ROB WALKER (1917-2002)

ROB WALKER

R.R.C. 'Rob' Walker is the resident aristocrat among the Grand Prix people, and he alone remains from the days of the gentlemen racers. He used his family money, from the Walker whiskey business, for the sheer pleasure of being involved with motor cars in competition. A former driver himself, he then became a private entrant fielding cars for others, notably Stirling Moss. Now over 70, and a journalist for Road & Track magazine (where he alternates with Innes Ireland), Rob is a wonderful raconteur of the many fascinating experiences he has had.

"I've lived in the circus really all my life and it is a way of life for me. In the old days you'd leave Monaco and everybody would shake hands and say goodbye and a week later you'd all be shaking hands and saying hello in Zandvooort, and so on. Everybody knew everybody literally. It's much less so now, of course. Of the original people still here, I think you could count them on about four fingers. Among the journalists, for instance, there's Jenks, Alan Brinton, John Blunsden, and Jabby Crombac.

     "As one gets older I suppose one's enthusiasm for anything gets a little bit less, and the atmosphere here is absolutely no comparison to what it used to be. But of course, we've got all these sponsors in now.  It rather spoils the close affinity among the people. I think there's much more jet setty stuff - it's the place to be and that sort of thing - than there was in the old days when the people were very special. But I still get very excited over the races, as long as Senna is driving. If Senna wasn't driving, I don't think I'd be so interested. Still, I love meeting everybody and knowing a lot of the people. And a lot of them know me. All that is very, very pleasant. 

"I go back an awful long way you know. My mother took me to a Grand Prix in 1924, the Bologne Grand Prix as a child. I found it all absolutely fascinating.  And I think that was the start of it all for me. We were taken by the taxi driver round the circuit. He was highly enthused by the whole thing and my mother was terrified, while I was encouraging him as much as possible. And he was pointing out the places where people had been killed with great delight, the trees that they'd hit and so on.

"Then my mother gave me a car when I was still quite young and we had a long drive where I used to drive up and down, up and down. I used to time myself for the drive, and then I began to tune cars. My mother, seeing that I was very keen, gave me the second chauffeur to look after my car, to tune it up and that sort of thing.

"This was while I was under the age of being able to drive.  I was on my own private property, so it didn't matter. And this sort of thing went on for a long while.  Well you can imagine how it grew and the very first time I was able to have a car legally I put it in for a race. And then I got the Delahaye when I was up at Cambridge. I saw it in a shop window in Park Lane in London and I absolutely fell for it. And, although it was far more money than I had, I was introduced to hire purchase and I bought the thing. Without telling my mother or anybody, I entered it for a race at Brooklands. That was in '38 and the next year I raced at Le Mans, the last one before the war.

     "When I got married one of the things my wife said to me was I must give up motor racing. She said, 'You can do speed trials or hill climbs, but not circuit racing.' This was during the war when as I was a Fleet Air Arm pilot and our losses were phenomenal. Out of our batch, where there were 260 people, 25 eventually came out alive. So I had no hesitation whatsoever in saying, 'Yes, I won't drive after the war,' because I didn't think I'd ever see another motor race, let alone drive in it. 

"Well, when the war did finish, and I was still alive, I still had the Delehaye which was the fastest road racing car in Great Britain and I wasn't allowed to race it. So what to do but find somebody to drive it and that's what started me as a race entrant. I got Tony Rolt, he really was a magnificent driver, who won Le Mans with the Jaguar team and he drove single seaters for me. We got a Delage and then we worked up to Connaughts. After Tony Rolt retired I had Peter Collins, then Tony Brooks, and then I had Jack Brabham who was the first one who drove a full year's Grands Prix for me. And then Stirling Moss came to me and we had this wonderful relationship for five years. 

"I was fairly well known by this time. I'd been the first private entrant to win a Grand Prix, I was the first person to win a Grand Prix for Cooper, and Cooper Climax, and I won the first four for Lotus. Actually I was the first chairman of FOCA,, only because they were such a rabble! They had to have somebody and I was called in for a short time until they organized themselves.

"Towards the end of the time when I had Siffert driving for me and we were doing very well, Road & Track sent a man over from America to interview me. And I must be honest, I'd never heard of Road and Track, but the chap interviewed me and the last thing he said to me was, 'If you weren't in Formula 1 with your team, what would you like to be?'  So I thought for a moment and I said, 'Oh I think I'd like to be a journalist to keep my interest in motor racing.'

"By return post a letter came and said, 'If you meant what you said in the last paragraph, we'd like first refusal of your efforts.' And then they wrote a whole list of things for me to write on.  Well, I tore the whole lot up and threw it in the waste paper basket and never thought any more about it. Then they sent a letter and said Henry Manney, their Grand Prix man, had got tired of going around Europe and would I try doing Monza for them.  So I said I would have a shot at it. I was still running the team, but I did it and they were very pleased with it. When Henry Manney decided he was going to stay in America they asked me to go on doing it. And it was the first time I'd ever earned any money in motor racing!"

- from Grand Prix People (1990)