Peter Arundell
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Where are they now?
When Peter Arundell moved into the Lotus Grand Prix team at the start of the 1964 season, succeeding Trevor Taylor as number two to Jim Clark, his future appeared encouragingly bright. He’d mastered Formula Junior and opened his first full Formula One season with two fourth places and a third at the wheel of a Coventry Climax-powered Lotus 25. Unfortunately a terrible accident during the frantic slipstreaming Formula Two dash at the ultra-fast Reims circuit in Northern France left him hospitalised for many months with doubts as to whether he would ever walk properly again. Arundell’s convalescence took almost 18 months, but Colin Chariman stuck to his word and kept his place as number two open, filling it temporarily for the remainder of 1964 and the whole of 1905 by Mike Spence. At the end of 1965 Arundell rejoined the team and undertook a full 1966 season driving alongside Clark in Grands Prix, Formula Two and saloon cars. Sadly, the fire seemed to have gone out, and after a series of disappointing drives Peter Arundell was dropped from the team and retired from race driving.
But Arundell didn’t dwindle away from the scene completely. Shortly before his retirement he opened a motor factors business in Essex and also returned briefly to the circuits as senior instructor at a Brands Hatch-based motor racing school, enthusiastically trying to pass some of the things he’d learned in the cockpit of a racing car on to many enthusiastic and ambitious youngsters. He subsequently left Brands Hatch to devote all his energies to his business and he still lives in Essex where he maintains a keen interest in aviation, being an accomplished private pilot.-A.H.