Paxton Sierras and Robbie Francevic
I received as a Xmas present a book titled “Bathurst: celebrating 75 years of racing at Mount Panorama”, with an author I have never heard of.
Rather than just do lap by lap reports, it also tries to cover stories around/behind the racing.
Some of these are very interesting, but one made me have doubts as to validity.
This concerns the story of the Paxton Ford Sierras on pages 197 & 198, and the 1988 season.
1… “Ian Paxton was a successful businessman who owned a wet suit company called Ocean One on Sydney northern beaches. Paxton was passionate about the business that had made him a fortune”
He had a love for motor racing, and decided at start of 1988 to buy and run two Group A touring cars.
“Paxton had warmed to the driver Robbie Francevic” and the two with some others went to Germany to buy Sierras from Wolf Racing. “They bought two cars, six engines, 32 wheels, gearboxes and the rest but also four staff to come to Sydney and teach local crews about the Sierras.” That lot would have cost a motza.
Does anyone recall anything of Ian Paxton or Ocean One, as I don’t recall ever hearing of him?
Who looked after the cars for him, as they were very high tech for the time?
2… “At Paxton’s cost he allowed Francevic to run the cars a couple of times at races in Australia with no sponsorship. However although the cars were strong they did not get the results”.
Paxton shelved his plans to run a team.
I can’t recall Francevic running these cars in 1988, can anyone?
3… “Paxton ended up offloading the cars without realising his dream”
Does anyone know what became of these cars?
Wolf Racing Sierras were known for sailing close to the wind on legality, so surely there would have been some news about them.
4… From my other records I note that Francevic raced at 1988 Bathurst 1000 in a Sierra entered by Wolf Racing but owned by Mark Petch, and sponsored by Whittakers Peanut Slab.
This car was flown out from Germany just days before the race, had very few spares, and I believe was not one of the Paxton cars.
5….The author confuses Wolf Racing with the Walter Wolf Racing Formula 1 team, two very different operations I contend.
Walter Wolf Racing was owned by a Walter Wolf, a Slovenian-Austrian-Canadian businessman. He was a Canadian oil drilling equipment supplier who in the early 1970’s made a fortune from the North Sea oil business. He became interested in formula 1 and ran a team from 1975 to 1979. With lack of success he grew tired of motor racing and sold the complete team at the end of 1979 to Emerson Fittipaldi. He was a swashbuckling character who is currently wanted by Interpol for an arms related bribery scandal that helped bring down the Slovenian Government. For more info see under Google “Who is Walter Wolf and why is he wanted?” It’s fascinating reading.
Wolf Racing is also owned by a Walter Wolf, but a very different person.
Wolf is a very common German surname, like Smith or Jones used to be here.
He was a German mechanic who started in 1979 in a small barn and began to develop and deploy complete racing cars and engines, under the name HWRT Tuning. He progressed to a Ford dealership in small town of Neuenstein (pop 6,000) in south west Germany. He became the official agent for Ford Cologne racing products. In 1986 the business was renamed “Wolf Racing” and continues in business to today, producing some very nice Ford Focus with upgraded turbochargers. The official name of the business is “Wolf Racing Neuenstein GmbH”.
The author states “Wolf had to come up with a solution to the team’s future after kissing Grand Prix Racing goodbye. What followed was a transformation that would have had a car-rebirthing gang doing cartwheels. Wolf entered into touring car racing and became Ford Germany’s factory operation building and racing Sierras.”
I contend that this is incorrect and the two operations are not related.
Would greatly appreciate thoughts on these points, as they have me puzzled.
Terry
