Early Racing Career
Hawkins began racing in Australia with an Austin-Healey in 1958. He left Australia and arrived in England in 1960. He found employment with the Donald Healey Motor Company Ltd., under John Sprinzel:
"I put an ad in the Evening Standard newspaper looking for
a mechanic and employed a really good guy to be our works
foreman; his name was Paul Hawkins. Paul literally came in
straight off the boat from Australia. He’d done a little bit of racing
and was a very good mechanic, very good as he knew his stuff, and
certainly knew the best parts of the English language, too."
Hawkins was soon behind the wheel of an Austin-Healey Sprite, racing at the Aintree 200 meeting on 30 April 1960, and winning his class in the GT race. He then finished 38th at the 1960 Nurburgring 1000 km race, with co-driver Cyril Simson, known as Team 221, on a "miserable foggy day in May". In 1961 at Le Mans Hawkins teamed with John Colgate in an Austin-Healey Sprite, but they retired in the eighth hour with engine problems. On Whit Monday, 1962, at the Crystal Palace Hawkins drove Ian Walker's Lotus-Ford to victory in the up to 1,150 c.c. sports car race, setting lap and race records. At Le Mans in 1965 Hawkins, with John Rhodes, finished twelfth overall, and first in class, in a 1.3-litre Austin-Healey Sebring Sprite entered by the Donald Healey Motor Company, completing 278 laps.
Hawkins also drove single-seaters, participating in the first race run to the new Formula Two regulations at Pau on 5 April 1964, finishing seventh in a pushrod Alexis. He was entered in a Team Alexis Alexis-Cosworth at Silverstone on 20 March 1965 but the race was abandoned due to heavy rain. He went on to win the Formula Two Eifelrennen race on the Nurburgring south circuit, in bad weather, in an Alexis-Cosworth Mk. 7 on 25 April 1965.
Read more about this topic: Paul Hawkins (racing Driver)
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