Remembering Mike Spence

©CahierArchive

We recently featured Jim Clark's victory at South Africa in December 1963, and one of the men who drove with him for Lotus was born on this day. Mike Spence - seen here racing for BRM at Monaco in 1967 - was born in Croydon, London in 1936, and made sporadic appearances for Lotus from 1963-65. After full seasons with Reg Parnell's team and BRM, Spence was testing the Lotus 56 at Indianapolis in 1968 - having been invited to join the team after Clark's death - when he crashed in practice and died later in hospital.

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.