David
Kennedy

David Kennedy was born in Sligo, Ireland, on 15 January 1953 and began his racing career at Mondello Park in the early 1970s. In 1976 he won both the RAC British Formula Ford Championship and the Townsend Thoresen Formula Ford 1600 Championship in a Crossle, becoming the first Irishman to win a British single-seater title. He also finished a close second in the European FF1600 series that year. He moved up to Formula 3 in 1977, but the factory-supported March team folded early in the season and Kennedy switched to the small Argo outfit. He ended 1978 sixth in the series and switched to British Formula One before the year was out, winning on his debut at Snetterton in a Wolf WR3 run by Theodore Racing. In 1979 he was runner-up in that championship.

In 1980 he joined Shadow and was entered for seven Formula One World Championship races, without starting any of them. Kennedy did qualify for and race in the 1980 Spanish Grand Prix, an event that was later stripped of its World Championship status.

He took part in part of the 1981 North American Can-Am season in a Frissbee, then returned to Europe and raced in sportscars, latterly with the factory Mazdaspeed team, at Le Mans, in Japan and in the world sportscar championship. In 1991 he finished sixth overall at Le Mans with Stefan Johansson and Maurizio Sandro Sala. That year Mazda won the race with Johnny Herbert, Volker Weidler and Bertrand Gachot, a line-up Kennedy had put together. His driving career ended in 1994 and he moved into driver management. From 1995 to 2003 he worked for RTÉ as Formula One co-commentator alongside Peter Collins, and from 2004 to 2009 he worked as a Formula One analyst for Setanta Sports.

Source: Wikipedia, “David Kennedy (racing driver)”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.