Tom Walkinshaw Loses Battle With Cancer
Flamboyant team owner and driver dies at the age of 64
Walkinshaw's career spanned the whole of the motorsport globe - both as a driver and team owner - getting involved in touring cars, sports car and F1.
His early years as a driver were in single-seaters, but he soon switched to touring cars, the peak of his touring car success coming with the European Tour Car Championship crown in 1985 behind the wheel of a Jaguar XJ-S run by his own TWR organisation.
Walkinshaw's Jaguar success would continue with Group C sports car racing in the late 1980s - his iconic TWR Jags would take three world sportscar crowns, and Le Mans victories in 1988 and 1990.
A move to Benetton as engineering director in 1991 would bring Ross Brawn and Michael Shumacher to the team, and set the young German superstar on the road to his first two world titles.
After a successful but controversial 1994 season at Benetton, there was a (very) brief spell at Ligier, before Walkinshaw became the owner of the Arrows F1 team. He would, in 1997, very nearly score a famous victory for that team in Hungary, with Damon Hill at the wheel.
Meanwhile, the TWR group was finding success with Volvo in the BTCC, famously starting with the 850 estate in 1994, and eventually taking the championship in 1998 with Rickard Rydell driving an S40.
Unfortunately the Arrows F1 team proved too much of a financial strain, and TWR folded in 2002, although Walkinshaw would keep his racing hand in, running a team in V8 Supercars in Australia.
As a man who brought colour and innovation (and controversy) to whatever motorsport he was involved in, he will be sadly missed, but let's remember him this way - in epic form on the way to pole position in the 1985 Bathurst 1000 (see video below).
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