Leo Geoghegan lookin’ not all that joyful in his ex-Clark Lotus 39 Climax on the Symmons Plains Gold Star grid, 13 November 1966. That’s Kevin Bartlett’s Alec Mildren Racing Brabham BT11A Climax alongside…
Geoghegan is swearing, in his mind at least, about the shitful Coventry Climax 2.5 FPF motor he bought from Team Lotus when he acquired Jim Clark’s 1966 Tasman Series weapon of war at the end of that summer. There was nuffin’ wrong with the chassis, but the tired ‘ole engine gave Australia’s Lotus concessionaire all manner of problems.
So he may well be dreaming of a Repco-Brabham V8, not that said acquisition proved drama free either into 1967 and beyond!
Look at the crowd, all well rugged up despite it being mid-November; all eyes are on the Cusack Lotus (perhaps it is he off to the left). I wonder what they’re doing to that car to arouse so much interest. Maybe it’s just a pretty lady standing beside the car; a few things fixate a group of males of all ages as much as a fine specimen of that particular species…
Leo’s Lotus is in Total colours: red and blue stripes on white, sensational too! The Total name could not appear on the car, of course, but I imagine the colour cues to the punters were pretty strong in the day.
That year of Australian elite-level single-seater racing is an interesting one as it represented a changing of the guard, which in the main shaped the grids to come for the next half decade or so.
Bib Stillwell, who raced for a looong time from just after the war, and peaked late in his career, retired at the end of 1965, having won four Gold Stars on the trot and proved on his day, with all of the planets aligned, that he was as good as all but the absolute cream of the international crop.
Spencer Martin won the Gold Star in 1966 with three wins in six rounds- he brought to the table twelve months and a bit of racing the challenging 2.5’s, having jumped aboard David McKay’s Brabham BT11A after Graham Hill vacated it when he returned to Europe at the end of the 1965 Tasman, having won the NZ GP at Pukekohe in the same chassis. Click here: https://primotipo.com/2015/04/30/spencer-martin-australian-gold-star-champion-19667
Bob Jane bought the car in 1966 when McKay and Martin had a meltdown in their relationship. They patched up later in their lives, but things were a bit frosty at the time. Jane and McKay were both sponsored by Shell, so it was all kept in the family, but I suspect Jano paid full-tote-odds for the BT11A rather than nick-it the way he preferred to buy stuff…
Kevin Bartlett had done his time, having come into racing circa 1958 and been in Alec Mildren’s care for a year or so. He had been getting some big car experience in Alec’s Mildren Maserati 2.9 sports-racer and showed great speed in his Brabham BT2 Ford t/c 1.5 in the 1966 Australian Tasman rounds, including fifth in the AGP at fast Lakeside.
That KB chucked the BT11A about with the gay abandon he demonstrated in smaller cars surprised no one. The pointy end of the grid was usually these two similarly mounted Sydneysiders- that is, Bartlett and Martin, who were and still are good mates. Click here for Martin and Bartlett and BT11A speed: https://primotipo.com/2018/04/27/kbs-first-bathurst-100mph-lap/
Greg Cusack raced under the Scuderia Veloce umbrella with his Elfins and Brabham 1.5 but struck out on his own in 1966 with Clark’s 1965 Tasman car- a Lotus 32B Climax which had been acquired by Kiwi Jim Palmer after the Tasman and raced by him in New Zealand in 1965, and sold to Cusack after the 1966 Tasman in which Palmer showed plenty of speed.
Greg wasn’t entirely happy with the car, converting the front suspension from inboard rocker to conventional outboard wishbones and picked up the win at Symmons when poleman Martin retired with clutch problems, Bartlett’s Hewland played up, and Leo’s FPF issues did not even allow him to take the grid, hence the shitty look in photo #1!
John Harvey was a speedway star before deciding longevity was a bit more likely if he switched to the circuits. After showing speed in Ron Phillip’s Cooper S, he graduated to the ex-Stillwell Brabham BT14 Ford t/c ANF1.5- he made his debut in the car at the Hordern Trophy Gold Star round at Warwick Farm in December 1965 and showed lots of speed and consistency in it during 1966, fettled as it was by Peter Molloy, who very sadly left us several weeks back.
John raced this car with a twin-cam which progressively grew in size until Molloy squeezed an RBE640 2.5 V8 into its spaceframe chassis in time for the opening Gold Star meeting at Lakeside in June 1967- and then became very much an outright contender. By the time they had the package sorted, winning a feature at Oran Park, Bob Jane popped Harves into the Brabham BT11A seat vacated by Spencer Martin at the end of the 1967 Gold Star- he retired prematurely in the minds of many, but in one piece, at his peak.
Jane was in a very good place to observe the talent sharing the grids as he was and being passed every now and again by the 2.5’s in his ANF1.5 Elfin Mono Mk1…
Let’s not forget John McCormack either.
He raced the ex-Jack Brabham BT4 Climax to third place this weekend, albeit three laps adrift of the leading pair of Cusack and Harvey. This car was raced by thrice World Champ Brabham in the 1962 Caversham AGP and our Internationals that summer. It would be a year or three before Mac chased his dream nationally, moved to Adelaide and acquired an Elfin 600C, initially fitted with the FPF out of the Brabham, with his intent really shown when he and the Elfin boys fitted an RBE740 2.5 into that car in the dying days of ANF2.5 in 1970. Success in F5000 followed, of course.
Garrie Cooper didn’t travel across Bass Strait, but he contested four of the Gold Star rounds in his ‘works’ Elfin Mono- he too was stepping up a gear with the luxury of his own car in addition to looking after the needs of his customers.
Let’s not lose my original premise, though- 1966 and the ’emergence at elite level’ of Geoghegan, Martin, Bartlett, Cusack and Harvey shaped our Gold Star races for the next few years to come, with only KB and McCormack racing single-seaters a decade hence.
The two photos above are just before the off and a few seconds after the drop of the flag.
In the lower of the two, Cusack on the left has gotten the jump on Martin on the right. Bartlett hasn’t left the line; look carefully, and you can see him mid-grid, arm in the air, praying nobody gives him a hit up the arse, so to speak. KB has Lynn Archer, Elfin Catalina Ford, at left and Stan Keen (I think), Elfin Mono Mk1 Ford, at right. The two cars in between are Harvey’s BT14 on the left and McCormack’s BT4 on the right.
Cusack won from Harvey, McCormack, McEwin’s Elfin Mono Mk1 Ford t/c, Glynn Scott’s Lotus 27 Ford t/c and Archer’s Elfin Ford 1.5 pushrod.
Etcetera…
Symmons 1966 raceday scene.
The track is still in use, having opened on 13 March 1960 using a leased paddock on the Youl family’s Symmons Plains grazing property. The track is 2.41km long and located 30km south of Launceston, the ‘capital’ of Northern Tasmania.
I’m buggered if I know who this is, but I’ve arrived at Mike Champion’s ex-Dave Walker/Frank Gardner/Kevin Bartlett (how’s that for a pedigree?) Brabham BT2 Ford by a process of elimination.
Using good old racingcars.com as my reference source, it ISN’T Bob Jane, Mel McEwin or Stan Keen’s Elfin Monos; Glynn Scott or Les Howard’s Lotus 27s; or Lynn Archer’s Elfin Catalina Ford. Therefore, it is Mike Champion. Is it, though?
There’s More…
Shortly after I uploaded this article, Ray Bell, author/historian and race reporter in the day for Racing Car News and other publications, sent me this email, many thanks, Ray.
Hi Mark,
Your 'Times They Are A-Changin' was indeed how it felt at the time. All of a sudden the relatively new Spencer was up against Leo, Greg and KB. Spencer had been in the 2.5s since 1964, however, having had the joy of driving the BT4 for one season. Another young newcomer in a 2.5 was John McDonald.
Leo's problems are hard to quantify. I tried to talk to Sheppo about some of this, one meeting at the Farm a head stud broke, which he explained was because he'd had them plated. Hydrogen embrittlement was the cause of it breaking, he said that if he'd known he could have avoided it by putting them in the oven. So were the problems partially lack of experience with that engine? Shouldn't have been, but maybe Sheppo applying his perfection to things hit in other ways too.
The conversion of the 32B to Brabham suspension was done in pursuit of the ideal that Greg was used to the chuckability of the little Brabham. Both front and rear suspensions got the changes. See the pic (below). If you go through the RCN reports that year you'll see that Bruce Burr's contribution was pure amateur hour stuff. He told me at Longford that he'd been watching the cars coming down the straight to Mountford and saw that the Lotuses were doing the best job of holding a straight line and so he used Greg's money to buy the Palmer car - yet three months later (or less?) he was pitching the original suspension out.
For KB it was a slow start to the year. The car failed in practice at Bathurst and then didn't appear at the May Warwick Farm, so his first race was Lakeside. Then at Surfers he was showing JB and Jackie Stewart the way around. McDonald, meanwhile, was floundering. But a late start to Leo's and Greg's season wasn't helpful for the competition either.
The other thing about Symmons was that there was heavy rain for the last nine laps of the race, Harvey made good progress in those conditions but Greg still won. And it was Champion, who had a pit stop with engine
trouble a few laps before pitting again for good. Funny thing, I don't remember him ever having those stripes around the front, the most memorable thing about that car being a very high exhaust pipe.
Ray
Credits…
oldracingcars.com, Reg Dalwood Collection, oldracephotos.com/DKeep, Ray Bell
Finito…
primotipo... 