50 years ago at Warwick Farm

[Terry S]

It is basically 50 years to the day since the 1966 Warwick Farm Tasman Series Race meeting on February 13, 1966.

I was there, and I know it’s a cliché “but it only seems like yesterday”.

The meeting was the most prestigious meeting in Sydney for the year, and all the big guns were there.

There were only 10 races on the programme, and each was won by a top driver.

For interest I list below the winners of the 10 races:
1 Series Prod Touring Frank Gardner Alfa GTA a
2 Formula Vee Terry Quartly Jay Bee Vee d
3 Improve Prod < 1.5L John Harvey Cooper S
4 Improve Prod Sports Niel Allen Lotus Elan
5 Tasman Race Jim Clark Lotus 39 a
6 Sports Div 2 Max Brunninghausen Alfa GTZ
7 Race Car F2 Max Stewart Rennmax 1,100 cc a
8 Improve Prod Tour Pete Geoghegan Mustang a
9 Sports Div 1 Greg Cusack Lotus 23B f
10 Improve Prod >1.5L Bob Jane Lotus Cortina e

It’s doubtful you could have got a better bunch of winners at that time.
You will note the spread of categories, and not dominated by Touring Cars
Some sundry notes and observations in no particular order:
a Unfortunately since deceased, two on the race track.
b The Tasman Race was a great struggle between Clark, Hill and Stewart. It was over
101 miles and Clark eased away to win by just over 20 seconds, completing the race in 71
minutes.
c For Brunninghausen it was his first race in his brand new Alfa GTZ.
He is the only one of these drivers still competing, running in a Chevron B8 sports in Historics
d This was the first ever F Vee race at Warwick Farm. There were only 6 starters.
e The Jane lightweight Lotus Cortina was entered by “Ford Motor Co” so they may have been the
owner. The car seemed to disappear after Jane’s use.
f This was the famous/classic race where Geoghegan was in the Loa Climax 1100 that he had
traded from Frank Demuth for his Lotus 23B T/C 1500, but he was all over Demuth for most of
the race despite a much older and smaller car. This had the crowd very excited. Geoghegan also
fitted in a dice with Jane’s lightweight E Type and came out on top.
g According to the RCN report Geoghegan sat out the last race “to give the rest a go”. He had won
Race 8 by 9 seconds from Foley.
h It is interesting that all but races 5 and 9 were only of 5 laps, or about 10 minutes. Many drivers
had only the one race, but the prestige of the meeting drew competitors from Victoria and
Queensland.
i The crowd was 28,000 and this was accepted as realistic. It was not a Cochrane style number.
j If the meeting had been held one day later, the prize money would have been “double,” as that
was the day Australia converted to decimal currency. The first prize for the Tasman race of 300
pounds would have been 600 dollars. It was in the good old days when prize money was noted in
the programmes, (and they were not spelt “program”).