Farewell Peter Brock

Peter Brock, the second prominent Australian to die in the space of a week, was not an international celebrity like the first, but arguably influenced a lot more Australians.

For me, it was during my teens and due to an unhealthy interest in cars. Production car racing was big, it was your Dad's car (sort of) being flogged round the track, and (chances were) Brock was driving it.

The 1970s were the golden age of production car racing, with the 'Bathurst 500' race (later '1000') the pinnacle of the season. In those days, production cars were simply taken off the street, rebuilt to the manufacturers specifications, fitted with a roll cage and full harness seat belts, and let loose on the racing circuit. It took a lot of skill to drive one quickly.

Sunday of the October long weekend was invariably spent watching Bathurst race. The undisputed champion was Peter Brock. I was never a great fan, my father didn't drive a Holden, but anyone who took more than a passing interest in the sport acknowledge he the best there was.

Brock had his idiosyncrasies, promoting pseudo-science performance devices at one stage, but he had a strong commitment to road safety. One aspect of this was to emblazon his car with the number '05,' rather than the champion's number '1.' It was his own personal campaign to have the prescribed alcohol limit for driving lowered from 0.08% to 0.05%.

It appears that Brock's unwillingness to retire from the sport was his undoing. There's not many active racing drivers in their sixties. In the absence of any mechanical failure of the car, it seems his skills failed him.

He refused to grow old gracefully, and paid the price, but he'll always be remembered as one of the greats of Australian motor sport.