Tom Walkinshaw (born November 17 1950 Scotland) is a racing car driver and the founder of the racing team Tom Walkinshaw Racing.

Tom began racing in 1968, starting in an old Lotus FF1600. The following year he won the Scottish FF1600 title at the wheel of a Hawke. 1970 saw a move south to England and a change to Formula 3. Early in his career, Walkinshaw broke both his legs in a racing accident while racing for the March works team. Continuing his career despite this setback, he has driven in many classes, including Formula 5000 and Formula 2.

Ford hired Walkinshaw to drive a Capri on the British Touring Car Championship circuit in 1974. This resulted in him winning his class that year.

In 1975 Walkinshaw established Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), a group whose business is the manufacture and design of racing and road cars. He spent 10 years in this position before retiring from competition to concentrate on TWR's Jaguar Sportscar Programme. In six years the programme won Le Mans twice and the World Championships three times.

In 1983 Tom Walkinshaw led the TWR team to an amazing eleven wins in eleven races in the British Saloon Car Championship in a Rover Vitesse.

Walkinshaw was Engineering Director of the Benetton F1 team which subsequently won the 1994 Formula 1 World Championship amid much controversy.

1997 saw Tom voted Autocar Man of the Year. By this stage the TWR Group employed 1500 employees in the UK, Sweden, Australia and the United States. At the time, Tom was also Managing Director of Arrows Grand Prix International.

His racing group went into liquidation in 2002 following a bid to revive the ailing Arrows racing team.

Tom has been awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering by Oxford Brookes University

External links

• TWR Arrows Site
• F1 official site
• newsonf1 - contains detailed statistics and race results
• GrandPrix.com - all race results since 1950, detailed driver profiles
• FIA Official Site - all race results archived

• Category:Formula One - All F1-related articles, excepting drivers, teams/constructors, grands prix, and circuits.