David Besnard

David John Besnard (born 21 January 1977 in Sydney, Australia) is a retired professional racing driver.

Career history

Starting in karts in 1991, he quickly proceeded into Formula Ford in 1995. After initial success, he had a major accident at Eastern Creek Raceway and broke his leg. In 1996 he made a comeback and won the Australian title.^[1] He made a venture to the United States, with a small budget, and limited success. In 1998, he returned to win the U.S F2000 National Championship. 1999, saw David enter the US Formula Atlantic Championship. After a heavy crash at Nazareth Speedway, the team had to buy a new chassis and ran out of budget halfway through the season. 2000 saw Besnard again in the United States, running various Sports Car races, until Stone Brothers Racing picked him up for the Konica V8 Supercar Series and the Bathurst 1000. From there he drove with Stone Brothers for several seasons, with the highlight being winning the 2002 Queensland 500 with Simon Wills. He raced with Ford Performance Racing for one season in 2003, and WPS Racing for three seasons following that.

In 2004, with his links with WPS, a drive in the Champ Car World Series came about at Surfers Paradise. His finishing position of seventh is still the highest finish for an Australian at that event (but bettered by Ryan Briscoe's 2008 IRL win after the CCWS collapsed). After being dropped by WPS in 2006 Besnard has been racing in the New Zealand Touring Car Championship, picking up an endurance race co-driver role with Stone Brothers Racing in 2007, paired with James Courtney, which resulted in a second place at Bathurst.

Motorsports career results

Career summary

GrandAm Championship

Complete American open-wheel racing results

(key)

Atlantic Championship

Champ Car World Series

Supercars Championship results

(Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete Bathurst 1000 results

Year	Car#	Team	Car	Co-driver	Position	Laps
2000	9	Stone Brothers Racing	Ford AU Falcon	Tony Longhurst	DNF	151
2001	9	Stone Brothers Racing	Ford AU Falcon	Matthew White	DNF	84
2002	5	Glenn Seton Racing	Ford AU Falcon	Glenn Seton Owen Kelly‡	DNF	102
	9	Stone Brothers Racing	Ford AU Falcon	Wayne Gardner	DNS
2003	19	Ford Performance Racing	Ford BA Falcon	Owen Kelly	DNF	115
2004	23	WPS Racing	Ford BA Falcon	John McIntyre	DNF	99
2005	48	WPS Racing	Ford BA Falcon	Craig Baird	8th	158
2006	8	WPS Racing	Ford BA Falcon	Max Wilson	14th	160
2007	4	Stone Brothers Racing	Ford BF Falcon	James Courtney	2nd	161
2008	4	Stone Brothers Racing	Ford BF Falcon	James Courtney	3rd	161
2009	33	Garry Rogers Motorsport	Holden VE Commodore	Greg Ritter	9th	161
2010	33	Garry Rogers Motorsport	Holden VE Commodore	Lee Holdsworth	7th	161
2011	17	Dick Johnson Racing	Ford FG Falcon	Steven Johnson	DNF	112
2012	14	Brad Jones Racing	Holden VE Commodore	Fabian Coulthard	23rd	147

‡ Besnard replaced Kelly due to illness

References

• Conrod V8 Profile & Stats
• Speedsport Profile & stats Archived 28 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
• David Besnard career summary at DriverDB.com
• David Besnard driver statistics at Racing-Reference

External links

• Official Web page