Robert Hugh Fearon Anderson (19 May 1931 – 14 August 1967) was a British Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and racing driver.
He competed in Grand Prix motorcycle racing from 1958 to 1960 and in Formula One from 1963 to the 1967 seasons. He was also a two-time winner of the North West 200 race in Northern Ireland. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Bob Anderson started out racing motorcyles before switching to cars and was one of the last true independent F1 drivers.
As a youth, he had serious back problems due to osteomyelitis (a painful bone infection) which led him to spend the best part of a year in a hospital bed. He eventually went to agricultural college, though left after a year and got a job as a mechanic in a local machinery dealer. A visit to a motorcycle race with friends would lead to him eventually giving up his job to concentrate on racing and over the next few years he developed into one of Britain’s leading riders.
He finished second behind John Surtees in the 1958 Senior TT and would finish in the world championship points twelve times on his 500 and 350cc Nortons, and once with an MZ in 125cc. He came close to winning a Moto GP when he finished just inches behind Geoff Duke in 1958’s Swedish GP and also twice won the North West 200 race in Northern Ireland.
However, after several seasons in motorcycle racing he made the switch to cars and raced in Formula Junior finishing fourth at Goodwood’s Chichester Cup and twelfth at Silverstone. In 1962 he ran under the Team Lotus banner, alongside Peter Arundell and Alan Rees. He showed excellent form at Monaco, finishing third behind P.Arundell and Mike Spence, plus also picked up third places at Rouen, Goodwood and Zandvoort, and was second at Montlhéry.
In 1963 he entered Formula One with his own Lola, racing as DW Racing Enterprises, and competed in non-championship F1 races. His debut was at Snetterton and he went on to Pau, Imola and Syracuse, where he qualified second to Jo Siffert. He won the Rome GP at Vallelunga and at the British Grand Prix, he qualified sixteenth out of twenty three and finished twelth at Monza.
He moved up to the World Championship with a Brabham BT11 and at Monaco he qualified twelfth, finished sixth at Zandvoort, took a seventh place qualifying position at Brands Hatch and finished third in the Austrian GP behind L.Bandini and R.Ginther. However, this was an amazing result as he prepared his Brabham in a converted shed next to his house and carried it around Europe on a VW pickup. The team consisted of his wife doing all the administration, and often just a single paid mechanic or an occasional volunteer helper from his hometown. Also, a friend of his recalled that Bob told him he had taken out a life insurance policy and used it as security for finance to buy the Brabham. At the end of the year he was awarded the Wolfgang von Trips Trophy for the best private entrant.
In 1965 he again showed his pace by qualifying fifth at the Easter Goodwood meeting (ahead of J.Brabham, B.McLaren and D.Gurney) and took ninth place finishes at Monaco and France but his season was cut short after he wrote off his car while practising at the Nurburgring.
In the following season, after rebuilding the Brabham and adding an old Climax four-cylinder engine for the new 3-litre formula, he qualified eighth at Monaco, and was running fifth until he retired with an engine problem on lap four. However later in the season he took a sixth place finish at Monza in the Italian GP. He also did a full F2 season of F2 racing with Bob Gerard and the year would also see him back on a motorbike, finishing fifth on a Yamaha in the 250cc event at Assen.
Late in the year, in December, he won the Rhodesian GP (after spending all night repairing accident damage to his car) and in the January then took a strong fifth place finish in the South African GP that started the 1967 season.
He went on to take seventh place at Oulton Park’s Spring Cup and eight in the International Trophy followed by ninth place at Zandvoort and eighth at Spa. He retired in France and Britain but after the British GP Bob tested the car at Silverstone before it was shipped out for the Canadian GP. Sadly, in wet conditions he slid off and hit a marshal’s post, suffering serious chest and neck injuries, and died later in Northampton General Hospital.
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