Philip Fotheringham-Parker

22/9/1907 - 15/10/1981

Record updated 21-Sep-06

Fotheringham-Parker was a wealthy amateur driver who participated in the 1951 British Grand Prix driving a privately-run Maserati 4CL. He once survived going over the top of the banking at Brooklands in an Alvis Silver Eagle.

Fotheringham-Parker was a wealthy amateur driver, typical of the British privateers at that time. He started racing an Alvis Silver Eagle at Brookland in 1932 however, in the August Senior Mountain Handicap race, he slid wide on the banking in the wet, over-corrected and went over the top. He went down the embankment and came to a halt against the railings which separated the entrance road from the banking. Shaken but uninjured, the car was sold in the following year.

Fotheringham-Parker graduated to an ERA and then on to a Maserati 4CL Grand Prix car, however his racing was interupted by the outbreak of World War II.

At the end of the war Fotheringham-Parker, now 38, took the old Maserati out of storage and went racing again, enjoying some success in the immediate post-war era.

In 1949 he finished second in the Wakefield Trophy at The Curragh and in 1951 made his one and only World Championship Grand Prix appearance at the British Grand Prix. He did not figure strongly and retired after a problem with an oil pipe. Later that year, he won a minor Formula One race at Winfield.

Fotheringham-Parker continued in sportscars in the 1950s, sharing an Aston Martin with Tony Gaze in the Goodwood Nine Hours and the Spa 24 Hours in 1953. He also competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race that year, sharing an Allard-Cadillac with Sidney Allard himself, but they retired after completing just four laps. The following year, 1954, he did the Monte Carlo Rally in a Willment Jupiter. It had been built for him to drive in the 1953 Monte Carlo Rally, but it was not finished in time. By then he was 47 and faded from the racing scene.

He retired to Rye in Sussex where he died in 1981 at the age of 74.