Nick Halstead

Last updated

Nick Halstead
Nick Halstead Thruxton 2024.jpg
Halstead at Thruxton Circuit in 2024.
Nationality Flag of the United Kingdom.svg British
Born (1972-04-09) 9 April 1972 (age 52)
Kent, United Kingdom
British Touring Car Championship career
Debut season 2021
Current team Team Bristol Street Motors
Car number22
Starts61 (61 entries)
Wins0
Poles0
Best finish22nd in 2024
Previous series
2023
2022, 2021
2022, 2021, 2020
2019, 2018, 2017
2019
2019
2019		 Asian Le Mans Series
British GT
Ginetta GT4 Supercup
Ginetta GT5 Challenge
TCR UK
Renault Clio Cup UK
Dunlop Touring Car Trophy
Championship titles
2018 Ginetta GT5 Challenge AM

Nicholas John Halstead (born 9 April 1972 in Kent) is a British racing driver, software engineer and entrepreneur currently competing in the British Touring Car Championship for Team Bristol Street Motors. [1] Halstead has previously competed in British GT and the Ginetta GT4 Supercup. He won the AM title in the 2018 Ginetta GT5 Challenge, and made his British Touring Car Championship debut at Croft in 2021, substituting for Rick Parfitt Jr. at Excelr8 with TradePriceCars.com. [2]

Contents

Halstead is the founder of companies such as Infosum, Datasift and TweetMeme, the latter of which was the first site containing the retweet feature, before it was sold to Twitter in 2010. [3]

Career

Fav.or.it

In October 2007, the Fav.or.it company was founded, a proposed blog commenting system founded on principle that consumers and businesses both need content curated. The site was launched in 2008, and quickly built to 500,000 monthly users. [3]

TweetMeme

In January 2008, the first prototype of TweetMeme was released, a site founded by Halstead which tracked trending topics on the social media giant Twitter. The site would find new topics being talked about, and would track numbers talking about them to rank them, an aggregator. [4] The full site was then launched to the public in July the same year.

In February 2009 the retweet button was released onto the website, a feature allowing you to share posts you liked. Although this feature was founded on the TweetMeme website, it soon became a standard feature of almost all forum and social media sites, with approximately 1.6 billion retweet buttons across different pages on the internet. [5]

On 12 August 2010 the retweet feature was sold to Twitter, [6] and the website was shut down in September 2012, when it still had 3 million users at the time.

DataSift

Halstead announced DataSift in September 2010 at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, a social data platform that provides brands and enterprises with access to content from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and dozens of other social networks. [7] The software was officially released in November 2011. [8]

Nick stepped down as CEO of the company in October 2015.

InfoSum

In late 2015 Halstead founded Cognitive Logic, a data collaboration company. It was rebranded to InfoSum in September 2017. [3]

Racing career

Halstead's CUPRA Leon TCR competing in the 2019 Britcar Endurance Championship. CupraLeonTCR.jpg
Halstead's CUPRA León TCR competing in the 2019 Britcar Endurance Championship.

Ginetta GT5 Challenge

In 2017 Halstead would make his professional racing debut in the Ginetta GT5 Challenge with Fox Motorsport. Competing in the AM class, in this year he would pick up ten podiums in the class to finish 3rd in the AM standings.

He would continue with Fox Motorsport in the AM class in 2018, where with four in-class victories he would go on to win the AM title.

In 2019 he made the switch to the Pro class, still competing with Fox Motorsport, where he had a best finish of 11th. [9]

Ginetta GT4 Supercup

Competing in a handful of races in series such as TCR UK [10] and the Renault Clio Cup UK alongside his Ginetta GT5 campaign across 2019, in 2020 Nick would step up to the Ginetta GT4 Supercup, competing in the Pro-AM class still with Fox Motorsport. [9] Across this season in his class he racked up 3 wins, 15 podiums, 3 pole positions and 4 fastest laps on his way to 3rd in the championship standings.

With Fox Motorsport, he would compete in the rounds at Oulton Park and Brands Hatch in 2021 in the Pro-AM class, scoring a second-place finish at Brands Hatch.

He continued in the championship with Fox Motorsport in 2022 in the G55 Pro class alongside his British GT campaign.

British GT

Nick made his British GT debut in 2021, racing a McLaren 570S in the GT4 Pro-AM class alongside teammate Jamie Stanley. [11] The duo achieved 2 wins in class over the course of 7 races to finish 2nd in the GT4 Pro-AM cup and tied 8th overall in the GT4 category.

Halstead continued with Fox Motorsport in the series in 2022, this time switching to the GT3 category. [12]

British Touring Car Championship

Halstead made his British Touring Car Championship debut at Croft in 2021, substituting for Rick Parfitt Jr. at Excelr8 with TradePriceCars.com. [2] Over the course of the weekend Halstead finished in a better position every race, driving home to 21st position in Race 3.

Racing record

Racing career summary

SeasonSeriesTeamRacesWinsPolesF/LapsPodiumsPointsPosition
2017 Ginetta GT5 Challenge - AM Class Fox Motorsport [13] 190 ? ?10 ?3rd
2018 Ginetta GT5 Challenge - AM Class Fox Motorsport [14] 154 ? ? ? ?1st
2019 Ginetta GT5 Challenge Fox Motorsport1300000 ?
TCR UK 60101824th
Touring Car Trophy 601011845th
Britcar Endurance Championship - Class 4 Maximum Motorsport 20111879th
Renault Clio Cup UK Westbourne Motorsport [15] 200001017th
2020 Ginetta GT4 Supercup - AM Class Fox Motorsport18334154773rd
2021 British GT Championship - GT4 Fox Motorsport8000166.59th
Ginetta GT4 Supercup - Pro-Am 500011516th
British Touring Car Championship Excelr8 with TradePriceCars.com 30000034th
2022 British GT Championship Fox Motorsport91002817th
Ginetta GT4 Supercup - G55 Pro 1700012765th
2023 British Touring Car Championship Bristol Street Motors with EXCELR8 300000-530th
Asian Le Mans Series - GT Garage 59400001113th
2023-24 Middle East Trophy - GT4 Century Motorsport
2024 British Touring Car Championship Team Bristol Street Motors 280000722nd

Complete British GT Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

YearTeamCarClass123456789DCPoints
2021 Fox Motorsport McLaren 570S GT4 GT4 BRH
1
18		 SIL
1
24		 DON
1
10		 SPA
1 		SNE
1
17		 SNE
2
17		 OUL
1
18		 OUL
2
21		 DON
1
16		9th66.5
2022 Fox Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 GT3 OUL
1
3		 OUL
2
9		 SIL
1
13		 DON
1
9		 SNE
1
9		 SNE
2
8		 SPA
1
1		 BRH
1
10		 DON
1
11		7th81

Complete British Touring Car Championship results

(key) Races in bold indicate pole position (1 point awarded – 2002–2003 all races, 2004–present just in first race) Races in italics indicate fastest lap (1 point awarded all races) * signifies that driver lead race for at least one lap (1 point awarded – 2002 just in feature races, 2003–present all races)

YearTeamCar123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930DCPoints
2021 Excelr8 with
TradePriceCars.com 		Hyundai i30 Fastback
N Performance 		THR
1 		THR
2 		THR
3 		SNE
1 		SNE
2 		SNE
3 		BRH
1 		BRH
2 		BRH
3 		OUL
1 		OUL
2 		OUL
3 		KNO
1 		KNO
2 		KNO
3 		THR
1 		THR
2 		THR
3 		CRO
1
26		 CRO
2
25		 CRO
3
21		 SIL
1 		SIL
2 		SIL
3 		DON
1 		DON
2 		DON
3 		BRH
1 		BRH
2 		BRH
3 		34th0
2023 Bristol Street Motors
with EXCELR8 		Hyundai i30 Fastback
N Performance 		DON
1
Ret		 DON
2
7		 DON
3
Ret		 BRH
1
23		 BRH
2
23		 BRH
3
20		 SNE
1
26		 SNE
2
25		 SNE
3
21		 THR
1
NC		 THR
2
23		 THR
3
22		 OUL
1
23		 OUL
2
24		 OUL
3
19		 CRO
1
22		 CRO
2
22		 CRO
3
20		 KNO
1
15		 KNO
2
21		 KNO
3
Ret		 DON
1
24		 DON
2
20		 DON
3
20		 SIL
1
25		 SIL
2
21		 SIL
3
19		 BRH
1
22		 BRH
2
20		 BRH
3
20		30th-5
2024 Team Bristol Street Motors Hyundai i30 Fastback
N Performance 		DON
1
16		 DON
2
16		 DON
3
17		 BRH
1
17		 BRH
2
13		 BRH
3
17		 SNE
1
20		 SNE
2
WD		 SNE
3
WD		 THR
1
19		 THR
2
19		 THR
3
Ret		 OUL
1
17		 OUL
2
18		 OUL
3
17		 CRO
1
20		 CRO
2
Ret		 CRO
3
18		 KNO
1
19		 KNO
2
17		 KNO
3
14		 DON
1
19		 DON
2
18		 DON
3
17		 SIL
1
16		 SIL
2
18		 SIL
3
18		 BRH
1
14		 BRH
2
17		 BRH
3
19		22nd7

Complete Asian Le Mans Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

YearTeamClassCarEngine1234Pos.Points
2023 Garage 59GT McLaren 720S GT3 McLaren M840T 4.0 L Turbo V8 DUB
1
12		 DUB
2
5		 ABU
1
11		 ABU
2
10		13th11

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References

  1. ↑ "Nick Halstead joins EXCELR8 for 2023 campaign". TouringCarTimes. 4 November 2022. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
  2. 1 2 "NICK HALSTEAD TO SUBSTITUTE FOR RICK PARFITT AT CROFT". BTCC . Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 "About Nick Halstead". Nick Halstead. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  4. ↑ "Tweetmeme arrives to track Twitter's hottest links". TechCrunch . 28 January 2008. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  5. ↑ "What Exactly Do 1.6 Billion Retweet Buttons Get You? About 6 Million Actual Retweets". TechCrunch . 21 August 2009. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  6. ↑ "Pushing Our (Tweet) Button". Twitter Blog. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  7. ↑ "Tweetmeme Founder's Datasift Helps You Find A Needle In A Tweetstack". TechCrunch . 27 September 2010. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  8. ↑ "DataSift Launches Powerful Twitter Data Analysis And Business Intelligence Platform". TechCrunch . 16 November 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
  9. 1 2 "Former Ginetta Champion Nick Halstead Joins Millers Oils Ginetta GT4 SuperCup". Ginetta . 12 March 2020. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  10. ↑ "Nick Halstead joins TCR UK for three events in Fox Motorsport Honda". TouringCarTimes. 29 May 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  11. ↑ "Fox Motorsport Return With GT4 McLaren In 2021". dailysportscar.com. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  12. ↑ "Fox Motorsport Step Up To GT3 With Halstead, Stanley & McLaren 720S GT3". dailysportscar.com. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
  13. ↑ "British GT Championship - Rounds 1 & 2 - 15th & 17th April - Oulton Park - 2017". TSL Timing. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  14. ↑ "British GT Championship - Rounds 1 & 2 - 31st March & 2nd April - Oulton Park - 2018". TSL Timing. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  15. ↑ "British Touring Car Championship - Round 9 - 28th/29th September - Silverstone - 2019". TSL Timing. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
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