David Piper, one of our longest-serving members of the Grand Prix Drivers Club, celebrated his 94th birthday on December 2.
David competed in his first Grand Prix at Aintree in 1959. It was the second time the British Grand Prix had been held at the famous horse racing establishment.
He had been racing a Lotus Eleven successfully and bought the second Lotus 16 grand prix car made, chassis 363. It was a replacement to the prototype 362 that Cliff Allison had crashed in Portugal.
Chassis 363 was the car that Graham Hill mainly drove during the 1958 season.
At the end of the season, Colin Chapman sold chassis 363 to David Piper for the 1959 racing season and he took advantage of the fact that by changing engines he could race the car both in Formula 1 and Formula 2. His Dorchester Racing Team was able to get an entry for the British Grand Prix at Aintree. He ran the car the following year at the Silverstone British Grand prix finishing 12th.
David then turned to sports ccar racing in which he was very successful with a variety of cars notably with Lotus Elevens and 15s until he had his first Porsche experience sharing a Porsche 356 with Keith Greene. He was to go on to become a leading privateer with the mighty Porsche 917’s However he was always close to Ferrari and ran his own Ferrari GTO in 1962 and 1963 followed by a 250LM. He raced with NART and had a great career in sports car racing.
He and his wife Liz have been regular attenders at our various GPDC functions over the years and we send him best wishes on his birthday.