David Kennedy (born 15 January 1953 in Sligo) is a former racing driver from Ireland. He was one of his country's first Grand Prix drivers, and is widely seen as having helped pioneer the Irish move into international racing.Kennedy was in the vanguard of a wave of 1970s Irish international racing talent and became Ireland's first winner of a British single seater championship when he won the RAC and Townsend Thoresen Formula Ford 1600 Championships in 1976 driving a Crossle-Minister 30F. He also finished a close second in the European FF1600 series that year. In 1977 he graduated to the factory supported AFMP March European Formula 3 team but the squad folded early in the year and Kennedy soon switched to the small Argo team, scoring a number of giant killing results with the Jo Marquart designed JM1 chassis.He finished sixth in the series in 1978 but switched to the British Formula One series before the end of the year scoring a win on his debut with a Theodore Racing run Wolf WR3 at Snetterton. He finished runner up in British F1 in 1979 which helped him to moved into Grand Prix racing with the Shadow team in 1980. However, the team was chronically underfunded and had a poorly engineered DN11 chassis. Teddy Yip of Theodore Racing fame took over ownership of the team after a few races but a new DN12 design turned out to be a similar disappointment. Kennedy did qualify and race in the 1980 Spanish Grand Prix, an event subsequently stripped of its World Championship status. Kennedy left Formula One with a record of seven DNQ's without qualifying for a World Championship event.After a part season of Can Am racing in 1981 with a Frissbee, Kennedy returned to Europe and went on to forge a successful career in sportscar racing, latterly with the Mazda factory team with whom he raced extensively at Le Mans, Japan and the world sportscar championship.Since 1995 Kennedy has been a Formula One commentator for Irish television, first with RTÉ and more recently with Setanta Sports. He also regularly writes a column for the Sunday Independent newspaper. He also did some testing with the Jordan Grand Prix F1 team, mainly for television programme features, in the late 1990s.
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