Kieth Odor was a familiar face in touring car paddocks throughout the first half of the nineties, driving for Nissan.
Throughout the early nineties the name of Kieth Odor was familiar to fans of touring car racing. He was a stalwart in the burgeoning British Touring Car Championship (BTCC), driving Nissans entered by his father. Sadly, following a switch to German touring cars, his life was cut short by a fatal accident at the AVUS circuit near Berlin in 1995.
Kieth was born in Salisbury in 1962 but he was always proud of his Hungarian heritage. His father János had emigrated from Hungary to England in 1957. The spelling of Kieth’s name would later cause much confusion for racing journalists. Kieth was the Hungarian spelling of Keith. The original spelling of his surname was Ódor, which Kieth simplified to Odor. Later in his career he often raced with O’dor written on his cars. He would joke in interviews that the change was made to fool people into thinking he was Irish.
Kieth’s racing career began in rallying but, for 1987, he switched to saloon cars. In 1989 he became the British Production Saloon Champion, following that success up with becoming the British Group N Saloon Champion the following season. The latter title was won in a Nissan and he would drive the Japanese cars for the remainder of his career.
1991 saw Kieth make his debut in the BTCC, driving for his father’s Janspeed team. At the end of the 1992 season he gained fame for one of the most spectacular crashes in BTCC history, when he left the track at Donington and somersaulted over a safety fence. Remarkably, he walked away from the accident. The high point of his time in the series came at the British Grand Prix support race in 1993, where he scored an impressive win.
By 1994 the Nissan was uncompetitive and the company chose to temporarily withdraw from the BTCC. Kieth was offered an alternative drive with them in the German ADAC Super Tourenwagen Cup. At AVUS there were two races, with Kieth winning the first, Nissan's maiden win in the series.
Kieth was leading the second race at AVUS when his car veered left into a concrete wall, probably as a result of tyre or suspension failure. The Nissan rebounded onto the track and into the path of oncoming cars. Frank Biela, driving an Audi, was unable to avoid striking the Nissan. Video footage showed him braking heavily but the collision still inflicted massive damage to the driver’s door of Kieth’s car. Due to spending so much of his career racing in the UK Kieth used a right-hand drive car and took the full force of the impact. He was evacuated by helicopter to a Berlin hospital but passed away a short time later.
SOURCES:
Autosport
The Nostalgia Forum
www.motorsportmemorial.org
