Bob Gerard established his name in sprints and trials in the mid 1930s, before graduating to circuit racing, mainly at Donington, after buying 1.5-litre Riley Sprite. From 1946 he raced an ERA RL with success, scoring three consecutive victories in the Empire Trophy, and two victories in the Jersey Road Race between 1947 and 1949. He finished third in the 1948 British Grand Prix and second in 1949, but by the time the new FIA World Championship started in 1950 the gap between his vehicle and the rest was too wide for him to be competitive.

Where he fell short of performance, his car's reliability was second to none and he often achieved good results because of it. At the 1950 British Grand Prix, the first official race of the championship, he finished sixth, a result he repeated later in the season at Monaco. In 1951 he swapped his ERA for a Cooper T23-Bristol which he continued to use until 1957. He only managed another sixth in a grand prix, at Aintree in 1957, but in only one other race was he forced to retire early. He continued to enjoy tremendous success in other forms of racing across the country, and although he retired as a driver in 1961, he continued to enter cars until the early 1980s. A bend at Leicestershire's Mallory Park, his home circuit, was named in his honour.

Martin Williamson