Basil
Van Rooyen

Basil van Rooyen was born in Johannesburg on 19 April 1939. He began racing motorcycles in 1957 at the age of 18. In 1961 and 1962 he took several class wins in a Ford Anglia at the newly opened Kyalami circuit. He later raced saloon cars such as the Lotus Cortina and the Ford Mustang. He won the South African Saloon Car Championship in 1966 and 1967. He was also an engineer who developed his own race cars, including an Alfa Romeo fitted with a 2000cc engine he had developed himself.

He started two Formula One races. His debut came in the South African Grand Prix on 1 January 1968, in an older Cooper that had previously been driven by John Love. In 1969 he lined up for the same race in a McLaren. He retired from both races and did not score a championship point. Later in 1969 he crashed while testing tyres at Kyalami and needed time to recover.

He carried on racing afterwards. In 1970 he won the Onyx Production Car Championship in an Alfa Romeo GTV. Back in 1968 he had finished second in the Kyalami 9 Hours, sharing a Ferrari Dino with Tony Dean. In 1977 he travelled to Australia, finishing fourth in the Sandown 500 and retiring from the Bathurst 1000. Van Rooyen died in Australia in 2023, aged 84.

Source: Wikipedia, “Basil van Rooyen”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.