Patrick Barron Hopkirk MBE was a rally driver from Northern Ireland. He was appointed MBE in the 2016 New Year’s Honours list. In early 2016, Hopkirk became the IAM RoadSmart Mature Drivers Ambassador.

Hopkirk died on July 21, 2022.

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Hopkirk’s first win came in 1953 at the Cairncastle hillclimb at the wheel of a V.W. Beetle, reg no EI 5756. He was offered a free Beetle for the 1953 Circuit of Ireland by Isaac Agnew of Belfast. It would be the first of many Circuit entries: the following year he led the Circuit on the first day of the competition.

The retired rally driver, started his winning career in professional racing and rally driving in 1955, taking a class win at that year’s Circuit of Ireland, and clenching his first Hewison Trophy, awarded to the most successful Irish rally driver of the year: he would go on to win the Trophy for three consecutive years.

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By this time he had graduated to a Triumph TR2. His success in the Triumph was noticed by the Standard Motor Company, who offered Hopkirk his first factory drive in a Standard Ten at the 1956 RAC Rally in March of that year, where he took the early lead before suffering problems later on.

Two months later he took a Standard Eight to third place in the Tulip Rally in the Netherlands – his first trip outside of Britain and Ireland. However he lost his drive with Standard in 1958, after overdriving his car at the Alpine Rally in an effort to make up for time lost due to a puncture on the Stelvio Pass, damaging the engine and forcing him to retire from the competition.

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Alongside Henry Liddon he won the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally in a Mini Cooper S car number 37, with the registration number 33 EJB.

They are the most recent all-British crew to have won the event. He also led BMC to the team win, with fellow Mini drivers Timo Mäkinen and Rauno Aaltonen pacing fourth and seventh.

The victory made Hopkirk a household name: he received telegrams from the then UK Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home and the Beatles, was given the Freedom of the City of Belfast, and appeared along with his Mini on Sunday Night at the London Palladium.