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[David Beard]

Part of an E Mail I have just received from a friend who lurks here:

......we pulled out all the old colour slides from 1959 and
found some beauties. Many more of Frank in the UK in 1959, covered in
stubble, crawling under the transporter, etc etc. One slide was of
Frank failing his driving test, this gave me an idea for the nostalgia
forum, "Drivers who have failed their driving test". The slide showed
Frank with the instructor in an A40 Farina, he failed. Apparently Frank
then slammed the door shut, took the instructor on a doorhandles trip of
the side streets. The instructor is reputed to have said " OK I will
pass you, if you show me how to drive!" By 1959 Frank was already NSW
sportscar champion.
I heard that Jenson Button failed his test too because according to his tester "he went for a gap that just wasn't there"

[Geza Sury]

I have read Button's autobiography , but I don't recall the story about his failure at the driving test.

However, a driver who did fail his test was Perry McCarthy, as he wrote in his autobiography:

My nose stopped producing spots and my body at last remembered how to grow. I shot by about four inches and went from being a trainee dwarf to my full five feet eight inches. Okay we're not talking Charles Heston, but it stopped peopleasking me about eight o'clock at night if I'd lost my mummy.

With this new-foundheight, I could now see over a steering wheel, so I took my driving test. However, the examiner felt I still had some growing up to do and failed me for 'going off test route, lack of Highway Code knowledge, and speeding'. (...) One month later, I passed.

Another driver who failed his driving test was Hungarian pre-war racer László Hartmann.