page_title: David Walker (racing driver)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: David Walker (racing driver) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: 1972 French Grand Prix...
context_page_description: David Walker is an Australian former racing driver who drove for Lotus in the 1971 and 1972 Formula One World Championships.
context_section_description: Walker had some international racing experience early in his career in the Australian rounds of the Tasman series in 1964–65 on challenging tracks like Longford and Sandown at a time when most Australian National 2.5 drives were near world class and he also finished 5th in the ex Follmer Lotus 70 in the Nov 1970 Australian GP at Warwicks Farm. While few would have been surprised that Walker failed to match the fastest Australian F5000 driver Matich, Allen and K. Bartlett, it was a pointer to Walkers later big car problems that at Warwicks Farm he was slower than Australia's leading 2-litre single seater exponents, K. Bartlett, M Stewart and Leo Geoghegan . During the 1960s Walker's racing career faltered (he was the 1969 British Formula Ford Champion and finished third in the 1969 European Formula Ford Championship), however finally broke through racing a Lotus in Formula Three during 1971. He won 25 out of 32 races that year, including the Formula Three support races at the Monaco Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. By the end of the year he had won both the Shell and Forward Trust UK Formula Three titles. Coming to the attention of Lotus founder Colin Chapman, Walker was handed his Formula One debut at the 1971 Dutch Grand Prix to drive the Lotus 56B, powered by a Pratt & Whitney turbine engine. During the rain-affected race, Walker used the turbine car's advantages of four wheel drive and superior torque to rise from his starting position of 22nd to 10th place within five laps, but eventually spun off into retirement.
  Walker was given a full-time Formula One seat to drive the Lotus 72 in the 1972 season, as number two driver to Emerson Fittipaldi. As the season went on, however, both Walker and the team became increasingly disenchanted. After Lotus discovered Walker had tested a Formula Two car for another team, he was dropped from the team for the Italian GP and the Canadian GP, where he was replaced by Reine Wisell. Walker was back for the US GP, but retired.
  In all, Fittipaldi won five races and scored 61 points, winning the championship, while Walker never finished a Grand Prix higher than ninth place (in Spain), his best race where he had been contesting 5th place with Peter Revson, when he ran out of fuel, in the last laps. He was promising in the opening glaps at Monaco where he had F3 experience, but made mistakes in the extraordinary downpour. By mid season Team was totally focused on Fittipaldi taking the Championship, and Walker's 72 of little importance, but predictably his form at Brands and in Austria suggested some improvement, while the engine lasted. Lotus blamed Walker's allegedly inadequate driving technique, poor fitness and lack of mechanical sensitivity; while Walker claimed Lotus gave him inferior equipment and gave far more attention to Fittipaldi's needs than his. He was not retained for the 1973 season, and was replaced by Ronnie Peterson. David Walker remains the only driver not to score a single Formula One Championship point in the same season his teammate won the drivers' title.
  For 1973, Walker drifted into Formula Two but was unfortunate to be badly injured in two road accidents that year. He retired from motor racing at the end of 1975, saying the effect of crash injuries made him not the same driver, and he was trying too hard, after a few impressive outings in the UK Shellsport F5000 series, taking a front row grid position at Oulton park and now lives in Queensland running a boat charter business.
  A little known fact is that Walker drove a Vauxhall Ventora in the 1968 London to Sydney Marathon. This was Walker's first and only real rally experience. He was working for the Jim Russell International Racing Driver School at Snetterton in the UK and the opportunity presented itself. He was accompanied in Car#40 by Doug Morris and Brian Jones in the car. The team were essentially a "private" team, although the car build was assisted by Vauxhall UK and Bill Blydenstien who built many of Gerry Marshall's racing cars.
  In the Marathon, the Team was keeping up with the leade
caption: Walker driving at the 1972 French Grand Prix.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DXO Optics Pro v6", "Image DateTime": "2010:11:29 12:09:34", "Image IPTC/NAA": "[469913600, 239952242, 1663061093, 541222252, 1818587676, 39125039, 1433692524, 1769169268, 1702195744, 1684349036, 660697200, 1634887017, 1814065256, 1869901600, 1853189609, 1919512949, 1696616041, 1802464796, 41156652, 675490098, 808529952, 1298231907, 541877536, 1113943148, 1701981216, 1953461619, 543453807, 1769239328, 1927902053, 1920395635]", "Image ExifOffset": "376", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "3192", "Image DateTimeOriginal": "2010:11:29 11:11:50", "Image Tag 0x9216": "[1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3324", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6801", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:11:29 11:11:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:11:29 11:11:50", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1393157/200000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "9/2", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "19/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "60", "EXIF SubSecTime": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "90", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2366", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3341", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "90", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}