The name behind the race: Peter Arundell

Peter John Arundell was born in 1933 and began racing MGs at the age of 21. After he finished service with the RAF, he picked up where he left off racing Lotus and Elva cars, winning 1959’s Formula Junior race – the John Davy Trophy – on Boxing Day at Brands Hatch in 1959. 

By 1962 he was a Championship winner, his Lotus 22 carrying him to victory in the British Formula Junior Championship Trophy. He’d win the Championship again the following year behind the wheel of a Lotus 27, convincing competitors he had an illegal engine because he was so quick. 

Talent was his only advantage, and in 1961 and 1962, he also won the Monaco Formula Junior race, while 1963 brought him victory in England’s last Formula Junior race, the Anglo-European Formula Junior Trophy, at Brands Hatch.

Formula 1 beckoned in 1963, and by 1964, the emerging talent was seen as an ideal partner for the Lotus-Climax of World Champion Jim Clark, with Arundell taking two podium finishes that season. 

But tragedy struck the same year as Arundell, racing in Formula Two at Reims-Gueux, spun out and was hit at high speed by Richie Ginther, ejecting him from his car in an accident that broke both his legs and put him out of racing until the 1966 season. 

Colin Chapman kept Arundell’s seat free, and he would return to F1, finishing third in the non-Championship South African Grand Prix. But he never fully recovered from the injuries he suffered in France, and he retired from F1 that year, having started just 11 races. He would give up racing altogether in 1969. 

Fittingly, the Arundell Cup celebrates Formula Junior racing, where its eponymous driver had shown such promise, bringing together the small-capacity, rear-engined single-seaters that raced before 1963. The overall winner claims the Arundell Cup, with the Taylor Trophy awarded to the first drum-braked finisher.

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