Ron Dennis pays tribute to Salvadori

05/06/2012

McLaren boss Ron Dennis has paid tribute to former F1 and Sports Car driver Roy Salvadori who died at the weekend.

The Essex-born driver participated in 47 Grands Prix between 1952 and 1962, driving for Connaught, Aston Martin, Cooper and a host of private entrants, driving cars such as the Ferrari D500, Maserati 250F, Cooper T45 and Lola 4.

Over the course of his F1 career he scored two podium finishes, the 1952 British and German Grands Prix, both as a works driver with Cooper.

It was at Cooper that Dennis first met Salvadori, the Woking born youngster joining the legendary British team as a mechanic in 1966 aged 18. With Salvadori as team manager, Dennis worked on the car of Jochen Rindt, destined to become the sport's first posthumous world champion just four years later.

"I'm very saddened to hear of the death of Roy Salvadori, who, although he never won a Grand Prix, was in my view one of the finest racing drivers of the 1950s," said Dennis. "His superb victory at Le Mans in 1959 was proof of that.

"I worked with him myself in the mid-1960s, as a young technician at Coopers, where he was team manager for a while," added the Englishman. "I learned a lot from Roy and, more than 40 years later, would like to pay tribute to him, and to send my condolences to his wife Sue, his relations, and his many friends."

While somewhat outshone by the likes of contemporaries such as Moss, Hawthorn, Collins and Brooks, Salvadori was still widely regarded, and it is only right that his name went into the record books courtesy of his victory at Le Mans in 1959 with Carroll Shelby who died last month.