(D Lupton)
Rocky Tresise’ Lotus 18 Ford with Mike Ide’s Riley Special behind during an Australian Motor Sports Club meeting at Calder circa 1964.
Every now and again Melbourne enthusiast/racer/Brabham historian Denis Lupton sends me a great colour shot or two, these are his latest, grazia Denis.
Rocky commenced racing his road-going MGA, progressing to this Lotus, chassis ’18-J-797′ in January 1963. The car was one of a batch of three imported by Sydney’s Paul Samuels in 1960. The car was featured on the Lotus stand at the Melbourne Motor Show in April 1961 before being acquired by Jack Hunnam who was very quick in it. He scored first in class results in the 1962 Sandown Cup and Victorian Road Race Championships.
Tresise raced it throughout 1963, his best result on his climb to a Tasman 2.5 drive with Lex Davison’s Ecurie Australie was fifth in the Victorian Road Racing Championship. The sad Rocky story is here; https://primotipo.com/2016/05/20/bruce-lex-and-rockys-cooper-t62-climax/
Three likely Melbourne lads- Rocky Tresise, MGA with Tim Schenken’s Austin A30 on the outside and Allan Moffat’s Triumph TR3A at Calder on February 24, 1963 (M Carr)
Tim Schenken was the next purchaser, racing the outdated machine to many firsts before he sold it a year or so later to jump a ship to the UK and international racing success.
The car passed through Don Baker, Bob Minogue and two others hands before its arrival in historic racing with Gavin Sala in 1972. Kim Shearn has owned it for a couple of decades.
The other Calder Lotus 18 shot is ‘three of the five Birchwood race school cars, four were green, the spare in the workshop was white.’ I know little about Jon Leighton’s operation, it would be great to speak to a graduate or former employee to flesh this out.
(D Lupton)
Credits…
Denis Lupton, ‘Historic Racing Cars in Australia’ John Blanden, Mychael Carr via Graham White
Finito…
primotipo... 
Mark,
It is stated above that Rocky placed third in the 1963 Australian Formula Junior Championship aboard the Lotus 18 but I don’t believe that to be correct. His name does not appear on the entry list for the race in the Official Programme and reports in Australian Motor Sport, Modern Motor and the Sydney Morning Herald all have Jack Hunnam as third in an Elfin.
The document HISTORY OF FORMULA JUNIOR EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA DURING PERIOD 1960 – 1963 which appears on the Australian Formula Junior website at http://www.australianformulajunior.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/fjhistory.doc supports the view that Rocky wasn’t a competitor in the race.
Cheers,
Rob Bartholomaeus
Rob,
Many thanks, I grabbed all that from John Blanden’s book without checking.
M
Mark,
I assume that it was also John Blanden who led you astray regarding Tim Schenken winning the 1965 Australian Formula 2 Championship in the ex-Tresise Lotus 18. Tim recorded a DNF in that race, which was won by Greg Cusack in a Repco Brabham Cosworth. My information is from Racing Car News, Australian Motor Sports & Automobiles, Australian Autosportsman and the Official Programme.
Cheers,
Rob Bartholomaeus
Yeppp…But its up to me to check.
I am a huge fan of John’s 3 books, I was in seventh heaven each time I bought one as he did what no-one else had, or has done.
Lotsa stuff is wrong but they are still great places to start, and wankers like me have the advantage of swags of discussion on the internet which has solved many of the knotty ‘who won and who owned it?’ problems in the last 25 years or so.
Mark