Paddy Driver

Record type: Motorsport Biographies

Biography: Age 26, Ernest Gould Driver - usually known as "Paddy" - is a farmer and comes from Witkoppen, Johannesburg. He started racing in 1953 on a 1938 bronze-head Excelsior Manxman, and continued using this machine the next year with occasional successes. In 1955 and '56 he scored several second and third places, and in April 1957 he won the Allcomers' Handicap and the 250 c.c. race at Salisbury.
Many more seconds and thirds followed, but in March last year—just before coming to England--he won the 500 c.c. scratch race at Grand Central Circuit. He then rode--and finished—in races at Brand's Hatch and Oulton Park, and going on to the Continent won the 350 c.c. class of the Austrian Grand Prix and was third in the "500".
Paddy rode Nortons in both Junior and Senior T.T. races in 1958. He was eleventh in the Junior at 89.44 m.p.h. (Silver Replica), but retired on the first lap of the Senior. In 1959 he retired on the fourth lap of the Junior, but finished sixth in the Senior, with a Silver Replica, whilst last year he was 14th in the Junior and ninth in the Senior, with a couple of "Silvers."
Paddy was well amongst those present in the Championship races which followed, collecting two fourths, a fifth and a sixth in the Dutch, Ulster and Italian events. He won the 500 c.c. class of last month's Saar Grand Prix.
Hobbies: "Big guns and motorbikes." (TT Special, 12 June 1961, p. 23)

Nationality: South African

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