AMP Stories – Jeremy Buckingham

Jeremy Buckingham’s fascination with cars started from a very young age in a small town near Oxford, England. He turned this interest into a long and successful career in motorsport and automotive technology. 

“I’ve always been interested in cars,” Jeremy recalled. “I was one of those kids that drove my parents crazy. Luckily I had an uncle who was a mechanic at the Jaguar dealership so if we went into town to go shopping I would get off the bus by the Jaguar dealership and look at the Jaguar E-Types and he would take me for a test drive in them.”

As soon as Jeremy graduated high school his career in motorsport began as a designer with MG. At the time, the British automotive manufacturer offered an engineering design school that fast-tracked young engineers into their design team but Jeremy’s time at MG was cut short before it had really gotten started as the factory went on strike. 

“Luckily I grew up in an area of England that’s just an hour south of Silverstone and there’s a big racecar industry there. I got hired by March who were the biggest manufacturer of single-seater racecars at that time in Formula One, Formula Two, and Formula Three cars. My first job in racing was to work on their Formula One car to prepare it for hill climbing. It was actually a six-wheeled Formula One car with four wheels at the back.”

Jeremy then became involved in a couple of successful projects in the U.S. with March as they began to compete in Indycar in the early ’80s and GTD cars later on.

“Then I became head of quality control for the March Indycar project so I had to inspect all the Indycar pieces and during that time we won the Indy 500 five years in a row. Then I became the project manager for the GTD cars that ran at Daytona in the IMSA championship.” 

“I was the project manager on the GTD cars when Adrian Newey had just started at March. I was the project manager so I had to give Adrian Newey a hard time to get the drawings done. And he went on to be the chief designer for Williams F1 and then Red Bull.”

Jeremy chatting with Adrian Newey at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

Newey is still one of the lead designers for the Red Bull F1 team and has designed some of the most dominant cars in F1’s history, including the Red Bull cars which Sebastian Vettel scored four consecutive world championships with from 2010 to 2013. 

Eventually, Jeremy’s involvement in U.S. racing series forced him to move to the States permanently. In the early ‘90’s he transitioned from the world of motorsport to restoring vintage cars in the Atlanta area. 

“I had a shop and looked up everyone from Formula One cars to early seventies to all sorts of cool cars including a Ferrari GTO which I got to spend the day driving around Atlanta while a photographer followed me around taking photographs.”

Jeremy eventually left the motorsport world and began working alongside fellow AMP member, Andy Gilberg, in automotive safety. 

“Now I still do some safety research but I also do a little bit of racecar work for people and in the meantime, I finally got to go race myself about five years ago when I did the first endurance race at AMP. Then I went out and bought a spec E30 BMW and been doing as many of the AMP member race days as I can.”

Jeremy is a founding AMP member and tries to give back to the community whenever possible by helping out as an instructor for the DriveStrong teen driving school when needed. 

“I enjoy helping the kids, getting them started, and hopefully teaching them some skills trying to help out a little bit and help them become safer drivers. You feel like you are helping these kids and it’s good for the community.”