Shahzad Sheikh
13 December 2010
Former racing driver, better known as founder of Walkinshaw racing and team boss of the defunct Formula One Arrows team died at the weekend aged 64, after a long battle with cancer.
The Scottish racer first started racing in 1968 at the wheel of an MG Midget. He moved on to Lotus Formula Ford and British Formula 3 in 1970. He also drove in Formula 5000 and Formula 2.
But as a racer he’s probably best remembered for racing a Ford Capri in the British Touring Car Championship in 1974. Two years later he founded the famous Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), and won the European Touring Car Championship with his own team in 1984 driving a Jaguar XJS.
He’s also known in Austrlia for entering the Bathurst 1000 Touring car endurance race with his drivers winning in 1985.
TWR ran touring car programmes in the mid 1970s and early 1980s and through the World Sportscar Championship programme won Le Mans twice and the World Championship three times in six years.
In the early 1990s he joined the Benetton F1 team as Engineering Director and is credited with bringing Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher together which enabled the team to win the 1994 F1 title.
He bought the Arrows team and recruited the then Formula 1 world champion Damon Hill for the 1997 season.
In 2005 Walkinshaw returned to V8 Supercars Australia and joined the Holden teams to produce wins in 2006 and 2007. Even as recently as 2009 saw the debut year of Walkinshaw Racing in the series (the squad was revived after his company Walkinshaw Performance bought into the Holden Racing Team).
A mighty force in the world of international motorsports he will be missed by the racing fraternity. Walkinshaw is survived by his wife Martine and sons Ryan and Sean.
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