David Walker (born 10 June 1941 in Sydney) is an Australian former racing driver who drove for Lotus in the 1971 and 1972 Formula One World Championships.

Career

Walker had some international racing experience early in his career in the Australian rounds of the Tasman series in 1964-65 on challenging tracks like Longford and Sandown at a time when most Australian National 2.5 drives were near world class and he also finished 5th in the ex Follmer Lotus 70 in the Nov 1970 Australian GP at Warwicks Farm . While few would have been surprised that Walker failed to match the fastest Australian F5000 driver Matich, Allen and K. Bartlett, it was a pointer to Walkers later big car problems that at Warwicks Farm he was slower than Australia's leading 2 litre single seater exponents, K. Bartlett, M Stewart and Leo Geoghegan . During the 1960s Walker's racing career faltered (he was the 1969 British Formula Ford Champion and finished third in the 1969 European Formula Ford Championship), however finally broke through racing a Lotus in Formula Three during 1971. He won 25 out of 32 races that year, including the Formula Three support races at the Monaco Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. By the end of the year he had won both the Shell and Forward Trust UK Formula Three titles. Coming to the attention of Lotus founder Colin Chapman, Walker was handed his Formula One debut at the 1971 Dutch Grand Prix to drive the Lotus 56B, powered by a Pratt & Whitney turbine engine. During the rain-affected race, Walker used the turbine car's advantages of four wheel drive and superior torque to rise from his starting position of 22nd to 10th place within five laps, but eventually spun off into retirement. Walker was given a full-time Formula One seat to drive the Lotus 72 in the 1972 season, as number two driver to Emerson Fittipaldi. As the season went on, however, both Walker and the team became increasingly disenchanted.