Peter Nield Whitehead (12 November 1914 – 21 September 1958) was a British racing driver.
He was born in Menston, Yorkshire and was killed in an accident at Lasalle, France, during the Tour de France endurance race. A cultured, knowledgeable and well-travelled racer, he was excellent in sports cars. He won the 1938 Australian Grand Prix, which along with a 24 Heures du Mans win in 1951, probably was his finest achievement, but he also won two 12 Heures internationales de Reims events. He was a regular entrant, mostly for Peter Walker and Graham Whitehead, his half-brother.
His death in 1958 ended a career that started in 1935 – however, he was lucky to survive an air crash in 1948. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born in 1914 in Menton, Yorkshireman Peter Whitehead raced before World War II and then the 1950s and his biggest victory came with Peter Walker at Le Mans in 1951.
He was a member of a wealthy family ‘W & J Whitehead’ with extensive interests in the textile industry, including Australia, and he lived on a farm near Reading. He started racing with a Riley in 1934, then switched to an ERA, and his first major result came with third in 1936’s Limerick GP, with Geoffrey Taylor’s Alta. 1936 would also see him take third in the Donington GP, co-driving an ERA with Peter Walker.
In 1938, while on a business trip to Australia, he timed his stay around the GP at Bathurst and took victory with his ERA B-Type. In the race, on lap 20 he pitted for oil, fuel and water and a local newspaper report stated ‘this intrepid Englishman apparently does not know the meaning of fear. Once or twice his car slid badly and began to waltz about on the road but he just smiled unconcernedly and set it racing on a perfect course again with the utmost simplicity’. He received a tremendous ovation at the finish and “dusty, dirty and deaf in a dark blue shirt, spotted tie and grey slacks, mug of beer in hand, he praised the circuit, fellow competitors, and the race itself: ‘I think it is a really fine track. It has the fast corners and the slow corners and a long straight that enables cars to make up lost time…when tar paving is carried out it will be hard to better it…some nasty bumps appeared down the Mount during the latter part of the race’. He said he had not been troubled by spectators walking on the track! The Light Car Club of Australia History told how “Whitehead and Sinclair (a fellow English racer) lead the celebrations. At the prize presentation His Worship The Mayor had just finished his address to the multitudes and was on the point of handing the winners trophy to Whitehead when he was squarely hit on the head by a large cauliflower. This being followed by a shower of similar vegetables resulting is His Worship, his two daughters and other Councillors retiring in disordered haste.” raced an ERA B-Type in the Australian GP and took victory at Bathurst.
He also took the Australian hillclimb championship and won a race at Aspendale Speedway, Melbourne, in the ERA R10B plus also set the lap record. At a Grand Prix in Parramatta Park, Sydney, there had been a number of incidents in practice, including Peter hitting a sandbag wall, and shortly before it was due to start the Police banned the race.
He also made several attempts on the Australian Land Speed Record with one at 90 Mile Beach in September 1938 and he stated “The car can do it if the conditions are good…You just sit there and tread on the gas, and hold tight to the wheel. On a good test run particularly, it is not the driver that counts but the engine. At the beach on Sunday I am not going to be a Segrave or a Campbell!! So do not be disappointed’. However, after he achieved 118.8 mph in the ERA, waves washed over the track and halted any further serious attempts. The Sunday Times’ Perth reported “With only a few yards of wet sand between the flags and the waves on the four mile course, Whitehead pluckily started up so as not to disappoint the crowd. He was obstructed by water in his first run however, and although he averaged 118.8 mph in his next run, his car plunged through the lip of a wave, tearing away the apparatus for cooling the brakes, ripping off the oil filler cap, and partially flooding the crankcase with salt water. He maintained control but it was evident that he had no chance of putting the record up to 135mph which was his hope.” Eventually the event was abandoned as waves lapped the tent containing the electric timing apparatus and covered the finishing point and there was a rush to get cars off the beach before the tide rose further. His last Australian Land Speed attempt came in November at Gerringong Beach, New South Wales, though it failed at 132mph when a piston broke. He then travelled back to England though contested two races in South Africa at the start of 1939 on the journey back, retiring with piston failure in the South African GP at East London.
Back in Britain after his Australian trip, he was second with an Alfa Romeo at Donington and then served as a pilot with the Royal Air Force during the War. He returned to racing afterwards and in 1947 took his ERA to second place in the British Empire Trophy and also raced at Lausanne. In 1948, while on his way to purchase a Ferrari 125, he survived a plane crash at Croydon Aerodrome but was badly injured and out of racing for a year. However, in 1949 he became the first Ferrari privateer after buying the car from Enzo Ferrari and with it contested nine F1 Grands Prix, in the last season before the F1 World Championship was inaugurated. He finished third in the French GP at Reims (though had come close to winning it until slowed with a gearbox problem) and later won the Czechoslovakian race at Masaryk Circuit in Brno, becoming the first Englishman since Dick Seaman to win a major international motor race outside the UK.
In 1950 he contested non championship races, winning the Jersey Road Race and the Ulster Trophy but though he appeared at Monaco’s World Championship round he didn’t start the race. His championship debut came in France, where he went on to finish third behind Juan Manuel Fangio and Luigi Fagioli and this was his only F1 championship podium. He finished seventh at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and his season’s four points saw him finish ninth in the first ever F1 World Championship. There was also a debut at Le Mans, sharing a Jaguar XK120 with John Marshall and they came home ninth and later he finished second in the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod (behind Stirling Moss) and third with the ERA at Goodwood
1951 saw four starts in the F1 World Championship races, retiring the Ferrari 125 in Switzerland, France and Italy though finished ninth at Silverstone with a Ferrari 375 Thinwall. He contested four non-championship races and was third, fifth and sixth at Bordeaux, Pescara and Bari. Then, in June 1951, came his greatest achievement when he and Peter Walker won Le Mans with their Jaguar C-Type, which was Jaguar’s first win there. In 1952, he continued combining Grands Prix and sports car races. At Le Mans he and Ian Stewart retired their Jaguar C-Type while in F1 he raced in France and Great Britain (in an Alta F2 car in the French GP) and his best results in non-championship races were a fourth and three fifth place finishes. The following year saw further victories in sports cars with Jaguar, in the Reims 12 Hours with Stirling Moss and the Hyeres 12 Hours with Tom Cole. At Le Mans, he and Ian Stewart finished fourth, behind teammates Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton and took a third place podium in the Goodwood 9 Hours. The Cooper Alta took second in the Goodwood Easter handicap, Snetterton and Oulton Park F2, and third in the Coronation Trophy at Crystal Palace. With a Cooper Jaguar sports car he won at Snetterton and later shared it with Graham Whitehead to take fifth place in a Casablanca 12 Hours race.
In Grand Prix racing in 1954, the Ferrari was replaced with a Cooper T24-Alta though he only contested one championship race, the British Grand Prix, where he retired due to engine failure. The Cooper took victory at Snetterton and in the Wakefield Trophy plus was third in the Oporto GP. There was a repeat of the Reims 12 Hours victory, sharing a Jaguar D-Type with Ken Wharton though they retired at Le Mans with gearbox failure and he took fifth in the TT. He took third place in the Coupe Du Salon at Monthlery in an HWM Jaguar, fourth in an Oulton Park Libre race with the Ferrari and won the Lady Wigram Trophy in New Zealand.
There were further successes with the Ferrari in New Zealand in 1955, taking second in the GP though most of the year was spent racing the Jaguar-powered Cooper in sports car races, taking fourth in the Portuguese GP, fifth at Aintree and fastest sports car time at the Brighton Speed Trials. There was a return to Australia and New Zealand the following year and he won the Lady Wigram Trophy with the Ferrari plus took third in the Australian and New Zealand Grand Prix, fourth at Dunedin plus took the Bryson Industrial Cup at Melbourne with a Ferrari Super Squalo. He had a second place with the Cooper Jaguar at Ardmore while travelling to Africa saw him win the Central African International Trophy plus races at Limpopo and Kafue. He and Graham Whitehead raced a Jaguar to fourth in the Swedish GP plus he was third with an Aston Martin at Chimay and took third at Snetterton and a class win at Leinster with a Maserati
He achieved his third Lady Wigram Trophy victory in 1957 with the Super Squalo, plus victory at Invercargill, second in the New Zealand GP and third in Dunedin. There were podium finishes with an Aston Martin DBS3 at Snetterton plus he had a class victory with a Lister in the Leinster Trophy. He and G.Whitehead raced at Le Mans that year, retiring their Aston Martin DBR2, though in the following year they finished second in a DB3S, behind the Ferrari of Olivier Gendebien and Phil Hill. In that year the pair raced to sixth place at the Nurburgring but sadly, while contesting September’s Tour de France, Peter was killed when their Jaguar saloon plunged off a bridge and into a ravine at Lasalle, near Nimes.
Gallery F1
