The Scottish driver who won the 1984 European Touring Car title, built Tom Walkinshaw Racing into a global force and later ran Arrows and Holden programmes.
Walkinshaw, who died in 2010 aged 64, won the 1984 European Touring Car title and built Tom Walkinshaw Racing into a major team. He retired from driving after the 1988 Tooheys 1000 and later ran Benetton and Holden programmes.
Thomas Dobbie Thomson Walkinshaw was a British racing driver from Scotland who founded the racing team Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR). He won the 1984 European Touring Car Championship in a V12 Jaguar XJS, and he later became a leading figure in sports car racing, Formula One and Australian touring cars. He also owned Gloucester Rugby and chaired the team owners' organisation for the Aviva Premiership.
Who was Tom Walkinshaw?
Walkinshaw was born on 14 August 1946 at Mauldslie Farm, near Penicuik in Midlothian. He started out in 1968 in an MG Midget, then switched to a Lotus Formula Ford. A year later he won the Scottish FF1600 title in a Hawke.
He is best known as a team founder and manager as well as a driver. He ran touring car programmes, sports prototype teams, a Formula One engineering operation and an Australian motorsport business, and he remained involved in motor sport until his death in 2010. He died on 12 December 2010, aged 64, from complications arising from cancer.
A touring car champion who built a racing group that won Le Mans twice and later reshaped Australian motor sport.
How did Walkinshaw start in formula racing?
In 1970 Walkinshaw entered the British Formula Three Championship with Lotus. He later moved to the March works team, where he broke an ankle in a racing accident. He recovered and continued to race in a wide range of classes, including Formula 5000 and Formula Two, which gave him a broad base of experience before he settled into touring cars.
Those years took him through several formulae before he turned his main attention to touring cars and to building his own team.
What did Walkinshaw achieve in touring cars?
Ford hired Walkinshaw in 1974 to drive a Capri in the British Touring Car Championship, and he won his class that year. In 1976 he established Tom Walkinshaw Racing and continued to drive for his own team. In the 1976 World Championship for Makes he shared a BMW 3.5 CSL, backed by Hermetite, with John Fitzpatrick.
The BMW pairing produced a dramatic result at the Silverstone 6 Hours, where they won by just 1.3 seconds. It was an early sign that his team could compete with factory-backed cars. His crowning result as a driver was the 1984 European title in a 5.3-litre V12 Jaguar XJS.
The Jaguar programme was the core of his touring car work. TWR ran the XJS in the European championship, and the 1984 title was its reward.
How did Walkinshaw fare at Bathurst?
In September 1984 Walkinshaw teamed up with the Australian driver John Goss to race an Australian Group C specification XJS in the Bathurst 1000. He qualified tenth, but the race ended before it had properly begun. The transmission failed at the start, and he was hit from behind by a Chevrolet Camaro. Several other cars were also caught up in the accident, and the race was red-flagged and restarted after 30 minutes, the first restart in the event's history.
In 1985 Walkinshaw returned with the ETCC Jaguars, which had been brought out of retirement and shipped to Australia. He claimed pole position, with Jeff Allam second on the grid. He led for more than two-thirds of the distance and finished third, but a split oil line late in the race kept him from a better result. Goss and Armin Hahne won the race for TWR in the other car.
The 1988 Tooheys 1000 was his last race as a driver. Working with Larry Perkins for the Holden Special Vehicles team, he qualified 13th. He retired after five laps with rear suspension failure. He was also cross-entered in the Perkins and Denny Hulme car, which he drove later in the race before it retired with engine failure after 137 laps while running second.
Why did Walkinshaw stop driving?
Walkinshaw retired from driving after the 1988 Tooheys 1000 to concentrate on managing the growing TWR motorsport portfolio. By then he had shifted his focus from his own cockpit to the team's structure, its engineering and its results across several championships.
His final race was also marked by a messy protest. Walkinshaw lodged a protest against five leading Australian-built Sierras, but the stewards had accepted it under the wrong licence, because only a race entrant could lodge a protest. A counter-protest then found illegal modifications to the steering racks of the Holden team cars, although no action was taken because the spare car had not started the race and the race cars failed to finish.
How big did Tom Walkinshaw Racing become?
TWR was established in the mid-1970s as a group that manufactured and designed racing and road cars. It ran touring car programmes through the mid-1970s and early 1980s, and in 1983 its Rover Vitesses won eleven races in eleven in the British Saloon Car Championship before the team was stripped of the title for a technical infringement.
The group later ran a Jaguar XJ-S programme in the European Touring Car Championship before moving into sports prototypes. In six years the team won Le Mans twice, in 1988 and 1990, and claimed the World Sportscar titles in 1987, 1988 and 1991. The team was also important for developing engineers, and it brought Ross Brawn to wider notice.
By 1997 the TWR group employed around 1,500 people in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and the United States.
| Year | Milestone | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Year after 1968 | Scottish FF1600 title | Won in a Hawke |
| 1974 | British Touring Car Championship | Class win in a Ford Capri |
| 1976 | World Championship for Makes | BMW 3.5 CSL with John Fitzpatrick; 1.3-second win at the Silverstone 6 Hours |
| 1984 | European Touring Car Championship | Champion in a 5.3-litre V12 Jaguar XJS |
| 1985 | Bathurst 1000 | Pole position and a third place finish |
| 1988 | Tooheys 1000 | Final race as a driver; retired after five laps |
| 1991 | Benetton | Engineering director of the Formula One team |
| 1997 | Autocar | Man of the Year |
| 2010 | Death | Died aged 64 on 12 December |
What was Walkinshaw's role in Formula One?
In 1991 Walkinshaw was recruited as engineering director of the Benetton Formula One team, which later won the 1995 world championship. He was involved in the recruitment of Michael Schumacher after the German's Formula One debut with Jordan, a move that proved significant for the team's later success.
His role at Benetton came under scrutiny during the 1994 season, when the team was investigated over suspected banned electronic aids and unauthorised changes to the refuelling apparatus. Illegal software was found in the cars, but the FIA had no evidence it had been used in a race, so the team faced no action.
In 1995 Walkinshaw bought half of the Ligier team from Benetton team principal Flavio Briatore. He wanted to take it over completely but could not buy all of it, so he pulled out and bought the Arrows team instead. He recruited the reigning world champion Damon Hill to Arrows for the 1997 season. In 1997 he was also managing director of Arrows Grand Prix International and was voted Autocar Man of the Year.
What happened to TWR's Australian business?
The TWR group collapsed into liquidation in 2002 once Arrows had exhausted its funds. The Australian arm of the business was bought by Holden. Because team ownership by manufacturers was banned in the Supercars Championship, Holden had to sell the Holden Racing Team to the lead driver Mark Skaife and K-Mart Racing to John and Margaret Kelly, the parents of two Supercars drivers.
Walkinshaw returned to V8 Supercars in 2005 and began a new relationship with his former teams. Holden won its first series title since 2002 in 2006 with Rick Kelly, and again in 2007 with Garth Tander. In late 2006 Walkinshaw Performance bought the Australian sports car maker Elfin Cars, and in 2007 it acquired a 50 per cent stake in the Holden Racing Team.
He fully reacquired the Holden Racing Team in 2008. In 2009 Walkinshaw Racing began as a two-car operation, running Bundaberg Red Racing and Team Autobarn. That team gave the family's name a continued place in Australian touring car racing.
What is the Walkinshaw family legacy?
Walkinshaw died on 12 December 2010 and was survived by his son Fergus from his first marriage, and by his second wife Martine and their sons Ryan and Sean. His memorial service was held at Gloucester Cathedral on 4 February 2011, reflecting his links with the Gloucester rugby club he owned.
His sons carried the family's motor sport interest forward. Ryan is a team principal at Walkinshaw Andretti United, the successor to TWR's Australian arm; Andretti Autosport and United Autosports co-own the outfit, which competes in Supercars. Sean races regularly in GT events and in the Super Taikyu Series for Hitotsuyama Racing.
Fergus, who has raced since he was 11, restarted TWR in October 2023. The name that Walkinshaw built therefore continues in new forms, from the road cars and racing programmes of the 1980s to the teams that bear the family's name today.
