[citation needed] Oliver began a long career in motorsport in 1961, driving a Mini in British club saloon racing.

Fabrications team and entered GT racing, scoring some excellent results, and then having a difficult time in Formula Three, where his natural speed was blighted by mechanical failures.

In 1968, he was called up to F1 by Colin Chapman to take over the works Formula One seat for Team Lotus after the death of Jim Clark.

The poor result in the Austrian GP which Team boss, Louis Stanley thought he should have won, saw the best car go to Pedro Rodríguez from then on, but Oliver still led some laps at the slipstream Italian race.

However, in the Canadian Grand Prix he ran well, and many believe he actually won the race, but the lap charts were thrown into confusion by a rain shower meaning multiple pit-stops, and a staggeringly inept deployment of a pace car by the organisers.

He was becoming more involved in the management side of Shadow, but would compete in Formula 5000 for the team for three seasons, and even briefly returned to F1, finishing fifth in the 1977 Race of Champions, and taking 9th in the Swedish Grand Prix.

[4] At the end of 1977 he left Shadow along with financer Franco Ambrosio, designers Tony Southgate and Alan Rees, engineer Dave Wass and driver Riccardo Patrese to form the Arrows Grand Prix team.

Oliver sold much of his stake to the Japanese Footwork Corporation in 1990, remaining as director, but the team failed to move forward and the company pulled out at the end of 1993 due to financial trouble.

(key) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap) * First in the Formula Two (F2) class, Oliver was ineligible to score points in the 1967 German Grand Prix because he was driving a F2 car.