Richard Robarts (born 22 September 1944 in Bicknacre, Essex) is a British former racing driver from England.
He participated in 4 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 13 January 1974. He scored no championship points. Info fom Wiki
With the shared title F3 1973 in his pocket and some money promised by a wealthy estate agent friend Richard bought his way into the second Brabham seat for 1974 after it had been vacated by Wilson Fittipaldi. Wilson had departed for the creation of his dream: a GP car born and bred in Brazil. In Argentina Richard qualified an encouraging 22nd, which was not too bad for a man of his experience, but in the race saw his engine expire 12 laps before the end. Meanwhile team leader Reutemann but for a self-minded airbox came within laps of Ecclestone’s first win as the Brabham team owner.
The next two races Richard’s qualifying gap to “Lole” was still three seconds, with Interlagos (our picture) handing Robarts his best finish with a 15th place, and while Carlos went on to win at Kyalami, finally delivering on the promise of Gordon Murray’s stunning design, poor Richard was languishing down the field, finishing 17th, 4 laps down, fighting for places with the likes of Migault and Pescarolo in their outdated BRMs. All that was left for Richard at Brabham were the two traditional British non-championship events, the Race of Champions and the International Trophy, and frankly, in both of them he was an embarrassment. At Brands he was responsible for punting off James Hunt’s Hesketh at Clearways while himself struggling to keep up with the F5000 machinery. In the Silverstone event Richard was beaten fair and square by the poorest of low-budget British kit-cars, John Nicholson’s Lyncar. For Bernie, Richard Robarts was merely a driving cash register.
So as soon as the money supply stopped – in fact it never started flowing, as is to be judged by Robarts’ pristine white car – Richard was out. Ironically, the well-funded man responsible for ousting Richard was Robarts’ predecessor as the Lombard North Central F3 champion, Rikky von Opel, another living testimony to the fact that not all F3 champions are true F1 stuff.
Richard hung on to a second chance at Williams, which had a vacant seat for the Swedish GP but he stood no chance to qualify as the team decided to hand his car to Tom Belsö. Tom had already driven for Frank at Kyalami and Jarama but destroyed his own car during practice. With the Swedish GP coming as close as it could get to a home race for the Dane, Belsö got the nod from Frank to continue with Richard’s car.
For the next one and a half years Robarts was effectively clutching at straws until he found some money to buy himself a year-old March F2 car, but he was unable to score a single point. Prolonging the life of his car, his last outings in big single-seaters were reserved for the British-based Shellsport Group 8 series for F1, F5000 and F2 cars.
With the same March 752 he had already taken part in round 1 of the 1976 series, taking a remarkable second on the grid but failing in the race with an ignition problem, before setting of on his European campaign. At the end of the season, now in possession of a BDA-powered 762-15, Richard raced the remaining four rounds of the Shellsport series and came good in the final two events, placing second to Keith Holland in the Motor Show 200 and third in the final round, also at Brands.
In 1977, having switched his engine supply to a Hart 420R, he took part in just one round (round 4 to be precise) and after qualifying 9th he was disqualified for receiving outside assistance during the race. Then in 1978 his career fizzled out with a couple of hardly noteworthy F2 appearances. So you see that winning the world’s most acclaimed F3 championship is not always a bed of roses. Ask Kelvin Burt.
