Richard
Attwood

Richard Attwood was born in Wolverhampton on 4 April 1940. He started out as an apprentice at Jaguar and began racing in 1960 in a Triumph TR3. From 1961 he drove in Formula Junior for the Midlands Racing Partnership. In 1963 he won the Formula Junior support race at the Monaco Grand Prix and received the inaugural Grovewood Award. In Formula Two in 1964 he won in Vienna and finished second at Pau, the Eifelrennen and Albi.

These results led BRM owner Alfred Owen to offer him a place in the works team. At the 1964 British Grand Prix he qualified the four-wheel-drive BRM P67 in last place, but the team withdrew the car before the race. In 1965 he drove a Lotus 25 with a BRM engine for Reg Parnell Racing, starting eight races and finishing sixth twice. In 1967 he stood in for Pedro Rodríguez at the Canadian Grand Prix in a Cooper and came home tenth.

He returned to BRM in 1968 as the replacement for Mike Spence, who had died in an accident. In his first race back, at Monaco, he set the fastest lap and finished second behind Graham Hill. It was his only Formula One podium. BRM replaced him with Bobby Unser four races before the end of the season, and he finished the year 13th in the championship. In 1969 he substituted for the injured Jochen Rindt in a Lotus 49B at Monaco and came fourth. He again ended that year 13th in the championship. At the 1969 German Grand Prix he drove a Formula Two Brabham for Frank Williams and finished sixth overall.

He also raced in sports cars. In 1964 he won the Rand 9 Hours in South Africa in David Piper's Ferrari. He drove for the Porsche works team in 1969, and at Le Mans his 917 retired with gearbox failure two hours from the finish after leading for a long stretch. In 1970 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Hans Herrmann in a 917K, the first of Porsche's victories there. In 1971 he was second at Le Mans with Herbie Müller and won the Zeltweg 1000 km with Pedro Rodríguez. He then retired, but came back for Aston Martin's Nimrod project at Le Mans in 1984. He later appeared at historic motorsport events.

Source: Wikipedia, “Richard Attwood”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.