John Duff
| Nationality |
 Canadian
|
|---|---|
| 24 Hours of Le Mans career | |
| Participating years | 1923–1925 |
| Teams | Private Bentley Motors Ltd. |
| Best finish | 1st (1924) |
| Class wins | 1 (1924) |
John Francis Duff (January 17, 1895 – January 8, 1958) was a Canadian racecar driver who won many races and has been inducted in the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame. He was one of only two Canadians who raced and won on England’s famous Brooklands Motor Course. The other, Kay Petre, is already an honoured member of the CMHF. Duff was the first Canadian to race in the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans. To date, he is the only Canadian to win the overall classification at Le Mans.
Duff also held over fifty world records for speed and endurance. Those records were sanctioned by the AIACR, the forerunner of today’s FIA. They included both class and absolute records. His achievements helped make the name of the Bentley car company. Duff scored a top-ten finish in his first Indianapolis 500 and a top-three in his first board track race. Those achievements make him one of the preeminent Canadian automobile racers of the first half of the twentieth century.
John Duff was born in Kiukiang, China. His parents were Canadians from Hamilton, Ontario who established a commercial outpost in nearby Kuling. As a boy, the rambunctious young Duff was sent to Hamilton for a good Victorian education. He lived there until he was sixteen. In 1912, Duff was back in Kuling. When war was declared in 1914, he travelled across Russia to England, where he joined the army. Gravely wounded at the Third Battle of Ypres, Duff was sent to a hospital in England where he met and married his nurse. In 1919, John Duff learned how to drive a car and became a dealer. In 1920, he started racing.
In 1920, Duff began his racing career at Brooklands, a 2.6 mile long concrete track with concave banking. He drove a Fiat S.61, a 10-litre chain-driven car built in 1908. By August 1920, he was lapping in the same range as Henry Segrave, one of the great Brooklands and Grand Prix drivers of the 1920s.
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