In motor racing we meet some very able people, and some very fine ones. It’s wonderful when they’re the same people. We call them gentlemen. Our community has just lost two: Bob Akin and Rob Walker.
Let’s honor their memories by stopping to think about how much gentlemen – yes, and gentlewomen – like these mean to our sport.
We all know that motorsport exposes us to dirt, in more than one sense. There’s the simple, inevitable grime of the game, the stuff that gets on us. We can wash that off.
The other kind can’t be cleaned. But it can be avoided.
Avoiding dirty behavior fits right in with one prime reason we enjoy racing. That’s the gratifying sense we can get (when we’re doing it right) of skillfully controlling enormous powers and forces. It applies not only to driving, but also to designing and preparing the equipment, to managing the campaign, to providing safety and support services, even (I dare say) to photographing and reporting the event.
And doesn’t it apply most of all to self? What power do you find harder to control than your own nature?
That’s why we honor sportsmanship, I think. By its very nature, competition can so easily get ugly. The higher the stakes, the deeper we’re tempted to descend. It’s understandable – I don’t say admirable – when drivers knock their fellows off the track to “win” a championship, or when dealings of the same sort go on over financial positioning. The heat of battle offers many “excuses.” Even simple lack of time is a ready reason for taking unethical shortcuts.
No, I won’t claim a record of purity for myself. Maybe that’s why I so admire scrupulous behavior by others. They remind me it’s possible, and important. Just talking with these gentlefolk at the races lifts my spirit.
I’m sorry that this was the limit of my personal contact with Bob Akin, but the outpouring of sorrow I’ve seen and heard about his passing tells me a lot about him. Born in the state of New York in 1936, he began racing in 1957, first in dragsters and then sports cars. In 1961, he quit to run the family business, Hudson Wire, but came back to the sport in 1973. And effectively so: in 1979 he won the Sebring 12-Hours, and did it again in 1986, the year he also won the IMSA World Endurance Championship. He raced six times at Le Mans, placing as high as 4th.
In addition, of course, Bob Akin was a well-respected member of the vintage community, in both the driving and restoration roles. It was at vintage events I used to see him, and I was always struck by his courtesy – he’d stop and give you his full attention. Talking with Bob made you feel valued.
Rob Walker was someone I had the fortune to know a little better. I used to see him at every Grand Prix in the days we both were writing about them – in his case for Road & Track. But that was a later career for Rob. He was mainly known as the privateer team owner who provided Grand Prix cars for Stirling Moss.
The greatest driver of his day, Moss was a prototype superstar who could have written his own terms into any contract with any top factory in racing. Rob and Stirl’ never had a formal contract. Their verbal understanding was binding. They were gentlemen.
Moss was insistent on proper sportsmanship, in driving, as well as dealing. Historians agree his sportsmanship cost him at least one world championship. Yet in my mind, at least, Stirling Moss stands taller than certain men who did take the title.
It could be argued that the times and the place were exceptional. Both Moss and Walker were men of some means (Walker more so than Moss), who had been raised in what looks today like a very “Old School” way. And in their day, even GP racing was still more a sport than “Big Business.” It remained possible for an individual like Walker to purchase F1 cars and be a contender in international Grands Prix.
Born in Scotland in 1917, Robert Ramsay Cameron (R.R.C.) Walker was a descendant of the man who founded that brand of Scotch whisky. In the 1930s, he took up competition on the British club level, driving such cars as a supercharged Lea-Francis, some Austin Sevens and a couple of French Delahayes. Just before war broke out, he won a race at Brooklands and finished 8th at Le Mans. Then he served his nation as an airman.
On returning to civilian life and his garage business, Rob naturally resumed racing interesting cars, including a Cooper and a 300SL, but he also turned patron. The RRC Walker Racing Team began sponsoring such talent as Peter Collins, Roy Salvadori, Tony Brooks…and Stirling Moss.
With Moss at the wheel of Walker’s dark blue Cooper and Lotus F1s, from 1958 through 1961 this privately owned but professionally turned-out little team won the World Championship GPs of Argentina, Portugal, Italy, Monaco (twice), USA and Germany. They also won another Monaco with Maurice Trintignant driving.
Though an accident forced Moss to retire in 1962, Walker continued as a team owner for another decade, and in 1968 Jo Siffert won Rob another GP – the British. As late as that, privateers could be real contenders in F1 – if they were of the caliber of Rob.
What I most remember of him as a person is his droll sense of humor. I think we’re all in racing for the fun (except possibly those trapped in today’s F1!) and I can still see Rob’s eyes coming alive as he’d tell a joke. A most genteel one, of course. Nothing at anyone’s expense.
Akin and Walker, gentlemen both. May the examples they set live on.
Photo: McDonough Collection
