Brian Redman

One of the great sports car racing drivers of his era, Redman was an enormously versatile all-rounder with an attractively straightforward personality which made him hugely popular. It was therefore disappointing that his fleeting and occasional F1 outings served almost as an irrelevant footnote to a glittering career in almost every other category.

Brian’s early career was closely linked with the emergence of the Bolton-based Chevron sports car company and his first F1 involvement came courtesy of the works Cooper team, although this partnership ended prematurely with a badly broken arm sustained when his T81 suffered a suspension breakage and crashed heavily in the Belgian GP.

A brief sojourn in retirement living in South Africa at the start of 1971 was followed by a return to international racing in 1972-73 as co-driver to Jacky Ickx in the Ferrari endurance racing team. He also had a handful of races for McLaren in 1972, during which period he convinced those he worked with on the team that he had the talent for F1, if not perhaps the inclination.

Eventually Redman withdrew from the fringes of F1 from choice after three races for Shadow in 1974, as one of the temporary successors to his former McLaren team-mate Peter Revson who had been killed in a Shadow testing at Kyalami earlier that season.

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