David Kennedy

David Kennedy, born 15 January 1953, is a former racing driver from the Republic of Ireland. He was one of his country’s first Grand Prix drivers.

Kennedy first showed his great potential when he won the RAC British Formula Ford and the Townsend Thoresen Formula Ford 1600 Championships in 1976 driving a Crossle-Minister 30F.

In 1977, he graduated to the European Formula 3 Championship with the small Argo team, scoring a few giant (Ralt and March) killing results with the Jo Marquart designed JM1 chassis.

He then switched to the British Formula 1 series in 1978 and 1979 (main picture), scoring a win on his debut with a Theodore Racing run Wolf WR3 at Snetterton. This helped him being noticed by the Formula One teams and he succeeded to move into Grand Prix racing with the Shadow team in 1980.

However, the team was chronically underfunded and the Shadow DN11 and DN12 were flawed designs and were far from competitive. Kennedy did qualify and race for the 1980 Spanish Grand Prix, an event that was later stripped of its World Championship status.

After a few races in the North American Can Am series in 1981 in the Frissbee chassis, Kennedy returned to Europe and went on to have a successful career in sports car racing, latterly with the Mazdaspeed team with whom he raced extensively at Le Mans (picture below), in Japan and in the World Sportscar Championship.