David Richards (racing)

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David Richards

David Pender Richards CBE (born 3 June 1952 Wales) is the chairman of Prodrive and Aston Martin, and a former team principal of the BAR and Benetton Formula One motor racing teams.

After training as an accountant, Richards began his motorsport career as a rally co-driver. He partnered Ari Vatanen in a Ford Escort RS1800 from 1979 until the end of 1981. This was a short, but very successful partnership, winning the British Rally Championship in 1980 and the World Rally Championship together in 1981, shortly after which, Richards retired from co-driving.

In 1984 Richards co-founded Prodrive, a motorsport and automotive engineering group. In 1999 he sold 49% of Prodrive to Apax Partners.

Prodrive runs the Subaru entry in the World Rally Championship and has employed such drivers as Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz, Richard Burns, Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Mäkinen and Petter Solberg.

Richards acquired the television and commercial rights to the World Rally Championship in 2000 when he bought International Sportworld Communicators (ISC) from Bernie Ecclestone.

In 1997, when Flavio Briatore was fired as Director of the Benetton team, Richards replaced him. However, his tenure only lasted one year, as he could not agree a long term strategy with the team-owning Benetton family.

When the BAR team was restructuring after the departure of Craig Pollock in 2001, they brought in Prodrive to run the team with Richards as their Team Principal. Under his direction there was an improvement in BAR with the team taking second place in the 2004 Constructors Championship. Richards also brought Jenson Button to the team and made him lead driver providing the majority of their championship points in 2004. However, when Honda took over the team in late 2004, the Prodrive management contract was terminated and Richards stood down as Team Principal and was replaced by Prodrive's then Managing Director Nick Fry.^[1]

In the 2005 New Year Honours List Richards was awarded a CBE for his services to motorsport.^[2]

David Richards is also a major figure in the complex politics of the World Rally Championship and Formula One Management and is an advocate for measures to reduce the costs of car development as well as increasing safety.

His Prodrive company entered a bid to enter a Formula One team from 2008 and on April 28, 2006, Prodrive were officially granted entry when the FIA announced the list of entrants to the 2008 Formula One World Championship.^[3] However, on November 22nd 2007, he was forced to announce that Prodrive F1 would not be competing in the 2008 Formula One World Championship after a lack of clarity over the legality of 'customer cars' and the threat of possible legal action.^[4]

In addition to Prodrive and Aston Martin, he sits on the advisory board of the Warwick Business School, is a trustee of the British Racing Drivers’ Club Benevolent Fund and is vice-president of BEN, the automotive industry’s benevolent fund. He is also a member of the Motorsport Industry Association committee and the Government Motorsport Development UK.

On March 12, 2007 Ford announced it had sold the controlling stake of its Aston Martin brand to a consortium of investors, led by Richards and including Investment Dar and Adeem Investment, raising $925 million to finance the purchase.

On September 16, 2007 Richards and his wife, Karen, survived a helicopter crash in Essex whilst returning from the 2007 Belgian Grand Prix, less than 24 hours after his former WRC driver, Colin McRae, perished in a similar accident along with his son and two others.^[5] Based on Prodrive's statement after the crash, Richards was piloting a Eurocopter EC 135 when he experienced mechanical problems, over Essex while travelling at about 1,500ft. Already in contact with Stansted airport at that time, Richards managed to bring the aircraft down in a field before it crashed onto its side.