OWNER of the rugby union side Gloucester Rugby and ex-F1 team Principal Tom Walkinshaw passed away on Sunday night. He was 64, losing his brave battle with long cancer.
Born in Scotland in 1946, Tom was a keen racing enthusiast from an early age and began racing in 1968 in Formula Ford. He won the production class in the British Touring Car Championship in 1974 and raced as high as Formula 2. However, it was his success as a team owner that made Tom Walkinshaw a famous name in the motor racing industry.
He established TWR (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) in 1976, and began a very fruitful partnership with Jaguar in sportscars. Before this, he won the European Touring Car Championship title in 1984 in a Jaguar and came third two years later alongside Win Percy in the legendary Australian touring car battle, the Bathurst 1000.
In 1988, Tom retired from driving and decided to concentrate on management, and it bought immediate results. Their motorsport portfolio increased very rapidly, and it was Jaguar where the main success came.
They won the World Sportscar title in 1987, winning eight of the ten races. A year later, the Jaguars stormed Le Mans. Johnny Dumfries, Andy Wallace and Jan Lammers took the honours and Walkinshaw was also responsible for poaching technical director Ross Brawn from Arrows, and making him into a legendary force in sportscars. Sauber Mercedes dominated the 1989 event, with a 1-2 finish, but the Jags returned to the winners’ rostrum in Le Mans in 1990. With Sauber not returning, the Jaguar team overcame a stiff challenge from Porsche to take a historic 1-2 finish. Lammers, Wallace and Franz Konrad were second, behind John Nielsen, Price Cobb and Martin Brundle. It was Brundle’s greatest career achievement and the BBC commentator remembers Tom’s passion for Le Mans; “He was a mentor to me; an entrepreneurial racer and a great tactician.”
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| FIERY: Verstappen's 94 fire spelt the end at Benetton for Tom |
At the British Grand Prix in 1991, news brokethrough of TWR’s 35% buyout in the Benetton Formula One team. Walkinshaw would join Flavio Briatore in owning the team and took the talented Brawn with him to Benetton. It was Walkinshaw’s insistence of the talents of Michael Schumacher, who’d raced for Sauber Mercedes in sportscars against Tom’s Jaguar squad that gave Briatore the belief to poach Schumi from under Jordan’s noses at Monza in 1991. In 1994, he played an instrumental part in Schumacher’s first world championship title. However, he was seen as the controversial villain in the team and parted company with Benetton at the end of the season. Walkinshaw was seen to challenge the black flag against Schumacher at the British Grand Prix. A race later, and a fuel filler was removed at the German Grand Prix, which led to a catastrophic refuelling fire for Dutchman Jos Verstappen. Although a junior member of the team was officially blamed, it is widely claimed that Walkinshaw gave permission for the filler to be removed, hence on an FIA deal, ending his career with the newly-crowned top team in Grand Prix racing.
Tom wound up at the Benetton-owned Ligier team for 1995, and then a falling out with Briatore led to a deal for him to take sole control of the team fall through. Consequently, he bought out Jackie Oliver’s Footwork team in 1996 and renamed it Arrows. His persistence saw Yamaha engines come onboard, Bridgestone tyres to make their debut a year earlier than planned and encouraged world champion Damon Hill to join the ambitious programme. The programme was a disaster. The car was massively uncompetitive and although Hill came so close to winning the Hungarian Grand Prix, until a throttle problem on the last lap cost him the race to Jacques Villeneuve, Hill and Walkinshaw parted company at the end of the season, and not on the best of terms. Damon, who now owns the BRDC valued Walkinshaw’s ambition; “He was a very big-hearted guy who put everything he had into motor racing in all of its forms.”
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| FADING: Tom with Briatore and Bernie in his final F1 season |
Afterwards, it was largely downhill in Formula One for Tom Walkinshaw, although there were a few highlights. On the track, there was a double point’s finish in Monaco in 1998 and Verstappen ran as high as second in the 2001 Austrian and Malaysian Grand Prix’s. Off-track, he secured a massive sponsorship deal with the mobile phone giant Orange for 2000, but it wasn’t enough for the failing Arrows team. The Arrows team went bust at the end of the 2002 season, after failing to pay Jaguar its fee for Cosworth engines. The team’s last appearance in F1 came at Hockenheim in 2002. Although his TWR team helped Rickard Rydell and Volvo to a British Touring Car Championship title in 1998 and he continued to run a touring car team in Australia, his major involvement in motorsport was finished.
At the same time as the Arrows team was disappearing out of F1, Walkinshaw started to turn his attentions towards rugby union. He was the chairman of Premiership rugby from 1998-2002 and pumped plenty of money into his role as Gloucester chairman. Although he turned the club into a leading force, he was unable to turn that money into success on a domestic or European scale.
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| Tom Walkinshaw (14 August 1946 - 12 December 2010) |
Some will say he had a ruthless and dark side to his business, but Tom Walkinshaw was a mild, generous and kind man, who didn’t quite achieve the success he craved, especially in motorsports ultimate pinnacle. However, he was a massive presence and a real hard-worker and he will be missed, both in the rugby and motor racing circles.
RIP Tom
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