Bob Anderson (racing Driver)

Bob Anderson (racing Driver)

Robert "Bob" Anderson (19 May 1931, Hendon, London – 14 August 1967, Northampton) was a Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and racing driver from England. He competed in Grand Prix motorcycle racing from 1958 to 1960 and in Formula One from 1963 to the 1967 seasons. He was also a two-time winner of the North West 200 race in Northern Ireland.

After several seasons in motorcycle racing in which he finished in the top ten on several occasions, he switched to car racing in 1961, when he ran a Formula Junior Lola in a race at Snetterton. He continued to race cars and eventually became a Team Lotus Formula Junior driver, winning a race at Autodrome de Montlhéry and finishing second at Monaco.

He entered Formula One in 1963 with his own Lola Mk4 car, under the guise of DW Racing Enterprises, a small team compared to other private outfits such as Scuderia Filipinetti or Rob Walker Racing Team. DW was actually only composed of Bob and a small team of mechanics. Despite this hindrance he took the flexible little Lola to victory in the non-Championship Rome Grand Prix in that first year. In later years he ran private Brabham cars under the same banner, with his best result a third place in the 1964 Austrian Grand Prix. He was awarded the Von Trips Memorial Trophy as the most successful private entrant of 1964.

In 1967 he suffered an accident while testing at Silverstone, in which he slid off the track in wet conditions and hit a marshal's post. Anderson suffered serious chest and neck injuries and died later in Northampton General Hospital.