Trevor Taylor (26 December 1936 – 27 September 2010) was a British motor racing driver from England. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Trevor Taylor rose to prominence in 500cc F3 racing, racing with a JAP-engined Staride and later a Cooper-Norton, and ten race wins in 1958 saw him take the British F3 championship. After racing a Formula Two Cooper in 1959, he received an invitation to run his own Formula Junior Lotus 18 alongside Jim Clark’s works car for the following season.
He shared the F3 championship with Clark in 1960, then won it solo the following year, and found himself promoted to the Lotus GP team.
In 1962 he had a horrifying high speed accident at Spa when he collided with Willy Mairesse’s Ferrari. A photograph of that time showed Trevor being offered a reassuring cigarette moments after escaping from the wreckage, while the Ferrari burns in the background.
At that year’s French GP, gendarmes prevented Maurice Trintignant’s car from entering the pit lane as he slowed after the race finish. As Trevor came over the brow there was nowhere to go and his Lotus locked up its front wheels for 150 yards as he aimed for the gap between Trintignant and the straw bales. However there was only room for the monocoque, without its wheels, so he ducked down low in the cockpit. He stated that he remembered thinking ‘Ah well, Trev – here we go again’ and came shooting out the other side like a sausage! Fortunately he wasn’t injured.
But at Enna, he survived probably his biggest escape, when he was thrown from his Lotus at more than 100mph. Bandini’s Ferrari dived inside him on a corner but slid wide in front of him as he came out of the corner. It dropped a wheel and showered him with rocks; one rock went straight into his mouth while another knocked him out. The car hit the guard rail and rolled, threw him out onto the track and then launched itself back over the guard rail where it burst into flames. Trevor bounced and skidded down the track and luckily only suffered grazing and severe bruising.
He shared the winning car in the Mexican GP with Clark and then won the non-title Natal GP at Westmead, one of the races in the Springbok series. Concerning the Mexican race, Clark later gave him a Rolex watch, with ‘winner, 1962 Mexican Grand Prix’ inscribed on it. Trevor had a high opinion of Clark, whom he always recalled as ‘that fine man’.
At the end of the season he joined the British Racing partnership team, alongside Innes Ireland, the man he’d succeeded at Team Lotus. Trevor felt he resented him for taking his Lotus drive and they nearly came to blows in a bar at Reims. However they made it up over a few drinks and by the small hours were the best of friends, staggering back down the main street to their hotel with their arms round each other. The US GP at Watkins Glen saw him take a sixth place finish but financial pressures closed the team and his Grand Prix career came to an end.
His racing continued for the next few seasons, the cars including a couple of Mini-Coopers and an F2 Brabham. He drove a Shannon-Climax V8 in the 1966 British GP at Brands Hatch but was forced to stop when petrol began pouring into the cockpit on the first lap.
He was away from motor racing for much of 1967 and 68 due to back problems, a long-term legacy of his accidents. However in 1969 he raced in Formula 5000 in a Surtees TS5, coming close to taking the title after fighting all the way to the final round at Brands Hatch.
He had a second season in F5000 with a Surtees through 1970, but was involved in a massive accident at the Salzburgring. His tyre deflated and with no steering veered off the track, clipped the end of the guard rail and flipped sideways up the bank and crashed back in the middle of the track. He got himself out quickly and sat composing himself at the side of the track. A marshal appeared, and upon seeing the mangled car sitting on the track, without its driver, burst into tears. He went to Trevor and said “driver gone, driver gone.” Trevor recalled he could hardly contain his mirth as Peter Gethin and Mike Hailwood were trying to reassure the marshal that Trevor was in fact the driver and he hadn’t gone.
In 1972 he decided to call it a day and retired back to the family garage concern.
PS. Around 1999/2000, I had a brief correspondence with Trevor and actually spoke with him on the phone. Amongst other things, he told me he was working on a hand control system for disabled drivers and sent me diagrams of the system although I don’t know if this ever went into production.
Following on from the post about Trevor Taylor, I’ve added more info about his later racing days.
As mentioned after F1 his racing continued for a few seasons. Sponsorship from Sheffield industrialist Hugh Griffiths’ Aurora Gears), saw him and his sister Anita (whom he called ‘an amazingly good driver’) race Mini-Coopers. He also joined the famous Broadspeed touring car team and enjoyed much success.
During 1966 he also competed in the British GP at Brands Hatch, in a Shannon-Climax V8. Long term back trouble kept out of much motor racing in 1967 and 68 but in 1969 he raced a Formula 5000 Surtees TS5 in a newly formed series. He fought for the first year’s Championship all the way to the final round at Brands Hatch when he tripped over a slow moving car as he was lapping it, spun into the bank and watched as Peter Gethin took the title. He described how he ‘was just about crying with frustration at the end of that particular day .’
He was asked by Mike Costin to test a four-wheel-drive Cosworth GP car at Silverstone but found the steering was so heavy that he felt like an old man after three laps. He suffered brake failure at one point and when a front driveshaft sheared he spun so many time that he didn’t know which way he was facing when he stopped. He’d never spun that quickly in his life. Mike Costin said to him, ‘let’s go down the pub’, so that was the end of that!’
1970 saw a second season in F5000 with a Surtees but he still found himself involved in some massive accidents from which he walked away unscathed. During his major accident at Salzburgring, he talked humorously of a poor marshall’s distress at seeing a wrecked car, with nobody in it, and thinking the driver was gone. However Trevor said that ’soon wasn’t so funny, as he’d briefly swallowed his tongue while the car was rolling and his throat was so sore he couldn’t eat anything for days.’
Trevor took victory in the 1969 Oulton Park Tourist Trophy in a Team Elite Lola T70GT coupe, but it was saddened by the cancellation of the race after Paul Hawkins’ fatal accident. In 1971 he had another drive in Formula 5000 with a Leda, sponsored by the Billinghurst based Malaya Garage concern. But in a massive accident at Oulton Park he gashed his left thigh open to the bone, Trevor did only another couple of races before deciding to call it a day and at the end of the 1971 season he retired.
