Gould began racing sports cars in 1952 at the wheel of a Cooper-MG. His entry into Formula One came in 1954, when he began competing in World Championship Grands Prix as a privateer. He made his championship debut on 17 July 1954 at the British Grand Prix. His willingness to fund and maintain his own programme without factory support placed him in the tradition of independent gentlemen racers who were a characteristic feature of 1950s Formula One.
Over his World Championship career Gould entered eighteen rounds, fourteen of which resulted in classified starts. He participated in numerous additional non-championship races throughout the period.
His most significant championship result came at the 1956 British Grand Prix, where he drove his Maserati 250F to fifth place to claim two championship points, placing him joint nineteenth in that season's final standings. He also won minor non-championship Formula One races at Castle Combe in 1954 and at Aintree in 1956.
His involvement extended across multiple chassis iterations. He acquired the Maserati 250F that had previously passed through B. Bira's hands — a chassis with a complex identity trail stemming from the factory's practice of swapping and renumbering chassis — and ran it consistently through his later seasons.
Although most of Gould's career was spent in England, he had spells living and racing in New Zealand and in Modena, Italy, home of the Maserati factory. The association with Modena gave him direct access to the marque he favoured and reflected the close relationships that privateers of the period cultivated with Italian manufacturers.
Beyond Formula One, Gould contested the 1957 World Sportscar Championship, earning two points with a fifth-place finish at the 1000 km of Nürburgring. In that race he shared his Maserati 300S with three legendary figures: Stirling Moss, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Chico Godia. That Gould found himself sharing a car with two of the greatest drivers in the sport's history was a measure of how the team-entry system of the era mixed factory efforts with privateer machinery.
Gould was known for his portly frame and what contemporaries described as a larger-than-life character. His build and driving style drew comparison with José Froilán González, the Argentine driver celebrated for his physical presence and attacking style at Ferrari in the early 1950s. The comparison earned Gould the informal nickname "the Gonzalez of the West Country," a label acknowledging both his physique and his willingness to compete alongside the era's factory drivers as an independent. A passage in The Guinness Complete Grand Prix Who's Who captured the flavour of his career by noting that in a period when heavyset Italians regularly occupied Formula 1 cockpits, Gould saw no reason why a heavyset Bristolian should not do the same.
Gould died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Southmead, Bristol, on 4 November 1968, aged 47. He was survived by his sons Martin, Stephen, and Richard. Martin pursued motor racing and competed in Formula 3. Two of Gould's grandchildren, Daniel Gould and James Gould, also had careers in motorsport at a young age, extending the family's connection to racing across three generations.