Rob Walker dead.

Legendary grand prix team owner Rob Walker has died from pneumonia at the age of 84.

Best known for running Stirling Moss in a privateer Coopers and Lotuses, Walker's passion for motorsport began as a child and lasted until the day he died, despite not being able to get to as many races as he would have liked.

Inheriting the family's Johnny Walker whisky business when still an infant, Rob was able to indulge his love of cars from an early age and began racing for himself in his twenties. Although interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, where he served the Royal Navy in Africa, his racing career resumed with the Delahaye he had taken to eighth place at Le Mans in 1938. Realising, however, that he was never going to be successful as a driver, Walker turned his hand to running other drivers as a way of maintaining his links with the sport.

One of his first charges was Tony Rolt, for whom Walker ran an ageing but competitive 1927 Delage, but it was not to be too long before the seeds of a more fruitful partnership were sewn. With Rolt moving onto a Connaught in 1953, Walker's eye was drawn to a promising youngster by the name of Stirling Moss, and he was drafted into drive the car in minor events that year. Although Moss moved on the following year, the same story was repeated with the likes of Peter Collins filling in alongside the veteran Rolt in cars carrying the trademark blue of Scotland garnished with a white hoop on the nose..

It wasn't until 1958 that Moss returned to the fold - following years in which Walker ran the likes of Reg Parnell, Tony Brooks and Jack Brabham in Formula Two. Moss and Frenchman Maurice Trintignant joined the Walker equipe just as its Coopers proved competitive, and took a win apiece - in Argentina and Monaco respectively. The Argentine win was made more significant as it was the first for a rear-engined car in grands prix, as well as the first for Cooper and its Coventry-Climax engine, and convinced rival constructers that this was the way ahead.

Moss was still driving for Vanwall at this point, but the relationship with Walker was such that, following the British manufacturers withdrawal from the sport, the rising star decided that he would rather pair up with the charismatic Scot than look overseas for another team.

Victory followed in Portugal in 1959, before Walker began his dalliance with Lotus that brought Moss wins in Monaco and the United States the following year. Moss repeated at Monaco in 1961, and also won at the Nurburgring, despite Walker being distracted by trying to build his own machine and develop the Rolt-designed Ferguson 4WD car.

Sadly, 1962 proved to be a less than happy year for Walker. Moss crashed badly at Goodwood while driving for the British Racing Partnership team, and both Ricardo Rodriguez and South African Gary Hocking were killed in Walker-owned cars, and the Scot, having already been present at the site of Mike Hawthorn's fatal crash in 1958, considered quitting the sport altogether.

He persevered, however, and continued to run cars for drivers including Jo Bonnier, Jochen Rindt, Jo Siffert and Graham Hill right up until the early 1970s. Success was sporadic, but Walker did enjoy victory his final privateer victory with Siffert at the 1968 British GP, before the team was subsumed into the Surtees operation in 1971 after Hill left to join Brabham.

Subsequent roles took him to the privateer Yardley McLaren team with Mike Hailwood, before Walker swapped an active role in competition for one behind a typewriter. He continued to be associated with the sport until a few years before his death, courtesy of articles in the American magazine Road and Track.