When it comes to the mechanics, there are some notable ones we've seen over the years...

Among them would be Geoff Smedley. From Tasmania, he worked on the Aussie Miller Cooper and was a major part of getting it to Baker's Beach for the record runs with a V8 engine fitted. Then he moved on to the Youl family cars, where he prepared the immaculate John Youl Cooper.

This car grew Brabham suspension, always looked fabulous, outperformed later model cars and even came close to trouncing an International field at a very wet Lakeside International. One of the big jobs Geoff did was to cast and machine up the parts to fit a second magneto and make use of the blank spots in the head to fit twin plugs.

These were set to fire just a couple of degrees apart to ensure a more complete burn in the Climax engines.

When Boyce Youl got sick and John was forced to go back to the farm and stop racing, the workshop retained basically everything that had been used over the time, just the car and actual spares being sold off. Years later, when John died, Geoff walked into what had been his workshop there and found it just as it had been.

There were wishbone jigs hanging on the wall, chalk notes and various things still there, he was going to go back and photograph it all but didn't get around to it.

After leaving the Youls, Geoff was snaffled up by Frank Matich and helped with the development of the Lotus 19B and the Brabham, but the departure of Team Total saw him move on to the Howard & Sons Racing Team. One of his great achievements there was to design, have cast and machine to a finish a downdraught head for the Ford engines. These achieved great success, though only 14 were made before a terrible fate overcame the patterns.

A trip to South East Asia saw him once again working with the Climax FPF, this time the ex-Bartlett (etc) car as driven by Allan Grice. The team also had a bunch of Mini Coopers, Geoff oversaw the preparation, development and finish of these cars so they performed well and reliably and looked the part.

Back in Tassie these days, Geoff has recently completed restoration of a Morgan and keeps his fingers occupied working on model steam boats.

An outstanding example of the 'Racing Mechanic'...