Victor Henry Elford (born 10 June 1935, in London – died 13 March 2022) is a former sportscar racing, rallying and Formula One driver from England.
He participated in 13 World Championship F1 Grands Prix, debuting on 7 July 1968. He scored a total of 8 championship points.
Nicknamed “Quick Vic” by his peers Elford was mainly a famous sports car competitor as well as a successful rally driver, associated often with Porsche. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Known as ‘Quick Vic’ to his peers and fans, Vic Elford raced single seaters and sports cars plus was also a successful rally driver and raced for Porsche, Ford, Triumph, Lancia, Alfa-Romeo, Ferrari, Chaparral, Shadow, Cooper, Lola, Chevron, Subaru plus drove McLaren in F1 & CanAm and Chevrolet in TransAm.
Besides winning at Sebring, Daytona and the Targa Florio, he was one of only four drivers ever to record six major victories at the classic Nurburgring plus held lap records at Targa Florio, Nurburgring, Daytona, Sebring, Norisring, Monza, Buenos Aires, Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Riverside and Le Mans (where he was the first driver to lap at over 150mph in the Porsche long-tail 917 in 1970).
As a youngster, his father was a cycling champion, and after he took him to the British GP in 1948 at Silverstone, he decided he was going to be a race driver. However, Vic had no money and the only way he could take part at first was as a rally navigator; as he stated “it got me into a car, even if it was in the wrong seat.” Competing as a co-driver in a Triumph TR3A (with David Seigle-Morris) his first international event was the Tulip Rally in 1960 and he then bought a race-tuned Mini and competed with it until the money ran out and he had to sell it. He was working at this time, making a living selling life insurance. Following this he raced a factory sponsored DKW, winning two national events in 1962 and the next year saw him post impressive times with a Triumph TR4. He then switched to Ford and this led to a successful three-year period with Cortinas, with results including first in the touring category on the Alpine, second on the Tulip and the Circuit of Ireland and third on the RAC.
After meeting with Huschke von Hanstein he persuaded him to let him use a Porsche 911 for rallying and after using a hire car for 10 days to learn the route in Corsica, took the 911 to third place in the Tour de Corse. In 1967 he became European rally champion in a Porsche 911 and competed in races and rallies, finishing third at the Nurburgring, third at Mugello, and second (in a 910) in the Croft International. In Porsche 906s he was seventh, and won his class, at Le Mans, was sixth at Reims plus won the Tulip Rally, the Lyons-Charbonnières and the Geneva. Racing an Isleworth 911, he won the 2-litre class in the British Saloon Championship and in the Marathon de la Route (84 hours around the full Nürburgring) in a Sportomatic 911 with Jochen Neerpasch and Hans Herrmann, they won by 12 laps.
The following year he won the Rally Monte Carlo and soon after won the 24 Hours of Daytona, having never seen the track before and only nine months after his first international race. This would also be Porsche’s first ever overall win in a 24-hour race. There was a victory in the Nürburgring 1000Km with Jo Siffert, second place at Sebring and Montlhéry, and third in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch. In the April he made his single-seater debut in an F2 Protos at the Nurburgring. He and Umberto Maglioli won the Targa Florio, despite suffering a loose wheel and then a puncture, and having to return to the pits on the space-saver spare. The race seemed over but Vic stayed in the cockpit for over five of its six and a half hours and, beating the lap record, they won by almost three minutes. In recognition of his efforts, Porsche dedicated their traditional victory poster to the driver, the only time a Porsche poster ever featured only the driver and not the car. Years later when he attended a Targa reunion, the locals would still recall his exploits.
There was also a Formula One debut in a Cooper at the French Grand Prix (replacing injured Brian Redman), where he finished fourth. At the Nürburgring he qualified fourth in the wet, ahead of J.Stewart, J.Surtees and D.Gurney, though crashed in the race, and would finish fifth in Canada and eighth in Mexico.
Early in the following year, he drove a Dodge in a NASCAR race at Daytona (one of the first non-American drivers to do the race) and finished eleventh. He said he expected to be treated as an intruder there but nothing was further from the truth and everyone was welcoming. He continued in F1 and finished seventh at Monaco with a Cooper-Maserati and then came a switch to a McLaren M7B. However, in Germany, after qualifying sixth, he had a big accident and ended upside down and trapped in the car. Despite fuel running out of the tanks, Mario Andretti helped to get him out of the car and though the McLaren was destroyed Vic was lucky to escape with a broken collarbone and arm.
For the next few seasons he concentrated on sportscars and at one point was involved in the filming of Steve McQueen’s ‘Le Mans’ movie, being one of the drivers chosen to do the high speed close-up action driving the 917. In 1971 driving a Martini Racing Team Porsche 917K he and Gerard Larrousse won at Sebring and he also took his third Nürburgring 1000Km win. Vic moved on to Alfa Romeo to race their T33 (when team-mate Helmut Marko lost an eye while driving a BRM in the French GP, Vic was driving the medical car).
He also impressed in Can-Am races, which included driving the Can-Am AVS Shadow, with its tiny wheels, and Jim Hall’s revolutionary Chaparral 2J ‘sucker car’. During 1972’s Le Mans race, a Ferrari crashed in front of him and after stopping to rescue the driver from the burning car, Vic was named Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by French President Georges Pompidou for his act of courage and heroism.
During this period he won the Nürburgring 500Km twice, in a Chevron and a Lola, and did development work for Toyota on their Group 7 and rally projects. In 1973 he raced a Ferrari Daytona (with Claude Ballot-Lena) at Le Mans, winning the GT class and finishing sixth overall. He was March’s sportscar agent in France for a time and in 1976 ran Jean Rondeau’s Inaltera Le Mans team while in 1977 he managed the ATS F1 team. In 1983 he raced one of Jean Rondeau’s Group C cars at Le Mans though it retired after nine hours.
He also competed in the Paris-Dakar and the East African Safari rallies and in 1984 drove a standard Porsche 928 in the Daytona 24 Hours with Richard Attwood; after qualifying 75th they finished 15th. Regarding rallying, he stated his favourite was the Coupe des Alpes, “We’d leave Marseilles, and the first mountain section might last 36 hours, to Grenoble. After a 12-hour break we’d go somewhere else for 24 hours, then another break, then 18 hours to the finish. Mountains all the way, against the clock. I just loved that.”
Vic eventually moved to live in Florida and became involved in Renault and AMC’s motorsport programme, then with Porsche in North America plus worked as an instructor at the Skip Barber school. He has also written two books, ‘The Porsche High Performance Driving Handbook’ and ‘Reflections on a Golden Era in Motorsport and attends corporate events as a keynote speaker.
He was inducted into the Sebring Hall of Fame in 2014 and honoured as Grand Marshal at that year’s race and in 2015 he received the Phil Hill Award from the Road Racing Drivers Club, presented by its club president Bobby Rahal.
Really good video piece on Vic
