Drivers

Ron Flockhart

Born in Edinburgh in 1923 Flockhart started racing on the British club scene in a MG sports car before switching to open-wheelers in 1952 with an ageing ERA D-Type which he raced in Formula Libre.

In 1954 he landed a drive in one of Prince Biraís Maseratis for the British GP but retired from the race. Two years later Flockhart made his name with victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours in an Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar D-Type which he shared with Ninian Sanderson. This led to a drive with Connaught at the Italian GP where he finished third. That performance opened the door for him at BRM and he joined the team in 1957. That summer he won a second victory at Le Mans, sharing his Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar with Ivor Bueb. Soon afterwards however he crashed at the French GP and suffered burns which kept him out of action for a while.

After a poor season in 1958 he returned fulltime to BRM in 1959 and won the Lady Wigram Trophy in New Zealand and the Silver City Trophy at Snetterton. He was sixth at the French GP, a feat he repeated in 1960 when he was driving for Team Lotus, having been drafted in after the death at Spa of Alan Stacey. He had his last F1 outing that year at the wheel of a factory Cooper in the United States Grand Prix at Riverside.

He continued to race and was in Australia in the spring of 1962 racing for Lotus in the New Zealand Grand Prix. He then began to prepare to beat the record for flying from Sydney-London in a converted Mustang fighter plane. On April 12 1962 he crashed at Kallista, in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. The official report into the accident concluded that as he was not an instrument-rated pilot he had probably become disoriented while flying in cloud.