Photos: The Graeme Bennett Collection - Part 1

[Steve Emson]

"Castrol GTX action, and this is the start of one of the Class events. Can anyone name the drivers here? Steve E, is this your dad Ralph on pole?"

Hi Steve,
Wonderful photos, bringing back lots of memories. Yes! that is Dad on pole in his Fiat 124 sports coupe. He won every race I remember watching, and broke all the lap records from the year before. It was the same car that he used the year before. ( It was actually sold to someone and he bought it back just before the first race of the second season). He did absolutely nothing to it. It was always parked down the side of our house and sometimes I would pinch it and take my girlfriend out in it.
The reason he went so much better the second year, was by his own admission he was more interested in what i was doing in my Datsun 1600 than concentrating properly in the first year. We used to run the 2 classes in the same race with a 10sec start difference. As stated he was watching me racing by looking across the track while he was driving in his race!! The funny thing was I found myself doing exactly the same thing here in Australia many years later. I was racing my XY Falcon GTHO in Historic group NC and my son was racing in our XU1 in the same race. I would look across the track in just the same way Dad must have been doing. I had Brett racing while he was still at school at Lakeside. A bloody good little driver, (not so little he is 6ft 2in) Brett made Dad this fantastic photo board of him racing an XU1, me racing an XU1 (back in the 70's) and himself racing his XU1. A pretty neat gift, and mum and Dad love it.

Great photos of all the cars and I look forward to some more