Brock: Over the Top (2020) - full transcript
Brock: Over the Top is a feature length documentary that not only chronicles the extraordinary life of Australia's greatest racing car driver, Peter Brock, but peels away the surface to ...
Cars to watch Brock,
on your right.
Morris alongside,
Moffat on the far left.
As more than a hundred
drivers suffering
from pre-race tension
listen carefully
to last minute
regs and instructions.
How much does the race
mean to you?
Oh, it's the event
for the year and you get
tremendous disappointment
if you lose it.
Lady and gentlemen,
start your engines.
There's Brock, preparing to
race like the devil.
This is it, the great race.
But now,
the one minute siren has gone
and all is ready for a start
with two Falcons and a Holden
on pole position.
The man who wants to win here
probably more than anyone else,
Peter Brock.
Thirty second
warning's about to go up.
Sixty-two of
Australia's finest drivers.
It's a mad scramble.
Literally the balloon's gone up.
Start of the James Hardie 1000.
Engines are throbbing.
You can feel the crowd
vibrating with emotion.
All set. Get ready.
He'd sit in that car,
holding the steering wheel
for hours, for days,
looking straight ahead.
He was sitting in that car
focusing on what he's gonna do
and how he's gonna do it.
This change would come over him
and his eyes would go black
and nothing else counted.
He was part of that car.
The actual exercise
of getting behind the wheel
of a car and make it
do something
it fundamentally doesn't
want to do,
that's a fantastic thing
for any person to do.
Behind the wheel,
he seemed to be almost
bulletproof.
He had an amazing
ability to feel the car,
to read the car,
to understand the car.
The noise, the sounds, the feel.
There was a lot more to Brock
than the smiling hero figure
you saw on the victory dais.
You could see the hunger
in his eyes. The intensity.
The naked ambition to be
number one.
He trusted everybody,
and there were people who
weren't worthy of his trust.
Orchestrated move by Holden to
crash this business.
He did an amazing job of
inspiring lots of people.
For all the Brock
fans waiting for Peter Perfect
to come across the line.
You asked for the man.
You asked for him.
It's Peter Brock!
He could turn it on.
Women swooned.
Men just wanted to be like him.
Peter needed to be
respected, needed to be loved.
The rise and fall
and rise and fall
and rise and fall
of Peter Brock.
He could do no wrong.
He was the messiah
of motorsport.
It didn't occur to me
that he could ever
have an accident.
He had this force in cars
where he could
push it until its absolute limit
and then bring it back.
So he would never spin out.
He would never...
Like, he just... He felt cars.
He understood them.
He didn't rub paint.
He didn't have accidents.
He just intuitively,
instinctively knew
where he needed to be
and I had complete
and absolute faith in him.
He had a real strong
sense of self-belief
and he actually didn't really
see obstacles.
The public owned
Peter Brock in a way
they never really owned
any other racing driver
that I've seen.
And it wasn't just charm.
It was just a kind of a special
intensity about him
and that sense of looking at you
and engaging with you
and you're the only person
in the room at that moment.
Fame has a price to pay
and the price you pay will
depend on
how you view it and how you use
that gift.
My very earliest? Wow...
Big brother.
A bit scary, a bit intimidating.
Peter was a very good competitor
and athlete at primary school.
So I would've been
just a little kid
and watching him win the sprint
races and things.
And Peter won by a mile
and then made a speech
with a little microphone.
It did set the bar pretty high
if you were looking to do
something.
The sense was that
you needed to do
just a little bit better.
It was interesting times,
but it was difficult.
If you didn't do what he wanted
he was pretty quick
in telling you.
His temper had a short week.
He... he did push me to do
things, and I'm glad he did.
He was my idol,
there's no doubt about that.
I'm about 14 or 15 years old.
That car I'm in
was once an Austin 7
and I remember getting that car
from a local guy for five pounds
and in my haste to remove
the bodywork
to strip it down to become
a paddock bomb, like that was
I actually used mum's axe
to sort of strip away
the rusty metal.
We used to do things like
put an open exhaust on
and we'd fiddle around
with the cam shaft and stuff
but as kids, we didn't know
what we were doing.
One thing you knew when you had
a car that was so fragile
and so delicate as a car
like that,
you learnt something called
mechanical sympathy.
In other words,
if you broke it you fixed it.
And if you had no money,
you better not break it.
It's got no brakes.
He'd be going flat out.
You didn't go slow just because
you had brothers
who weren't strapped in.
He used to talk to me sometimes.
He'd go "Phil, you know, look,
you've just gotta trick
the car to do this."
And you go, "Trick it?"
and he'd go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"Oh, come on, Pin.
You know what I'm talking about.
You gotta trick it." I'd go,
"But you might trick it,
but the car tricks me."
He somehow could become one
with the machine.
You know,
I loved dirt racing as well
and whether that's just a... a
sixth sense of feeling the car
underneath you
but allowing the car to move.
Go with it, not fight it.
I think that Peter
never quite understood
how natural that talent was.
Tricking a car to do something.
I mean, realistically you go,
"Are you serious?"
He was focused and when he was
focused, that was it.
That was the goal
and if you weren't on board
then you weren't on board,
you weren't there.
I think he was always
gonna be that boy
from Hurstbridge who raced cars
as fast as he possibly could
and did exactly what he wanted
whenever he wanted.
That's, that was his life
and that what's he did.
Nothing really ever changed.
Peter was born in 1945.
I mean, Australia still had
petrol rationing.
Still had food and clothing
rationing, until 1950.
So he grew up in an era of
austerity where you... you made
the best of what you could
with what you had
and you made your own
entertainment.
In the 1950s, when Brock
was growing up
Holden, Australia's own car,
put families on wheels.
Optimism with a chrome
grille, that's what the old
F.J. Holden was all about.
And there was a great sense of
national pride in the whole
deal, too.
It was a very strong signal
of affluence.
Every Australian post-war
family wanted a Holden.
Ford came here after it saw
the success Holden was having
and it was a monopoly.
So Ford thought,
"We'll have a bit of that."
When you talk Ford and Holden,
you were talking to 85 percent
of the Australian
driving population.
You followed one or you
followed the other.
It's tribal. It was a Ford
versus Holden thing
and it polarized Australia
from that point.
School was just
something he had to do
and as soon as he could get out
of it, he got out of it.
He had early model Holdens
when he became 18.
He rolled a couple of them.
The car was your ticket to ride.
The car was your coming of age.
Isn't it amazing that you could
get a license to drive
at the same time as you could
drink alcohol?
And the two often went together.
It was a sign that
you were... you were grown up.
You'd have your own car.
With it came an expectation of
the sort of person you would be,
the sort of people you would
surround yourself with
and there were expectations
that you would be naughty.
A... a worship of the bad boy,
the naughty boy.
He was conscripted in 1965.
That was the first year of
compulsory conscription
for a two-year period.
He wasn't happy about it
because he was very much
opposed to the Vietnam War.
He got stationed at Kapooka
in New South Wales
and it also meant that he was a
little bit closer to Bathurst.
In 1966 he went with
a couple of mates
and was absolutely blown away.
As I came away looking
at this track saying,
"I'm inspired.
I've gotta get out there
and race."
I've gotta get on the other side
of this guard railing
and do something.
And really, that's what got me
to build my very first Special
to get on the track
get my CAMS license,
that sort of thing.
He purchased an HD Holden,
a Triumph Herald,
and an Austin 7.
He shipped them down to
Wattle Glen,
which is where his parents
were living
and turned those three things
into the famous A30.
Down the main straight came this
hideously ugly blue,
it looked like it was
hand painted, thing
with a yellow stripe
down the middle.
And it was, it was just flying.
And it was bumping
all over the place.
But I remember
at one stage it was
sitting on the front row
of the grid.
Pete Geoghegan's Mustang,
which one of the all-time
fantastic cars in Australia
and there's this silly little
A30 beside
which he'd just look at and go,
"What is this thing
and why is it there?"
It was as skittish as all hell
with a short wheel base,
lusty engine
but it was ahead of the field
and I thought,
"Who is this person?"
So I took trouble
walking out of the pits
and there in the mud
was this car
and here was this skinny
long black-haired idiot.
And I introduced myself.
And he impressed me immediately.
He had charisma then.
And he raced that
for about two years
and won 102 races
from about 65 race meetings,
which was an extraordinary
number.
Brock, everyone else
who subsequently
tried to drive that Austin 830
when he sold it
couldn't drive it.
Brock could just get in
anything and drive it.
In Rome, it was the Colosseum.
In Australia, it's Bathurst
and a mountain circuit,
site of this country's
greatest road race.
There was only one race
worth winning
and that was Bathurst.
We had 60-odd cars in the race
in those days
not 20 like we've got now.
We had small cars, large cars,
mum's shopping car.
Cars off the showroom floor that
you could go and buy.
All sorts of cars.
Moffat powers up
Mountain Straight already.
They were for production cars.
They were for stuff
that you could,
as they used to say in the ads
"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday."
Win on Sunday,
you sell on Monday.
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
The motor companies believed it
and so did the dealers,
so that was good enough.
Obviously, if a car could do
500 miles at Bathurst
having the wheels driven off it
it was going to cope
fairly well with
taking the kids to school.
It was color, it was spectacle.
It was all of the things that a
lot of that younger demographic
quite liked to see.
It was just an
incredible scene up there.
People would go there and set
up these mobile townships.
Men and women used to
plan this trip
twelve months out and they
would stay on the same corner
every year and they would
camp in the same campsite.
It was the glamour, the speed,
the excitement, the danger.
It was the whole lifestyle.
People coming
from all over Australia
to watch this race.
It was like a religion.
Leo Geoghegan and Doug Whiteford
brush with spectacular results.
There were crashes, there
was dust, there was drama.
And back then,
there were no concrete
retaining walls.
You're required to
lean on the car
at 200 kilometers an hour with
millimeter perfect precision
and if you get it wrong,
it goes wrong badly.
It's brutally unforgiving,
and it's fast.
You went faster at
Bathurst than anywhere else.
Certainly nowhere as safe as
circuits are today.
But it was a thrill.
...Geoghegan attempts a miracle
and it appears Harry Firth
believes in them too,
as he orders more speed.
Harry Firth had won
Bathurst in Fords.
They had a falling out
of some sort
and he was given the job
by Holden
to start the Holden Dealer Team.
I was looking for people
who I thought
I could mold into my particular
way of doing things.
That long-haired bloke
who drives that A30.
Looks pretty smart to me.
He's built the car
but he would require
a fair bit of polish.
I rang him up and he thought
I was having him on,
you know, it was someone else,
so I talked to him.
"Get rid of that thing and I'll
build you a real car."
Well, that was a bit of a shock
to his system.
It's a tightknit organization,
this Holden Dealers Team.
No more than a dozen members
and they've won
every major touring car event
on the Australian
motorsports calendar.
Couldn't believe it when
I got the phone call
from Harry Firth.
"Come down, got a car for you."
And I walked into the workshop
and here's these pristine
Monaro GTS 350s
just sitting there.
You know, they were hot
off the press.
Big on horsepower,
ran on razorblades
and no brakes.
Oh, those were the days.
That's when they really sorted
you out, I can tell you.
I... I never believed though
that I was actually going to
drive this car
until I watched the sign-writer
mask it up and write B-R-O-C-K
on that mudguard.
It was just a magic moment.
Harry picked Des West
to partner Peter
so he could learn
from an older guy.
Harry showed him that
there was more to
motor racing than
you know, a strong heart
and big balls.
For the first time in his life,
he buckled down
and thought, "I can learn
something from this old bloke."
The largest crowd
in the history of the race
has come to see what promises to
be the most thrilling
motor race of its kind
ever staged
with main interest in the battle
for line honors
between the new and specially
built Ford Falcon GTHOs
and the car that won
convincingly last year
the Holden Monaro GTS.
Ford won in '67, so today's race
is something of a decider.
To get the car through
Bathurst for 500 miles
took an art and Harry knew
how to do that.
With Brock, I couldn't
give him much time at all
in the car
but I kept telling him,
"Peter, this is what you do."
I listened very
carefully to everything
Harry told me to do.
You know, he'd say, "Look..."
Telling him, "Peter,
this is what you do
at Bathurst."
"This is how you attack it."
"This is how you do each
corner."
When you go over the top of the
mountain at Bathurst
you go over full tap.
If he said don't use the brakes,
I didn't use the brakes.
The brakes are
only there to get you
set up for the corner.
And as your car lands,
you want to be down right
to get the run into Skyline.
Go back to third, you let the
car then use the engine brake
over Skyline because again you
don't wanna use the brakes
because you'll get the attitude
of the car out of sync.
You use the corner
to slow you down
and get you on the right path.
Just over the hill
you can see two hills
and a tree in the middle.
Now, you aim for that
and go full chat.
You had to do whatever
you could.
Give the car a flick
in the corner,
let it flow through,
do all those sorts of things
but do not use the brakes
because the brakes
had a limited life.
The Dipper's really exciting
because the car gets really
light but you've got to be
really precise because you want
to exit out of The Dipper
because it's a short run
down to the Forrest's Elbow,
which is up to third.
Very tricky, Forrest Elbow,
because you're braking around
the corner which you have
a tendency
to have a lockup
on the front wheel.
I'm looking for that crack in
the gap on the inside.
He figured if you could
learn to drive without brakes
and go fast, it was going to be
a pretty good technique.
Conrod Straight's great.
I think one of the biggest
things I learnt
is to relax in the car.
It was a technique
that I learnt.
It took a lot of discipline.
It was very easy to sort of say,
"Let's jump on the brakes."
I can still feel that brake
pedal pulsing under my feet
and the car not stopping
to this day.
I'd finished third,
did what Harry said
and I think that's what
clinched the drive with
Holden Dealer Team
on a fulltime basis.
The Monaro's main
runner, the Holden Torana GTR,
gets you won
and the story's the same.
The development
of the six-cylinder Torana
was a departure from
the traditional battle of
two big V8s thumping
around the mountain.
It didn't have the power
but it had the nimbleness
and the fuel economy
and was soft on brakes.
It needed a driver like Peter
to drive a car like that.
There was a very,
very strong contingent there.
Holden on one side,
Ford on the other.
You can't ever prophesize
who's going to win
but you can, have a look at
who's not gonna lose
and I don't think
a Ford's gonna lose.
Moffat has more
than a lap advantage
so the XU1 faces
an impossible task
as the Fords continue
their dominance.
There was only
one persistently quick,
and that was Allan Moffat.
How he muscled
that Falcon around
like he did was unbelievable.
Moffat was enemy number one,
there's no doubt about it.
Ford very much
Allan Moffat, one man.
They had drivers, of course,
but Moffat
was, was really calling
all the shots.
You had the very
mercurial Brock, the younger,
as being this lean, skinny kid
with a silly-looking
goatee beard.
He wasn't the sort of matinee
star that he later became.
And you had the very cerebral,
bespectacled Canadian
Allan Moffat
who could be quite bristly and,
and quite cool.
Basically plotting his way
around the course
you know, with... with
the equivalent of a,
of a slide rule
and a calculator.
I never saw it as a rivalry.
I saw it as... as fellows
that were capable of
actually just doing it
and not trying to be smarter
and never going up
to sideswipe Peter.
At that stage we were so fast
against so many other people
that nobody else saw what
the hell we were doing.
Didn't bother me.
Into Pit Straight
and Moffat sets about
dictating the pattern
of the race.
His concentration inflexible,
Moffat is in no danger of
becoming complacent.
Hardie-Ferodo, General Manager
presents the Victor's
laurel wreath
and outright winner's plaque
to a triumphant Moffat.
Having competed
from that very first race,
I really saw it as my
my life's work, almost.
I wanted to win it
at all efforts
and as many times as possible.
We didn't win,
but from that time on he said,
"I can beat him.
I can stay with him."
No need to remind
you that the road
will be very much
like a pork chop
so we will try to exercise
a little caution.
We now take you
direct to Bathurst
for the official telecast
of the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500.
You've got thirty,
forty cars on the grid
all revving their insides out
and off they go in a pall of
blue smoke and it's on.
Moffat would get into a car
and he would not be fast
straight away.
He had to build up his speed
gradually, gradually, gradually
get his concentration to that
point of fever pitch
whereas Brock would just drive
the wheels off everything
all the time.
In those days,
you know, 500 miles,
there was no relief driver.
You know, you didn't give him
too much to drink
because he'd want to stop
and go to the toilet.
Didn't do that in those days.
There was no drink containers.
If he was lucky,
he got half a mouthful of Coke
at the pit stop, that was it.
I was really charging
hard around the top of the
mountain.
And I've got him
down the bottom,
he's coming around
Mountain Straight now.
And Allan was a very
dedicated, hard driver.
I just wanted to make sure that
as long as I was close enough
I'll go as fast as I can
right up alongside him.
I was attacking Moffat,
and I'd catch Moffat up
over the mountain and he'd blow
me away down Conrod Straight.
I'd catch him up again going up
over the mountain.
And I was quite
conscious of it because it was
running through my
rear-view mirror
every lap,
that's how close he was.
They're pushing
Moffat hard as he escapes
the big bend
and down to the end.
The amount of times
that they go, "Oh, Brocky's
there, he's going too fast."
"He can't keep that sort of
speed up," but he would.
And I was nipping
at Allan Moffat.
I was trying to come up
the inside
and I was really pushing at him.
Brock,
whilst he used superior speed,
was always playing a cat
and mouse game.
Peter and I were always very
like this, do-do-do.
I came through the inside of him
and he just got a little wide.
I could see the whites
of his eyes in the mirror
and he was sort of like,
"Uh-oh."
Moffat's spun. He's off a bend
at Reid Park,
near where Bond went.
As I sort of whistled by.
That puts Brock in
the Holden Torana
into first place.
He finished up
off the road, unharmed
and I was into the lead
and away.
The second-last time,
Peter Brock at the wheel
of a car that on this track,
this day, has recorded
a classic victory.
His driving in that
race was just incredible.
I just dreamt of this thing.
It was just a ballsy but
also very considered drive.
I can remember him
getting out of the car
and he was as fit as he was
at the start of it.
Harry Firth allowed me
to race the car on my own.
Now, that's the last time
that anyone's been allowed
to race at Bathurst solo.
At the end of the day,
when I'd finished up
getting a box of chocolates
I had a totally different
understanding about
what I could do in life.
The peer group
viewed me differently.
The media did, and it just
changed my life.
And it was, "Hang on,
I can now do these things."
People were beginning to think
well, this kid from Eltham,
this Peter Brock,
he'd got real car control,
real skill.
And that really put him
on the map.
He'd earnt his stripes.
He'd done his apprenticeship.
He'd announced he was here.
He drove a skinny
little Torana XU1
to victory in the wet,
a real giant-killing victory
and that was the real beginning
of the Brock legend.
Philip Morris entered the
scene with a bag of money,
in search of a youth market.
Motor racing was glamorous,
it was edgy.
It attracted a young,
hip, cool crowd
and it was bang on their
demographic.
Holden started to see
that this young guy
could contribute to sales
and to the development
of the Holden Motor Company.
Bathurst winner Peter Brock
tests the new Holden Monaro GTS
four-door.
Well, this sort of motor
car is my type of car.
Peter had too much time
on his hands in those days.
Girls were chasing him as much
as he was chasing them.
There was always plenty around.
At one stage he had his
steering wheel in one hand
and his dick in the other.
He also had a very keen
eye. Even on the race track
he'd pull into the pits
on occasions
and tell the mechanics
before he told them
about the tire condition
and the fuel load
that there was a very pretty
girl on the inside of turn four
and could somebody please go
and chat her up for him.
When it started to
interfere with motor racing
I sat him down and had a few
words about it.
Well, Holden basically
sent him to finishing school
and Peter went and did
elocution lessons,
manners and really learnt
how to eyeball people
and to make them feel
comfortable.
He was raw material,
a rough diamond.
But as the years progressed
and he acquired more polish
more and more of the facets of
the diamond became brighter.
But there were also some, some
obvious dark sides as well.
Miss Australia 1973.
Ladies and gentleman,
Michelle Downes.
He won Bathurst at the same time
that I won Miss Australia.
I suppose I've...
I've always been attracted to
the naughty boys a little bit
and there was that naughtiness
in Peter.
I was 21, I'd just come out of
being chaperoned
all over the country.
Peter at the time was 28.
He was quite handsome,
very charming.
You know, we just,
we just clicked.
I don't know, it was, it was
instant and I fell very,
very much in love with him,
absolutely.
From the first night
that we got together
we just really
didn't go apart from that.
At first sight it was, I
guess, a match made in heaven.
He was just very proud of her
and deeply in love and adored
her, worshipped her.
Peter and Michelle
had a TV wedding
which was televised live,
which is pretty incredible.
The publicity machine
was very, very, very active.
We sort of became
the golden couple.
Peter was still very much
an unknown person
unless you were
a racing car fanatic
and then you would've known
who he was.
He enjoyed the attention
and he enjoyed being a public
person, very much.
He started to taste
what fame was like
through my profile.
Around that time,
Peter got a, a manager
who was being most difficult
with General Motors
a concern to Harry, and that
was upsetting everyone.
At race meetings he'd just jump
in the car after the race
leave all his clothes
in the marquee.
Expect us to pick up everything
and take them back to work.
He was married to Miss Australia
and I think he started to
believe he was Mr. Australia.
Peter wanted attention.
The more my profile lifted
the more resentful he became.
When something was happening to
him, like he was at a race
I would be pushed away because
he didn't want anyone
being distracted from him.
It was after we got married
that the violence started.
I had to go and be on television
and be the happy, you know,
weather girl
and all the publicity
and then I had to go home,
not knowing what I was going
to go home to that night
what sort of mood
he was going to be in.
If he'd won a race,
everything was fine.
If he hadn't won a race,
God help us.
Harry couldn't slow Peter down.
There was no radio
communication in those
days and it was just waving arms
and just ges...
Gesticulations and things
but Peter wouldn't slow down
and the motor blew up
six or eight laps
from the finish.
A sad sight
for the Holden Dealer Team
as Car One heads
for the back of the pits.
So Peter Brock is out
of the race.
Harry believed that
Peter didn't obey his orders
and slowed down,
if he had have slowed down,
he wouldn't have detonated
the piston.
Well, I don't think
it would've made any difference
from where we were sitting.
All of a sudden,
he was a car-wrecker.
So he would frustrate
Harry just by doing it the way
he believed was right and Peter
would do it in a way that
Harry wouldn't sort of
find out until later
which... which I think would be
a source of frustration.
Harry was a fantastic
manager, but I don't think
he had the skills
to sort Peter out.
And I think in the end
the falling out was just because
Harry wanted to control things
and he couldn't really
control Brock.
I don't think anyone
could control Brock.
I don't think Brock could
control himself, frankly.
You couldn't do
anything about it in those days
because you know, a husband
was allowed to beat his wife.
There was no such thing
as domestic violence.
I used to call the police
and they'd say
"It's a domestic. We can't have
anything to do with it."
It was almost a shameful thing.
You know, you didn't want
people to know
it was happening to you.
Very painful.
Very, very painful time
of my life.
Clearly, it was
a difficult relationship
and an unhappy marriage.
And the fact that
they were playing it out
in the general public
must've been
incredibly difficult
and incredibly painful.
He was the poster boy for Holden
and suddenly there were
newspaper reports appearing.
Race teams don't like
personal dramas
and there was a lot of personal
drama in... in that situation.
Holden, being part
of General Motors
very buttoned-down culture.
Very, well,
Midwest American values.
And image is everything
for a big company like that.
Perceptions were
not always reality.
Peter was a master, even back
then, of putting up a front
of the mask of what people
wanted to see he could present.
There were basically
two Peter Brocks.
One was, just a bloke who you'd
meet round the place
who was charming, intelligent.
And then there was another one
the personality full of rumor
and innuendo and you were
never quite sure
how to get to the bottom
of all of that.
And I would've thought
that the real Brock
was probably a combination
of both.
With the problems he's
giving General Motors
and Harry,
I think it came to a head.
From Holden's point of view
it was just too difficult
a situation.
Yes, it broke our hearts.
The mechanics bloody near wept.
We just couldn't believe
that we were going to lose
the best driver in Australia
at the time.
So what does he do?
He starts again.
Have a go.
Well, hang on,
privateers don't win Bathurst.
But here you are with
one of the only two full,
you know, professional race
teams in Australia
and you're given the boot.
Pete finds some people who,
who are gonna
have their own team
and I'll race their car and,
and, and we'll get some
sponsorship
and stuff and away we'll go.
And he just looked ahead.
I had a girlfriend
who lived in Melbourne.
I said I'd just met Peter Brock
so she told me of the,
you know, the media exposure
he was getting
and... and the stories
that were circulating and...
that took me aback
because I said,
"Well, that's certainly not
the guy that I've met."
I was seeing one side
of a man I'd just met
and then hearing that
there was this other side.
So I was apprehensive a bit.
He was at the early stage
of his career
and winning hadn't
become part of who he was.
Our real friendship started
when he was going through
turmoil in his marriage.
Peter had, you know,
gone out as a privateer.
Had no money.
When they came to Sydney,
they would stay with us
so they had accommodation,
free meals.
My husband was a mechanic
and, we had a service station.
They'd come and stay
and we would help them out
at the race team.
He drove cars
that weren't all that good.
He didn't have the support
of the factory.
He wasn't the works' driver
anymore.
He was a privateer.
He had to lift this team up
and make it competitive.
Very rarely were mechanics paid.
It was very much a labor of love
so people who were keen
on the scene would come along
and give their all
because they wanted to be part
of something bigger
than themselves.
Be fair to say that
when we got to Bathurst
in 1975
we really had to win
to pay the rent.
Away they go!
And Allan Moffat gets going
more quickly in first gear.
I don't think he's working
the car hard...
Gown and Hindhaugh,
a couple of engine
reconditioning fellows
very much a privateer effort
and we never had very much money
to sink into this project.
You had Rice, Bond, Harvey
Frank Gardner, Moffat.
You had all the big names
of the time.
Peter was at the back
of this 38-car field
and he drove past all of them.
They just said
would I drive with them?
Absolutely.
We never had any discussions,
never any arguments.
Really not even any tactics,
we didn't discuss.
Around the bend and
now Allan Moffat leads the race
and Peter Brock pulls out
and decides
that he might like to
lead for a change
and he goes up
on the outside of Colin.
And look at the distance
between these cars.
It's a real race
and Brock is the one
who wants to get to the lead.
He put it in the position
to win the race.
It was my job to make sure
the car got there.
One particular evening
they were all there.
I was out in the kitchen,
he came out
and sat on the kitchen bench
and opened up and he was quite,
uh, depressed at the time.
He didn't know
where his life was going
and I was a bit of a
motivational sort of person
and encouraged him to,
to believe in himself.
Brock in front now.
The bit that totally shocked me
was his vulnerability, his
insecurity in a personal sense
and I was very fortunate that
I got to see that side of him
because my perception of the man
was very different.
Last lap sign goes up
for the last time round
and the crowd acknowledge
the man
who's going to win this race.
Only a kilometer to go now
as Peter Brock...
You have to feel honored
when somebody
who is that capable
is game to let down the barriers
and be who he really
is with somebody.
You know that you're trusted
and you... you respect that.
I was going through
a not dissimilar situation
in my marriage.
We became good friends.
So he found that
he had somebody he could
lean on
and he could be honest with.
Peter Brock
goes for the last time
down through the Esses.
A moment of absolute triumph.
In his privateer car
Peter Brock just lifted it up
and carried it to
the finish line.
That's it, the
chequered flag for Peter Brock
in the 1975 Hardie-Ferodo
1000 Bathurst.
He managed to win
the grand slam.
Which I'm sure helped Holden
sell quite a few of those cars.
Peter was very big
on vindication
very big on
"I'll show you bastards"
and that was the essence
of being a great competitor.
It reminded Holden Brock
was a very merchandisable
sort of representative
for the Holden product
because it meant he'd won
two Bathursts
and was sort of up on a par
with... with Moffat.
And a few of them down there
were thinking,
"Why isn't he still
with the race team?"
I was beginning
to feel that Bathurst
and I had a very, very special
relationship.
You might ask,
what is the caper?
What's the similarity between
driving a car on the race track
and driving a car on the road?
I remember it
like it was yesterday.
He so desperately
wanted to be famous.
He really wanted to be loved
and acknowledged
and, and, and
so how can we do that?
And I said to Peter
"You know,
I reckon you should be
a spokesperson for road safety
because you're such
a brilliant driver."
Cars and driving. They're part
of the Australian way of life.
I said,
"Maybe you could even get .05"
as a number."
They were looking for somebody
to publicize his involvement
in a road safety campaign
promoting the ".05 drink drive."
You going to be hanging around
for a couple more?
We might as well have
another one.
- No, mate.
- We're all having one.
No, there's no way known you can
actually negotiate the traffic,
the trams and what have you
with a few too many inks in
the head, really, so I'm going.
By the time the .05 had actually
come out onto the car
our marriage was over.
And I watched this man
just get on with this life
like nothing had happened.
The .05 campaign
helped to put Peter back in
good faith with his public after
all the dramas of '74.
I think the magazine
that I was writing for
dubbed him "Super Brock."
And he looked the part
and he could switch from
one persona to the other
depending on where he was
and what he was on about.
You know, it's very important
to have the right attitude
if you drive a car like this.
You've got to blank everything
out of your mind.
No hassles, no dramas.
Hop in a car like this and just
drive it properly the whole way.
It was a natural fit
from a marketing point of view
for a drink-drive campaign
to recruit the best-known
driver in the country.
He was super clean.
I can only speculate
that one and one made two
or in this case .05
for the people
at George Patterson.
His life was so alien to mine
but there was this
just a comfortable
absolute trusting,
amazing friendship,
a bond that was very powerful.
And I guess it wasn't
until he told me
how he really felt about me
that I even allowed myself,
you know, because I was married.
I was brought up to believe that
you make marriage work.
I couldn't see somebody living
a life like he was
to take on a country girl,
with a six-month-old child.
He took me
completely by surprise
and was particularly persuasive.
He said to me, he said,
"This is going to be fantastic."
And I said, "Why is that? I
certainly hope so." And he said
"Well, I'll take care
of all the big things, Bevvo,"
"and you can take care
of the small things"
God bless him.
So I said to him,
"What's the big things?"
and he said, "Well, Bevvo."
He said, "I'll do the driving,
I'll earn the money and
I'll take care of the media."
And I said,
"Just out of curiosity,
what are the small things?"
He said,
"Well, you can look after me,
run the property,
raise the kids."
"I don't like
dealing with lawyers
and I don't like,
you know, bank managers."
"You can take care
of all those things."
And it turned out that way.
We were a good team.
Allan Moffat had
tremendous backing from Ford
with his Moffat Ford
Dealers Team.
Down the straight
they go, car one, car two.
An absolute demonstration
of the trust between Ford here
and the Allan Moffat Dealer Team
a scene we've never seen before.
That was the one that got away.
Peter spun, I think, a couple
of times early on in the race.
And Moffat from
the outside will sweep around
and take the chequered flag
first
for victory in the 1977...
Falcons were just too good.
They won just about
every race they did.
Holden were getting belted
every weekend
because they were putting
all this money in
and Ford were making them
look silly.
No car company
can put up with that.
Bathurst was a very important
part of the marketing.
Holden came calling.
It's pole position
car, Peter Brock, 05...
1978 was the return
of the prodigal son.
After three years away,
they could see that
Peter's popularity
was greater than ever.
Well, he was the perfect man
to front this revival
of Holden's race fortunes.
It was a massive positive stroke
for General Motors.
He was back in the fold.
Bathurst was the highlight
of the year.
It was what everything else
built up to.
If you could beat the mountain,
if you could win there
everything else paled
to insignificance.
You look very relaxed
and confident, Peter.
Oh, it's the outward
appearances, of course.
This is Hardie-Ferodo 1000
and it's a big event.
How much does the race
mean to you?
Oh, it's the event for the year.
Harry Firth was retiring
or Holden was suggesting that
he should retire.
They set up a new team
with John Sheppard at the helm.
So it was very important
for them
to turn their fortunes
around on the track
in order to protect their
fortunes in the showroom.
Standby Australia for the start
of the 1978 Hardie-Ferodo 1000.
I really had to prove myself
but I had to earn my stripes,
I can tell you.
When those red and
white cars were there, man,
you knew that was a serious race
and they really were
just iconic.
Think it was just the era
where I really started
to engage.
It's the Torana,
it's the A9X Torana, like
just basically one of the best
cars ever made on the planet.
It was the classic Marlboro
livery.
It's probably one of
the best-looking race cars
to ever have graced
our race tracks.
Holden was just
immediately back on top
and Brock was the name.
The winner of this
year's Hardie-Ferodo,
for the third time
for Peter Brock.
We had an agreement that
in the build up to Bathurst
and at Bathurst itself
would ever any issue be raised
that would bring him stress
we would take care of
between myself
and the guys in the team
all the stressful issues,
so that he could just focus
on doing what he needed to do.
I had found out I was pregnant
with our first child
but because we had
so much on the plate,
I wasn't going to tell him
because I didn't want to
distract him,
because the agreement was
that we would never shift
anything off the focus
of what needed to be focused on.
The emotional tension,
the demands on your time
physically
it is an absolute frantic,
controlled area of chaos,
uh, with everything building up
to the big day.
He started the race
and led every single lap
of the race.
¶ He was selling postcards
from a paper stand ¶
¶ The whiskey bottle
in his withered hand ¶
¶ Put his finger on a photo from
an old magazine ¶
He dreamt his races in the
weeks before they happened.
He drove his races in his sleep.
I would know where he was
on the circuit
from where he was leaning,
where he was braking.
¶ Shut him up in solitary
third degree ¶
¶ Take a long line ¶
Peter Brock is four laps ahead.
Couple of laps from the end
John Sheppard is talking
to Peter on the radio saying
"Okay, Peter, you've got a very
comfortable lead here."
"So just take it easy
and just get the car"
"across the finish line."
Typical driving style.
Driving around waving
to everybody in the crowd
and call on the radio and say,
"Hey, guys, there's a bird up
here with her tits out."
¶ Take a long line ¶
¶ Reel him in ¶
Things do go wrong.
Look at Allan Moffat.
He was worrying about
whether I'd last
and yet he was the one to fall.
His car had broken down.
I knew he was on that,
doing the TV commentary
and Moffat would be saying
"Peter will hear
every little squeak"
"and rattle
and he'll be going slow now"
"just to make sure he gets
over the hill," you know.
I thought, "I'll show him."
First man ever to
lead the race from go to whoa.
The crowd up there went berserk.
Down the pitch you could
hear them screaming
up at McPhillamy Park.
Here he comes.
Listen to the applause,
the accolades
for a man among when it comes to
race car drivers.
Still tidy.
So I really went
for it and the last lap
uh, I actually
set the lap record
purely just to show
to people that,
"Hey, this car's
running strong."
¶ Take a long line ¶
¶ Take a long line ¶¶
The winner of this
year's Hardie-Ferodo
and now he has four victories in
Australia's greatest race.
He won the race by six laps
and still broke the lap record
on the last lap.
Like, he was just in his own
little world, in the zone.
He was a guy who loved to drive
cars fast and he did it well.
That was,
that was his happy place.
People thought
he was being reckless,
driving that last lap so fast.
To do it in such
a convincing style, you know,
that's... that's no mean feat.
I don't think you can really
top that one.
It just worked beautifully
and it's one of those weekends
which is a race driver's dream.
People say to me what was
the best of his victories
and to me, they all meld
in together because
nothing was ever overlooked
in pursuit of that
ultimate chequered flag
at the end of the race.
When people ask me
what is my most
indelibly imprinted memory
of motor sport
it is, without
any shadow of doubt
the '79 Repco Reliability
Around Australia Trial.
It was the single-most
difficult, challenging
motoring event
you could imagine.
He was in there, boots and all.
Peter Brock and
the Commodore started that race
as underdogs.
In fact, it was him
and George Sheppard
who got Holden to say
we could launch
this new Commodore
to the public market
this would be the perfect venue
to do it.
These roads
aren't meant for cars
but the Holden Commodore
was engineered
to a level of toughness
that had never been seen
on an Australian car before.
It was an epic event,
without a doubt.
It's one of those disciplines
that, you know is
particularly
demanding on drivers
because you don't have, you know
tens or hundreds of laps
to get it right.
You have to get it right
the first time
and the only time you go over
that piece of road.
Driving by the seat of
your pants is something that
PB did exceptionally well.
And the cars were really very,
very standard,
very simple cars and were
you know,
pretty prone to breaking
when they went over some
of the most punishing roads
in the country.
What Peter Brock did with
the Repco Round Australia Rally
must have done a lot
to keep people
interested in buying this car
which was perceived to be
at a size disadvantage
for the Ford Falcon.
I'm just so focused on
doing it purely on adrenaline.
I had the sniff of victory
around about Darwin
and I thought,
"Oh, I can win this."
I'd had half a lap of Australia
to sort of figure it out.
Commodores have
been challenged by Ford
who lie first, fourth and fifth,
separated by Bell and Brock.
Sunday, August 19th
and the three Commodores head
the field with a police escort
for the trip to
the Melbourne Showgrounds.
The cars finished one,
two, three outright.
Fourteen days,
21,000 kilometers.
I was, I was just a skeleton
at the end of that.
He was already skinny
when he left home
to get started.
He was gaunt when he got back.
He was blessed as well.
He had a lot of luck
so, you know, Lady Luck
smiled on him
for a very long period of time.
He, he got away
with a lotta stuff.
That's when the Peter
Perfect era really began.
Peter, does this
win mean more to you
than any other win
in your motorsport career?
Probably similar to first time
at Bathurst.
Because he went and beat
the best rally drivers
in the world
in a one, two, three victory
that nobody ever expected
could happen.
He showed them that he wasn't
just there for the media.
You know, I had to tell him also
that he was going to become
a father.
There were so many layers to
this and what an amazing year.
I had no
comprehension of what it would
mean to step into a life
where you lived
in the limelight,
where you had to deal with media
and all the stresses that
involved in Peter's life.
I think she had a way
of putting things that
maybe did bring him down
to earth a little bit
and make him feel comfortable
with what was going on
around him.
Mum was there
in the pits doing timing.
Mum was there sewing new badges
to dad's uniform.
She was making sure dad ate.
She was feeding everyone else.
I, I don't know how they...
Most people get paid a lot of
money to do what my mum did.
She didn't get anything.
There was no doubt
that Bevvo, as he'd call her,
was the rock and basically
called the shots.
If you weren't on side
with Bevvo
well then you weren't getting
any access to the main man.
I suddenly discovered
that men have ownership
of somebody like Peter.
And so there were a few of them
who weren't happy with me
coming on the scene.
Peter was at the peak
of his powers.
He was the key to the Marlboro
Holden Dealer Team.
The Holden Dealers
were clamoring out
for cars with a bit
of the Brock magic
and maybe the Brock name
on them.
We went to a number of dealers.
I put it to them about
helping out, funding the team,
making it truly a dealer team.
The dealers agreed
to finance the team
on the basis that Peter start
a special vehicles operation
and use his racing knowledge
and experience
to develop some cars
for the road
that would appeal
to the punters.
I began HDT Special Vehicles.
We had the ability
to design with what we want.
A lot of that
was obviously Peter,
what he wanted in the cars
to make that standard road car
and just by altering
some of the componentry
to make it into a faster,
better handling
and more durable car
which is exactly
what it finished as.
It was based on the VC Commodore
using the five-liter engine.
So there was
a different inlet manifold
bigger valve cylinder heads
and a few other things
that were on these cars
that we couldn't race
until these cars
were effectively sold
or at least delivered
to the dealers.
So there was a relatively
short space of time
that we needed to produce
these 500 cars
get them out to the dealers
so that the cylinder heads
could be used
at the next Bathurst.
We had no idea what to do,
really
as far as to build a whole run
of cars all with the same spec.
We were young
and we're just into it
and no one had told us
we didn't know how to do it.
I never had any doubts. I...
You know, we just dived
in the deep end
and or as he said, "You bite
off more than you can chew"
"and you just chew like hell."
So he just did it.
It was just crazy
because no one had done
that sort of thing before
and I think
we hear a lot now
the term disruptive
in marketing or advertising.
Peter was a disruptor years
and years and years
ahead of his time.
His business was formed on
a handshake with General Motors.
It, it was a license
to print money for him.
It was a goldmine.
Every kid,
every middle-aged bloke
with a blood pressure problem
wanted a car like Brocky's.
Everybody was making dough.
The dealers loved it,
Holden loved it
because there was a huge halo
effect from the racing team
and I think Peter made quite
a nice living out of it
and employed quite a few people.
It was as time went on
the dealer input was so strong,
we realized
we had to just keep going.
Well, it was the beginning of
the best period of my life.
Absolutely loved it.
Australian touring car champion
last year's Bathurst winner,
car 05 MHDT Commodore
a time of 221.815, Peter Brock,
and so to the front row
of the grid.
Ford was back in the game
and they had a new star
in Dick Johnson.
He was a pretty good privateer
and he put together
a pretty good car.
No, Dick Johnson's
better than you!
Well, that's
a matter of opinion.
He's got a faster car
than you, I reckon.
Not for long.
The guy that I'm worried
about more than anyone
would be Peter Brock
because, he's...
Well, he's saying
he's worried about you.
Well...
It was virtually the start
of my career, to a point.
And Johnson has got the start
and it's a slow start by
Kevin Bartlett in the Camaro...
We went there with high
hopes of having a good result
and we were sort of
on track for that.
I was second on the grid
to Kevin Bartlett.
Brocky, his car was
really not quick enough
and we were sort of battling
away for the first
uh, ten laps or so.
He was driving the car
extremely hard,
which left me
cruising away out in front.
Dick Johnson, but
he has gone into the fence.
Dick Johnson, the leader,
he's broken
the left-hand front suspension.
You can see by the way
the car is leaning down.
And that changed the whole, uh,
the whole...
I suppose
the way the race ended up.
There was a rock.
It was, it was the size of
at least an overnight bag
and it was right on line.
But one of Peter's comments was
"The rock wasn't that big,
and I just drove around it."
So it was a little...
he was a little bit dismissive
of the whole rock theory.
I know you make your own luck
but, uh, certainly a lot of it
went his way.
When he won the '78, '79, '80
he had actually
achieved the pinnacle
of being the best driver
at Bathurst in Australia.
Brock became
a brand unto himself.
He just carried Holden
along with him.
The car itself became
an advertising billboard
even more so once the camera
went into the car.
Small and light
yet able to withstand
the enormous stresses that
will be fed into the Marlboro
Holden Dealer Team Commodore
of Peter Brock.
2-18 I would think to put him
on pole position.
There's our race cam
inside Brock's car.
Look at those hands
on the wheel.
And I can remember,
you know, sitting at home
when you first had
that in-car vision
of what the driver did
and how they did it
was really special.
This is one of the most
treacherous parts
of the circuit.
Oh, into the dirt on the side.
In-car cameras just took
the whole game to the next level
and Peter had
this beautiful ability
to be able to talk
to the camera to address
the fans at home
to talk to the commentators
as he raced around the track.
But the main thing is to give
your car a very easy time
but as you can see,
you can still go fast.
Now, I brake very late here.
There's a lot of time
to be made up just here.
He was the biggest thing
in Australia
that perhaps there'd ever been.
Sure, he likes
a bit of the worship
that he gets from other people.
- He loves it.
- Hero worship?
Yeah. Very much hero worship.
He's just great. He's beautiful.
I just love him.
I think he's
the most horniest guy around.
I think he's done great things
for motorsport in Australia.
I love him so much. Okay, I just
come here just to see him.
When it's over,
whether they've won
whether they've lost, everybody
likes to let their hair down
and relax, have a few beers
and enjoy themselves.
Now, that is the time
where the girls at motor racing
really go for him.
To get him to bed, to get him
round the corner on his...
they have no particular
qualms about where they get him,
as long as they get him.
Peter Brock had huge charisma.
You know, I saw it
many, many times.
He could turn the amp up to ten
and he was irresistible.
I mean, women swooned.
Men just wanted to be like him.
It'd be fair to say
that as time went along
he started believing
his own publicity.
But he was king of the kids.
You brought Phil in
as a driver for Bathurst
through a period
of incredible success.
Lou and Phil
Peter felt that he needed
to look after them,
create opportunities for them.
No matter what happened
in their life,
no matter what stuff ups
there were
he was always going to be there
for them.
And so he gave them
opportunities constantly
and sometimes they worked,
sometimes they didn't.
There was always a bit of
conflict because we...
you know,
we were three brothers.
It's almost like that stuff
that happened when you were kids
never goes away.
'83, Peter asked me to run
the second car with John
at Bathurst.
It was my first year running
the Holden Dealer Team
of Brocky's.
I was the workshop manager
and Peter's co-the driver.
You know,
everything was going well
until I think it was lap sixteen
and Peter's come down
the Conrod Straight
and the engine failed.
Hello, 05,
Peter Brock is in the pits!
When Pete's car broke down
I knew straight away
that he'd be in our car.
They pulled John in
and put Peter in the car.
I handed the car over
in second place.
It was looking good.
Peter chose to continue
with Larry rather than myself,
and that annoyed me.
Larry was this pushy bugger
who made sure that
he got his way
and he got in the car.
When you take over someone's car
it's no longer their car.
They don't get to hop back in.
Here's Peter Brock
now walking into the pit area.
To break the bad
news to brother Phil.
- Do you think?
- I think so.
It was Peter's team.
He could have stopped that
at any time
and said, "No, no, no,
Pin's gonna drive."
What was the bad decision
was putting Larry in the car.
He was the slowest
of the four of us.
Oh, he's almost
collected Perkins in car 25!
At the last stop,
Peter gets back in the car
and they go and win the race.
Yes, he's done it.
He's put seven on the board,
Peter Brock!
And I had a chance to win
Bathurst and never did.
Peter Brock with
the 1983 James Hardie 1000
at Mount Panorama, Bathurst.
I sometimes feel worse about it
now than I did at the time.
You get judged on, in some
ways, on things like that.
Peter didn't
make that choice lightly
but there were bigger,
wider responsibilities
and he had no choice.
Now Phil
was obviously disappointed,
and everybody would
understand that
but that's motor racing.
If it's your team,
you've put up the money,
you've got everything together
you've prepared the cars,
you take the risk
you take the responsibility,
you make the decisions
and sometimes those decisions
are not easy.
About three weeks later,
I did a very stupid thing.
I...
had a few drinks and then
for some unknown reason,
I drove home
and wrapped myself
around a telephone pole
uh, and
was in a pretty bad way for
oh, a few months.
And kept trying to go back to
work and I couldn't quite do it.
I'd get down and I'd last
about an hour or two and just,
just couldn't handle it so then
I'd just have to go home.
Then it was probably
around about, I don't know
I think it was round about,
uh, January or something,
Uh, Pete came out
to see me one day
and, and sacked me.
And so I decided
to leave Victoria.
I wasn't too happy with him.
You know, you've gotta
understand that Peter
was running the 05
so he was the face
of the road safety campaign.
It was obvious to Peter that he
you know, to have co-drivers
in his team
he had to have people
who were totally focused.
All of those things that
were necessary to be involved
as a face within the team.
I, I couldn't...
I couldn't tell people
he'd sacked me.
You know, it was...
The guy was my idol,
you know, and to...
I could never understand it
and... yeah, anyway.
The Holden Dealer Team
had decided we were going to go
and have a go at Le Mans
so we took the whole crew over
and we rented a Porsche.
Australia had just won
the America's Cup.
We could do anything.
And Brocky, our man
he was gonna show the Europeans
just what he was made of.
But at that stage
the bloke was what, 42?
And in a, in a racing driver's
career, that's getting on a bit
particularly if you haven't
looked after yourself
physically.
I remember taking a pic of Peter
in the back of the pits at
Le Mans, stripped to the waist
sweating, distraught,
gaunt, hollow-eyed.
He'd given everything he had.
There's an old adage
in motor racing, that
to finish first,
first you've gotta finish
and, you know, Larry was
circulating four seconds a lap
faster than Peter
but he crashed.
It was at 2 o'clock
in the morning
that struck the car off through
his own fault and he was, he
was big enough to admit that.
He was over what
anybody could physically take
so he's working in a workshop
where they're building the cars
so there's a lot of fiberglass
dust, there's paint,
we've got a paint shop.
Petrol, he was allergic
to petrol.
Not good for a racing driver.
His skin was giving off
all of this stuff.
He was coughing up.
He was, he was not well,
and he needed that time to
completely detox,
to get his body back in shape.
He needed time away
from everything,
so for a few weeks there
we did nothing else
but look after his health
and wellbeing.
Six months later, he reappeared
and the old Brock
was back in business.
Brock gave away cigarettes,
he gave away the booze
he stopped drinking 74 cups
of tea every day.
He got healthier. He was fitter.
In many ways he was improved
but I think some of this stuff
really played havoc
with his, his mindset.
Driving, to me
is... is a nice escape.
It's a means of getting
out of the office
and once I get behind the wheel
of the car, I am relaxed.
I just get behind the wheel
of that car
and I'm doing I know
what I can do best.
Bev had introduced him
to a chiropractor
who called himself a doctor,
Dr. Eric Dowker,
who not only fixed his body
and put him onto
a healthier lifestyle,
but had introduced
other concepts
in terms of his mental space
that were interesting,
to say the least.
Dr. Dowker was into
crystal technology.
They came to the idea that maybe
with crystals and magnets
they could improve
the performance of motor cars.
He and Eric would sit
and discuss philosophies
and stuff that, you know,
were outside the square,
that other people
had no concept about
and so he had found somebody
he could relate to.
He had a found, firm friendship
with somebody.
One shouldn't speak
ill of the dead.
He was a weird sucker.
Eric was a bit unusual,
but so was Peter
and so am I and, you know,
unfortunately when you put
your head up above the crowd
you're gonna get it pinged off.
I went in expecting to get
an engineering presentation
from a... a couple of
engineering blokes
and... and Brock maybe
a bit of whiteboard action
and... and here we go,
and instead he took me
into the office
and out comes this box.
Ah, the look on my face...
I went in and said, "Mate, look,
I'm... I'm not following
this stuff."
"We'll ring Bevvo."
"The laws of physics will
have to be rewritten."
"We are realigning molecules."
"Instead of being random,
"it's like flying
over the landscape
and instead of seeing random
trees, you see an orchard."
"It makes a shithouse car good."
To explain it in layman's terms
is very difficult
because you're talking about
a pretty complex,
uh, high tech product.
It was a little
plastic box with,
um, some magnets
and stuff in it.
A plastic box
with no wires going in,
no wires coming out
and you fix this box
in a particular place
on the far wall of the car
and miraculously it rearranged
all the molecules in the car.
There were a lot of crystals
in our house. A lot.
I... I mean, I definitely saw
lots of them
and helped make
some of them in the...
We started off making them
in the back shed
at home, in Eltham.
It was a bit of a worry to me.
A... a big worry, in fact.
But I have read,
I've read articles
which have sort of
tried to put together
with a whole lot of innuendo,
the fact that there's
something sinister
that he's master-minding you,
that you're programmed by him,
that you're into the occult.
I mean, you know, I mean...
I said, "Peter...
a... are you serious?"
"You're talking about
this energy
being a form of sexual release."
And he... he blew up and he said,
"Well, if you don't
bloody believe,
you don't bloody believe."
And I said, "Well, mate,
I'll tell it straight."
"That's what you want,
that's good, fine."
Back I went. I wrote the story
absolutely straight.
Caused an absolute sensation
and caused quite a
schism within the team.
One of my people
wouldn't allow me
to insult my eyeballs to read
the rest of the rubbish
that was written.
Well, you're talking
about Phil Scott?
I can hardly comment.
Don't, well it...
Phil's a fairly good journalist
and that's something that...
Well, I thought that particular
write-up was disgraceful
and I've got...
That's the only comment
I'll make on it.
Holden knew nothing
about this stuff,
so they were reading it
for the first time.
The theory was sound.
It's just there was
no real way to measure.
You'd kind of had to take faith
that it was working.
People don't trust
their own feelings anymore.
It's a very strange thing.
We need a scientific,
a needle there pointing at
something
before we believe that
what we feel is true.
Ian Leslie of 60 Minutes
came and did a test.
As he hopped out of the car,
he took out his check book
before even talking to anybody,
wrote out a check
for $20,000,
which I've still got
and he said,
"I want in to the business."
And there was all this
gushy stuff, you know.
"I don't know how it works,
but it works."
And this stuff was running in,
you know, national newspapers
and was later pulled out
and used in some of the ads
for this device.
It was an absolute
disaster scenario.
By the following year,
you know, 1985
we had Dr. Eric prowling the
pits in racing team colors.
Everyone in the
pits following you
going around the circuit.
Do you want to send them a wave?
Yeah... How are you?
Before that, it was a club.
After that, it became a cult.
You either believed
or you didn't.
He got more and more obstinate
and the Director
was the direct result of that.
The background music,
I'll never forget,
was Glen Miller's "In the Mood"
and I thought shit, this is,
this is pretty interesting.
There were various
celebrities there.
Most of the crowd were totally
in the dark
as to the significance
of what was happening.
This was just Peter Brock
launching a new car
so it was a bit of glamour
and a few flash bulbs
and off we went from there.
Brock was
modifying one particular car
putting his name on them,
but not submitting them
to General Motors Engineering
for them to be tested.
So there were all these design,
Australia design rules
that the car didn't meet
and he was gonna sell them
to the public.
And they said, "Well,
what are the specifications
for this new Holden Director?"
And he said, "Don't you
blokes read 'Wheels Magazine?'"
For anybody who knows anything
about the regulatory environment
around motor cars
that's just crazy stuff.
It was probably one of
the worst times of my life.
Holdens are trying to stop me
and I'm pretty determined
sort of person
and I'm pressing on.
They said to me
"If you, Peter Brock,
"announce this car
at the end of this week
we'll withdraw
all support for you."
Well, I've gone ahead,
and I've announced it.
Now I look at that
and just think
how the fuck could you do that?
I don't know
what more I can say.
I mean, you just
had to live with it
and do your best
and watch the place crumble
which is what happened.
So to the critics
and those within the industry
that say that
HDT is going down the gurgler,
what do you say to them?
I'd say you critics out there
would not have a clue.
We are a top company.
We are,
I've got a fantastic product.
We are profitable
and despite all these people
who would love to see us
go down the gurgler
we ain't about to do it.
His ridiculous naive optimism
in just believing
something was gonna work,
so therefore it would work.
That was what I found probably
the most frustrating.
Holden managed to
completely block up
any supply of cars to us.
Like if a Holden dealer
sold us a car
they were threatened with
the loss of their franchise.
It was a really testing time
and... and for Peter
it was sort of like
the giant slaying the underdog.
Excuse me?
It's like cutting off
your... your right arm.
Holden were making very good
money out of this business.
So was Peter.
They had millions upon millions
invested in this,
this charismatic racing star.
His identity and Holden
were... were fused at the hip.
To publicly divorce him...
was a... a commercially
very damaging decision
for those guys.
Brock was truly spontaneous
and he remained so
throughout his life
and often that spontaneity
combined with a kind of
larrikin lunatic streak
was his undoing.
There is obviously
orchestrated move
by Holden
to crush this business.
It all became a very stubborn
unfortunate dissolution
of the business.
At that stage
he didn't want me around anyway
because I didn't believe
in the Polarizer.
It was an uncomfortable
place to work
and I didn't want to be there.
It was just a sad, sad thing to
happen
to a great, great business,
a great man that had everything
going for him in life.
No more cars, no more business.
Not even parts for the race car.
He was starting from
ground zero again.
Peter Brock is a legend,
a motoring legend
of Australian motorsport.
Mobil did the consumer survey.
The Peter Brock brand
was still very strong.
Australia likes an underdog,
loves the battler
and Mobil made a
pretty savvy decision
to keep backing the guy.
It was early to mid-1987
when I got a phone call.
Peter and Bev asked me if
I would be willing to come back
and run the team.
Didn't take me long
to think about it really.
Peter was still Peter.
He threw it out there to me
as a challenge.
"You know what's gone on.
This is where it's at."
"Ah, it's not gonna
be an easy road."
I think we've probably
got a better team
than we've had for a long time,
we're extremely determined
and it's almost like "Hey,
Brock, you might've won it
eight times before, but this
time's the most important."
And that's the way
I thought about it.
We were going very much
as underdogs.
We were up against Ford Sierras
which had just
come on the scene.
We were up against
Dick Johnson's Sierras
and also a fella from Europe
called Rudy Eggenberger
had brought his Sierras
out to race at Bathurst.
Some of the journos
just absolutely
bagged the hell out of the team
and Peter basically
saying the team were
a bunch of rabble
not going anywhere.
On the way to the track
that morning on the bus
I held that newspaper up to
the boys and said
"Here, this is the shit
they're talking about us.
"Let's prove them wrong."
"Let's give it a red-hot go."
Bryce, Perkins and Brock
making one heck of a charge
up the mountain
but the Sierras have been
substantially quicker all week
coming down Conrod Straight
towards the new Caltex Chase.
Peter's car failed.
We transferred him across
onto the second car.
And Brock says, "I'm ready."
05 car is out,
the number 10 car is running.
Our guys would have friends
in surrounding townships
who they would be ringing up to
find out, "Is the rain coming?"
Yep, it's actually
hailing here at present.
It's freezing cold.
As soon as the rain came
I knew,
I knew what he was gonna do.
We were talking to
Peter on the radio
and Peter said, "Look,
let's just stay on the slicks."
James Hardie
1987, look at Brock.
Oh, would he
regret putting slicks on?
Yeah, I think
he's made a slight misjudgment
there because the track is still
very greasy,
very slippery on line.
He does have a
very desperate driver.
I think he can get himself
into great problems
if he doesn't watch it.
Peter had faith
that the track was gonna dry.
If he came in
to go onto wet weather tires
he was gonna waste
time on the track.
And he is gassing
in the Commodore,
he's got slick tires on.
He's in third position.
The drama continues...
The last 25 laps of that race...
well, I'm sure he was having
an out-of-body experience
because it was wet,
it was slippery.
It was a masterclass in car
control and concentration.
That really was
dancing on the edge of the
razorblade
lap after lap after lap.
It was an inspired piece
of work and an emphatic,
"Up yours. I'm still the man."
Brock just trying
very, very carefully
to stay on the only dry line.
Look how narrow it is.
He could do things at times
in a car that you can't fathom.
No matter how you drive around
that mountain
with slicks on in the wet
with one arm on the bloody
window sill is just...
You can't do it, but he did.
He was just pumped.
There was adrenaline oozing out
the back doors.
And just listen to the race fans
showing their favor to Brocky
as he goes over the hill.
We finished first
Commodore home.
We finished in third place,
behind Rudy Eggenberger's
two Ford Sierras.
We were in raptures. That's
what we went there to achieve.
We've done our job.
But you asked for
the man, you asked for him.
It's Peter Brock!
I gave it absolute heaps,
particularly in the wet there
in the finish.
And I thoroughly enjoyed myself,
I might add
and, uh, thanks for all your
support out there too.
I loved the way
you were cheering me on.
Just chanced on a
story a moment ago
about possible illegal fuel
in both the Texaco Sierras.
We were in
the pit beside Rudy Eggenberger
and watching sort of,
over the fence
while the race was going on.
I could see them mixing fuel,
which was illegal.
Back then there was a
young racing driver
getting around those days
by the name of Craig Lowndes.
Well, his dad Frank
was the head scrutineer
back in those days.
So I called Frank over, I said
"Oh, just stand here
and have a chat to me
for a while, Frank,
and watch a few things."
So sure enough,
it was proven that they were
mixing alcohol in their fuel.
So I can't even remember how
long later it was,
but we were all back in
Melbourne
and Brock called me up to
the office one day, said
"Oh, guess what?" "What's that?"
"We've won Bathurst." "Huh?"
Said, "Yeah, Eggenberger cars
have been rubbed out."
"We're the winner."
Well, shit, we'd better
have another party.
As he said at the time,
"Yes, that was a bit of
a vindication."
True motorsport fans
understood the impossibility
of the record
that he had built at Bathurst.
He could do no wrong. He was
the messiah of motorsport.
Brock was the number one
and he had been for two decades.
The fact that he no longer had
the equipment under him
to continue at his peak
didn't make any difference to
the people that loved Brock
and loved what he had done
before.
Didn't diminish
what he'd achieved.
Didn't diminish his record.
He's an iconic
Australian sports hero.
The Holden Race Team had
not been showing great success
and by getting Peter back
in the team meant that
not only did he come armed
with his sponsors,
who were extremely loyal to him
but he also came armed with
enormous media support
and a huge fan base.
The reason why
Mobil is the number one team!
Driving a Holden is something
I know a fair bit about.
I've spent 18 years
here with Holden
and getting back
into it of course is,
uh, old home week.
Complex,
like all families, rough times
but when the trouble's happened
you get back together.
You go from that phase of being
a person you looked up to
growing up
to then, you know,
rubbing shoulders
and he now being your mentor
inside of the car.
The young guns
were coming through
and understandably Peter was
not a young gun anymore.
But the way it was handled
was less than ideal
and he'd walk down the pits
in the race meeting
and the bonnets would be closed
and that was insulting.
Cars were being produced with
Peter's signature on it
that he knew nothing about.
He wasn't allowed to
go into the workshop.
He wasn't allowed to
talk to the mechanics
because they were putting
the latest developments
on the young blood's car
and phasing Peter out
so Peter's car wasn't
as competitive.
You've looked at
one perspective.
Well, the fans were treated
to something
there for an hour or two,
you know.
And, uh, but to come back
from here
will be pretty well
impossible, I guess.
I said to him, "Is this really
"what you want to be doing?"
"Are you prepared
"to put yourself
through this pain,
through this embarrassment?"
So on the way home we talk about
"Okay, if you announce that at
the end of the season
"you'd retire, this is gonna
give you the opportunity
"to go to every race track
around Australia
"say your goodbyes,
sign all your autographs
and go out the way
you wanted to."
This year, of course,
is a very special time.
It's, uh, one when you, uh,
decide to change
the direction of your life,
uh, you figure that it's really
only going to affect yourself
and perhaps your family
around you and a few,
you know, a few close
friends but, uh, well...
And it was the most
amazing, emotional year.
There would be grown men coming
in tears, wanting to hug him.
"What, what are we gonna do,
Brocky?"
"We're not gonna
have you here anymore."
The respect that he
had from everyone.
Doesn't matter whether
you're a Ford or Holden,
it was just a huge legacy.
To be able to do it
and just shut that door
would be quite incredibly hard.
He never really retired.
And the techniques
certainly have longevity.
But the physicality
and the mental acuity
they have a finite life.
He just didn't look like
the old Peter.
I could see a massive
change in... in him
and how he was and... and his
attitude and his...
Yeah, he definitely... definitely
didn't seem to be
the confident person that he was
earlier in... in his life.
What the public didn't
see was this man
who fell into this amazing hole.
His love of the sport
and his time to reflect on it
wasn't a positive thing.
I don't think he had the...
whimsical, child, wide-eyed glow
that he used to
always have to it
when he had his own team
and they could do
what they kind of wanted.
I genuinely felt that,
I was simply a commodity
and that I was not able to
make my own decisions, so...
Because he felt
he'd been controlled
and manipulated
by so many people
he needed to discover
his own strengths
and he made me promise
that I would no longer
solve his problems for him
or help him solve his problems,
that he needed to do that
himself.
He'd ring home and go, "Oh, I'm
gonna be home in 15 minutes."
"Can you tell mum I need lunch?"
I'm like,
"You can make your own lunch."
Can I just heat that up and have
that as a bit of backup?
I'd say you press that
for ignition.
You know,
this is an amazing person,
but he didn't have
a normal life.
Like he never went shopping.
There were basic skills in life
that he had missed out on
because he was in such demand
and worked so hard.
- Dee.
- Oh, hello.
Dee.
Look!
Hello.
He was turning 60.
He didn't wanna turn 60.
He didn't want anybody to
recognize it, and I said
"You're gonna have
to recognize it."
So we had probably 60-80
odd people at home that night.
It came to speech time
and his uncle
and another close friend
got up and spoke
and in their speech
about Peter
and how amazing he was
and here he is turning 60
and he, you know,
he's got all this potential
they both made it very clear
that he would not have had
the life that he'd had,
had I not been by his side
and been there for him.
And I'm sitting there thinking
"Please don't say this
because right now
he doesn't need
to hear that he's got where
he is because I've been there."
"He needs to hear that
he's achieved these things
on his own."
So when he gave his response,
I was devastated.
Nobody else picked it,
but I thought
"This is a... a farewell
speech to me."
I met Bev at basketball.
We both ended up playing
on the same team together.
It kind seemed like we
were both like-minded
and so we started spending
a bit of time together
and that's actually how
I got to meet Peter.
I guess it would be fair
to say that, um,
Julie's concept of friendship
was very different to mine
and on several occasions,
I suggested that maybe
she stop coming to our place.
He said that he just needed
to find himself,
he needed to live his own life
and make his own choices.
My biggest failing was, uh,
I guess over the years saying,
"Oh, I'm doing fine"
but are you really looking
at yourself honestly?
One morning Peter Brock
arrived at my house
and announced
that he was in love with me
and he wanted me to
come and live with him.
That was actually a shock to me.
You know,
my values in life were,
you don't go down that avenue.
You don't take those chances.
Peter said, "You know, Julie,
sometimes you need to
take risks in life."
The reality was that Peter
always needed to be loved,
needed to be valued,
needed to be appreciated
and could not be on his own.
I would think that, uh,
I've got a lot to offer
the world around me
and that the best parts
of my life
are now beginning to unfold.
Well, the day started off.
We did what we did every day.
We just went out
and did the first stage.
It was pretty twisty and bumpy
damp country roads,
north of Perth
and in the first stage
I... I remember
that wasn't the sort of terrain
that suited the car we're in
but we managed to do
the second-quickest time.
You know, the fact that we
finished second in the first leg
I mean, his wits were about him.
There was no, you know,
I didn't feel that he was,
you know,
slow or, you know, tired.
I mean, he was just
on the top of his game.
And I still don't know
why that corner, um,
didn't... didn't go right.
It was just a... a set
of circumstances
that even Peter couldn't
drive round.
The 61-year-old
lost control of his car
while navigating a bend...
The tree hit him in
absolutely millimeter
worst spot.
I think
it might have been the chaplain
that came up and said,
"Oh, there's been an off-road."
And I went, "Oh, yeah."
So I thought that means
someone skids off the road.
And he said, "Oh, it was Peter."
And I said, "Right. So..."
And they said,
"Sadly, he's passed away."
Well, I was standing up
and my body just let go.
"I want to go and see him."
I said, "I have to go."
I pick up the phone and there's
a woman on the other end
said, "There's been
an accident."
And as any parent does,
you instantly think
which of my children?
And she said, "It's not your
children. It's Peter."
and I said, "What do you mean?"
and she said,
"There's an event."
"What event?"
And she just said,
"He hasn't made it"
and she hung up.
I don't know who it was.
I... I don't suppose
I'll ever know.
I look outside, there's a
helicopter in the paddock.
I look down the drive,
there's cars.
Media coming up,
cameras whirring.
I haven't told the kids.
So I had to, you know,
suck it in and go outside
to deal with the media.
I was actually
doing an interview,
then the phone started
going off and he's like
"Sorry, I've just gotta
answer this"
and then he... he answered
the phone
and I was sitting like
just across my desk from him.
Ah, I just saw this look
on his face
and he just went white.
And, uh, because he had just
realized
that he had to tell me.
Trying to drive home
in peak hour traffic
with the radio on
listening to everyone going
you know,
"Put your lights on for Brocky"
and realizing that
the whole world had known
for a lot longer than me
that my dad had died.
I'm simply devastated
that the plans
that we had
for our future together
have ended prematurely.
I have full realization
that I shared a short part
of Peter's life.
He was such a unique
and wonderful man,
who I loved and adored.
All the pain that had happened
with mum and dad's split
was pointless.
It didn't mean anything now
and...
just sort of left this,
wasn't even a hole, it was like
a gaping wound in our lives.
I...
I miss him though.
He affected people
in... in such an amazing way.
Every single story
that I've heard
was about Peter Brock
the person,
not Peter Brock the race driver.
Motor racing just
happened to be the vehicle
that he used
to get his message across.
That's what we miss so much.
The tentacles are far reaching
and they still exist
to this day.
Every book that can be written,
every interview that can be made
everything that can be said
has finally been taken
into consideration
and hopefully the man is seen
and remembered for what he was,
an incredible, amazing
incredible individual
who deserves to be recognized
as somebody fantastic.
And as I said to my kids when
they've heard negative stuff
"Guys, your father was
95 percent perfect, amazing,
"five percent human and fallible
but didn't have a bad bone
in his body."
on your right.
Morris alongside,
Moffat on the far left.
As more than a hundred
drivers suffering
from pre-race tension
listen carefully
to last minute
regs and instructions.
How much does the race
mean to you?
Oh, it's the event
for the year and you get
tremendous disappointment
if you lose it.
Lady and gentlemen,
start your engines.
There's Brock, preparing to
race like the devil.
This is it, the great race.
But now,
the one minute siren has gone
and all is ready for a start
with two Falcons and a Holden
on pole position.
The man who wants to win here
probably more than anyone else,
Peter Brock.
Thirty second
warning's about to go up.
Sixty-two of
Australia's finest drivers.
It's a mad scramble.
Literally the balloon's gone up.
Start of the James Hardie 1000.
Engines are throbbing.
You can feel the crowd
vibrating with emotion.
All set. Get ready.
He'd sit in that car,
holding the steering wheel
for hours, for days,
looking straight ahead.
He was sitting in that car
focusing on what he's gonna do
and how he's gonna do it.
This change would come over him
and his eyes would go black
and nothing else counted.
He was part of that car.
The actual exercise
of getting behind the wheel
of a car and make it
do something
it fundamentally doesn't
want to do,
that's a fantastic thing
for any person to do.
Behind the wheel,
he seemed to be almost
bulletproof.
He had an amazing
ability to feel the car,
to read the car,
to understand the car.
The noise, the sounds, the feel.
There was a lot more to Brock
than the smiling hero figure
you saw on the victory dais.
You could see the hunger
in his eyes. The intensity.
The naked ambition to be
number one.
He trusted everybody,
and there were people who
weren't worthy of his trust.
Orchestrated move by Holden to
crash this business.
He did an amazing job of
inspiring lots of people.
For all the Brock
fans waiting for Peter Perfect
to come across the line.
You asked for the man.
You asked for him.
It's Peter Brock!
He could turn it on.
Women swooned.
Men just wanted to be like him.
Peter needed to be
respected, needed to be loved.
The rise and fall
and rise and fall
and rise and fall
of Peter Brock.
He could do no wrong.
He was the messiah
of motorsport.
It didn't occur to me
that he could ever
have an accident.
He had this force in cars
where he could
push it until its absolute limit
and then bring it back.
So he would never spin out.
He would never...
Like, he just... He felt cars.
He understood them.
He didn't rub paint.
He didn't have accidents.
He just intuitively,
instinctively knew
where he needed to be
and I had complete
and absolute faith in him.
He had a real strong
sense of self-belief
and he actually didn't really
see obstacles.
The public owned
Peter Brock in a way
they never really owned
any other racing driver
that I've seen.
And it wasn't just charm.
It was just a kind of a special
intensity about him
and that sense of looking at you
and engaging with you
and you're the only person
in the room at that moment.
Fame has a price to pay
and the price you pay will
depend on
how you view it and how you use
that gift.
My very earliest? Wow...
Big brother.
A bit scary, a bit intimidating.
Peter was a very good competitor
and athlete at primary school.
So I would've been
just a little kid
and watching him win the sprint
races and things.
And Peter won by a mile
and then made a speech
with a little microphone.
It did set the bar pretty high
if you were looking to do
something.
The sense was that
you needed to do
just a little bit better.
It was interesting times,
but it was difficult.
If you didn't do what he wanted
he was pretty quick
in telling you.
His temper had a short week.
He... he did push me to do
things, and I'm glad he did.
He was my idol,
there's no doubt about that.
I'm about 14 or 15 years old.
That car I'm in
was once an Austin 7
and I remember getting that car
from a local guy for five pounds
and in my haste to remove
the bodywork
to strip it down to become
a paddock bomb, like that was
I actually used mum's axe
to sort of strip away
the rusty metal.
We used to do things like
put an open exhaust on
and we'd fiddle around
with the cam shaft and stuff
but as kids, we didn't know
what we were doing.
One thing you knew when you had
a car that was so fragile
and so delicate as a car
like that,
you learnt something called
mechanical sympathy.
In other words,
if you broke it you fixed it.
And if you had no money,
you better not break it.
It's got no brakes.
He'd be going flat out.
You didn't go slow just because
you had brothers
who weren't strapped in.
He used to talk to me sometimes.
He'd go "Phil, you know, look,
you've just gotta trick
the car to do this."
And you go, "Trick it?"
and he'd go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"Oh, come on, Pin.
You know what I'm talking about.
You gotta trick it." I'd go,
"But you might trick it,
but the car tricks me."
He somehow could become one
with the machine.
You know,
I loved dirt racing as well
and whether that's just a... a
sixth sense of feeling the car
underneath you
but allowing the car to move.
Go with it, not fight it.
I think that Peter
never quite understood
how natural that talent was.
Tricking a car to do something.
I mean, realistically you go,
"Are you serious?"
He was focused and when he was
focused, that was it.
That was the goal
and if you weren't on board
then you weren't on board,
you weren't there.
I think he was always
gonna be that boy
from Hurstbridge who raced cars
as fast as he possibly could
and did exactly what he wanted
whenever he wanted.
That's, that was his life
and that what's he did.
Nothing really ever changed.
Peter was born in 1945.
I mean, Australia still had
petrol rationing.
Still had food and clothing
rationing, until 1950.
So he grew up in an era of
austerity where you... you made
the best of what you could
with what you had
and you made your own
entertainment.
In the 1950s, when Brock
was growing up
Holden, Australia's own car,
put families on wheels.
Optimism with a chrome
grille, that's what the old
F.J. Holden was all about.
And there was a great sense of
national pride in the whole
deal, too.
It was a very strong signal
of affluence.
Every Australian post-war
family wanted a Holden.
Ford came here after it saw
the success Holden was having
and it was a monopoly.
So Ford thought,
"We'll have a bit of that."
When you talk Ford and Holden,
you were talking to 85 percent
of the Australian
driving population.
You followed one or you
followed the other.
It's tribal. It was a Ford
versus Holden thing
and it polarized Australia
from that point.
School was just
something he had to do
and as soon as he could get out
of it, he got out of it.
He had early model Holdens
when he became 18.
He rolled a couple of them.
The car was your ticket to ride.
The car was your coming of age.
Isn't it amazing that you could
get a license to drive
at the same time as you could
drink alcohol?
And the two often went together.
It was a sign that
you were... you were grown up.
You'd have your own car.
With it came an expectation of
the sort of person you would be,
the sort of people you would
surround yourself with
and there were expectations
that you would be naughty.
A... a worship of the bad boy,
the naughty boy.
He was conscripted in 1965.
That was the first year of
compulsory conscription
for a two-year period.
He wasn't happy about it
because he was very much
opposed to the Vietnam War.
He got stationed at Kapooka
in New South Wales
and it also meant that he was a
little bit closer to Bathurst.
In 1966 he went with
a couple of mates
and was absolutely blown away.
As I came away looking
at this track saying,
"I'm inspired.
I've gotta get out there
and race."
I've gotta get on the other side
of this guard railing
and do something.
And really, that's what got me
to build my very first Special
to get on the track
get my CAMS license,
that sort of thing.
He purchased an HD Holden,
a Triumph Herald,
and an Austin 7.
He shipped them down to
Wattle Glen,
which is where his parents
were living
and turned those three things
into the famous A30.
Down the main straight came this
hideously ugly blue,
it looked like it was
hand painted, thing
with a yellow stripe
down the middle.
And it was, it was just flying.
And it was bumping
all over the place.
But I remember
at one stage it was
sitting on the front row
of the grid.
Pete Geoghegan's Mustang,
which one of the all-time
fantastic cars in Australia
and there's this silly little
A30 beside
which he'd just look at and go,
"What is this thing
and why is it there?"
It was as skittish as all hell
with a short wheel base,
lusty engine
but it was ahead of the field
and I thought,
"Who is this person?"
So I took trouble
walking out of the pits
and there in the mud
was this car
and here was this skinny
long black-haired idiot.
And I introduced myself.
And he impressed me immediately.
He had charisma then.
And he raced that
for about two years
and won 102 races
from about 65 race meetings,
which was an extraordinary
number.
Brock, everyone else
who subsequently
tried to drive that Austin 830
when he sold it
couldn't drive it.
Brock could just get in
anything and drive it.
In Rome, it was the Colosseum.
In Australia, it's Bathurst
and a mountain circuit,
site of this country's
greatest road race.
There was only one race
worth winning
and that was Bathurst.
We had 60-odd cars in the race
in those days
not 20 like we've got now.
We had small cars, large cars,
mum's shopping car.
Cars off the showroom floor that
you could go and buy.
All sorts of cars.
Moffat powers up
Mountain Straight already.
They were for production cars.
They were for stuff
that you could,
as they used to say in the ads
"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday."
Win on Sunday,
you sell on Monday.
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
The motor companies believed it
and so did the dealers,
so that was good enough.
Obviously, if a car could do
500 miles at Bathurst
having the wheels driven off it
it was going to cope
fairly well with
taking the kids to school.
It was color, it was spectacle.
It was all of the things that a
lot of that younger demographic
quite liked to see.
It was just an
incredible scene up there.
People would go there and set
up these mobile townships.
Men and women used to
plan this trip
twelve months out and they
would stay on the same corner
every year and they would
camp in the same campsite.
It was the glamour, the speed,
the excitement, the danger.
It was the whole lifestyle.
People coming
from all over Australia
to watch this race.
It was like a religion.
Leo Geoghegan and Doug Whiteford
brush with spectacular results.
There were crashes, there
was dust, there was drama.
And back then,
there were no concrete
retaining walls.
You're required to
lean on the car
at 200 kilometers an hour with
millimeter perfect precision
and if you get it wrong,
it goes wrong badly.
It's brutally unforgiving,
and it's fast.
You went faster at
Bathurst than anywhere else.
Certainly nowhere as safe as
circuits are today.
But it was a thrill.
...Geoghegan attempts a miracle
and it appears Harry Firth
believes in them too,
as he orders more speed.
Harry Firth had won
Bathurst in Fords.
They had a falling out
of some sort
and he was given the job
by Holden
to start the Holden Dealer Team.
I was looking for people
who I thought
I could mold into my particular
way of doing things.
That long-haired bloke
who drives that A30.
Looks pretty smart to me.
He's built the car
but he would require
a fair bit of polish.
I rang him up and he thought
I was having him on,
you know, it was someone else,
so I talked to him.
"Get rid of that thing and I'll
build you a real car."
Well, that was a bit of a shock
to his system.
It's a tightknit organization,
this Holden Dealers Team.
No more than a dozen members
and they've won
every major touring car event
on the Australian
motorsports calendar.
Couldn't believe it when
I got the phone call
from Harry Firth.
"Come down, got a car for you."
And I walked into the workshop
and here's these pristine
Monaro GTS 350s
just sitting there.
You know, they were hot
off the press.
Big on horsepower,
ran on razorblades
and no brakes.
Oh, those were the days.
That's when they really sorted
you out, I can tell you.
I... I never believed though
that I was actually going to
drive this car
until I watched the sign-writer
mask it up and write B-R-O-C-K
on that mudguard.
It was just a magic moment.
Harry picked Des West
to partner Peter
so he could learn
from an older guy.
Harry showed him that
there was more to
motor racing than
you know, a strong heart
and big balls.
For the first time in his life,
he buckled down
and thought, "I can learn
something from this old bloke."
The largest crowd
in the history of the race
has come to see what promises to
be the most thrilling
motor race of its kind
ever staged
with main interest in the battle
for line honors
between the new and specially
built Ford Falcon GTHOs
and the car that won
convincingly last year
the Holden Monaro GTS.
Ford won in '67, so today's race
is something of a decider.
To get the car through
Bathurst for 500 miles
took an art and Harry knew
how to do that.
With Brock, I couldn't
give him much time at all
in the car
but I kept telling him,
"Peter, this is what you do."
I listened very
carefully to everything
Harry told me to do.
You know, he'd say, "Look..."
Telling him, "Peter,
this is what you do
at Bathurst."
"This is how you attack it."
"This is how you do each
corner."
When you go over the top of the
mountain at Bathurst
you go over full tap.
If he said don't use the brakes,
I didn't use the brakes.
The brakes are
only there to get you
set up for the corner.
And as your car lands,
you want to be down right
to get the run into Skyline.
Go back to third, you let the
car then use the engine brake
over Skyline because again you
don't wanna use the brakes
because you'll get the attitude
of the car out of sync.
You use the corner
to slow you down
and get you on the right path.
Just over the hill
you can see two hills
and a tree in the middle.
Now, you aim for that
and go full chat.
You had to do whatever
you could.
Give the car a flick
in the corner,
let it flow through,
do all those sorts of things
but do not use the brakes
because the brakes
had a limited life.
The Dipper's really exciting
because the car gets really
light but you've got to be
really precise because you want
to exit out of The Dipper
because it's a short run
down to the Forrest's Elbow,
which is up to third.
Very tricky, Forrest Elbow,
because you're braking around
the corner which you have
a tendency
to have a lockup
on the front wheel.
I'm looking for that crack in
the gap on the inside.
He figured if you could
learn to drive without brakes
and go fast, it was going to be
a pretty good technique.
Conrod Straight's great.
I think one of the biggest
things I learnt
is to relax in the car.
It was a technique
that I learnt.
It took a lot of discipline.
It was very easy to sort of say,
"Let's jump on the brakes."
I can still feel that brake
pedal pulsing under my feet
and the car not stopping
to this day.
I'd finished third,
did what Harry said
and I think that's what
clinched the drive with
Holden Dealer Team
on a fulltime basis.
The Monaro's main
runner, the Holden Torana GTR,
gets you won
and the story's the same.
The development
of the six-cylinder Torana
was a departure from
the traditional battle of
two big V8s thumping
around the mountain.
It didn't have the power
but it had the nimbleness
and the fuel economy
and was soft on brakes.
It needed a driver like Peter
to drive a car like that.
There was a very,
very strong contingent there.
Holden on one side,
Ford on the other.
You can't ever prophesize
who's going to win
but you can, have a look at
who's not gonna lose
and I don't think
a Ford's gonna lose.
Moffat has more
than a lap advantage
so the XU1 faces
an impossible task
as the Fords continue
their dominance.
There was only
one persistently quick,
and that was Allan Moffat.
How he muscled
that Falcon around
like he did was unbelievable.
Moffat was enemy number one,
there's no doubt about it.
Ford very much
Allan Moffat, one man.
They had drivers, of course,
but Moffat
was, was really calling
all the shots.
You had the very
mercurial Brock, the younger,
as being this lean, skinny kid
with a silly-looking
goatee beard.
He wasn't the sort of matinee
star that he later became.
And you had the very cerebral,
bespectacled Canadian
Allan Moffat
who could be quite bristly and,
and quite cool.
Basically plotting his way
around the course
you know, with... with
the equivalent of a,
of a slide rule
and a calculator.
I never saw it as a rivalry.
I saw it as... as fellows
that were capable of
actually just doing it
and not trying to be smarter
and never going up
to sideswipe Peter.
At that stage we were so fast
against so many other people
that nobody else saw what
the hell we were doing.
Didn't bother me.
Into Pit Straight
and Moffat sets about
dictating the pattern
of the race.
His concentration inflexible,
Moffat is in no danger of
becoming complacent.
Hardie-Ferodo, General Manager
presents the Victor's
laurel wreath
and outright winner's plaque
to a triumphant Moffat.
Having competed
from that very first race,
I really saw it as my
my life's work, almost.
I wanted to win it
at all efforts
and as many times as possible.
We didn't win,
but from that time on he said,
"I can beat him.
I can stay with him."
No need to remind
you that the road
will be very much
like a pork chop
so we will try to exercise
a little caution.
We now take you
direct to Bathurst
for the official telecast
of the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500.
You've got thirty,
forty cars on the grid
all revving their insides out
and off they go in a pall of
blue smoke and it's on.
Moffat would get into a car
and he would not be fast
straight away.
He had to build up his speed
gradually, gradually, gradually
get his concentration to that
point of fever pitch
whereas Brock would just drive
the wheels off everything
all the time.
In those days,
you know, 500 miles,
there was no relief driver.
You know, you didn't give him
too much to drink
because he'd want to stop
and go to the toilet.
Didn't do that in those days.
There was no drink containers.
If he was lucky,
he got half a mouthful of Coke
at the pit stop, that was it.
I was really charging
hard around the top of the
mountain.
And I've got him
down the bottom,
he's coming around
Mountain Straight now.
And Allan was a very
dedicated, hard driver.
I just wanted to make sure that
as long as I was close enough
I'll go as fast as I can
right up alongside him.
I was attacking Moffat,
and I'd catch Moffat up
over the mountain and he'd blow
me away down Conrod Straight.
I'd catch him up again going up
over the mountain.
And I was quite
conscious of it because it was
running through my
rear-view mirror
every lap,
that's how close he was.
They're pushing
Moffat hard as he escapes
the big bend
and down to the end.
The amount of times
that they go, "Oh, Brocky's
there, he's going too fast."
"He can't keep that sort of
speed up," but he would.
And I was nipping
at Allan Moffat.
I was trying to come up
the inside
and I was really pushing at him.
Brock,
whilst he used superior speed,
was always playing a cat
and mouse game.
Peter and I were always very
like this, do-do-do.
I came through the inside of him
and he just got a little wide.
I could see the whites
of his eyes in the mirror
and he was sort of like,
"Uh-oh."
Moffat's spun. He's off a bend
at Reid Park,
near where Bond went.
As I sort of whistled by.
That puts Brock in
the Holden Torana
into first place.
He finished up
off the road, unharmed
and I was into the lead
and away.
The second-last time,
Peter Brock at the wheel
of a car that on this track,
this day, has recorded
a classic victory.
His driving in that
race was just incredible.
I just dreamt of this thing.
It was just a ballsy but
also very considered drive.
I can remember him
getting out of the car
and he was as fit as he was
at the start of it.
Harry Firth allowed me
to race the car on my own.
Now, that's the last time
that anyone's been allowed
to race at Bathurst solo.
At the end of the day,
when I'd finished up
getting a box of chocolates
I had a totally different
understanding about
what I could do in life.
The peer group
viewed me differently.
The media did, and it just
changed my life.
And it was, "Hang on,
I can now do these things."
People were beginning to think
well, this kid from Eltham,
this Peter Brock,
he'd got real car control,
real skill.
And that really put him
on the map.
He'd earnt his stripes.
He'd done his apprenticeship.
He'd announced he was here.
He drove a skinny
little Torana XU1
to victory in the wet,
a real giant-killing victory
and that was the real beginning
of the Brock legend.
Philip Morris entered the
scene with a bag of money,
in search of a youth market.
Motor racing was glamorous,
it was edgy.
It attracted a young,
hip, cool crowd
and it was bang on their
demographic.
Holden started to see
that this young guy
could contribute to sales
and to the development
of the Holden Motor Company.
Bathurst winner Peter Brock
tests the new Holden Monaro GTS
four-door.
Well, this sort of motor
car is my type of car.
Peter had too much time
on his hands in those days.
Girls were chasing him as much
as he was chasing them.
There was always plenty around.
At one stage he had his
steering wheel in one hand
and his dick in the other.
He also had a very keen
eye. Even on the race track
he'd pull into the pits
on occasions
and tell the mechanics
before he told them
about the tire condition
and the fuel load
that there was a very pretty
girl on the inside of turn four
and could somebody please go
and chat her up for him.
When it started to
interfere with motor racing
I sat him down and had a few
words about it.
Well, Holden basically
sent him to finishing school
and Peter went and did
elocution lessons,
manners and really learnt
how to eyeball people
and to make them feel
comfortable.
He was raw material,
a rough diamond.
But as the years progressed
and he acquired more polish
more and more of the facets of
the diamond became brighter.
But there were also some, some
obvious dark sides as well.
Miss Australia 1973.
Ladies and gentleman,
Michelle Downes.
He won Bathurst at the same time
that I won Miss Australia.
I suppose I've...
I've always been attracted to
the naughty boys a little bit
and there was that naughtiness
in Peter.
I was 21, I'd just come out of
being chaperoned
all over the country.
Peter at the time was 28.
He was quite handsome,
very charming.
You know, we just,
we just clicked.
I don't know, it was, it was
instant and I fell very,
very much in love with him,
absolutely.
From the first night
that we got together
we just really
didn't go apart from that.
At first sight it was, I
guess, a match made in heaven.
He was just very proud of her
and deeply in love and adored
her, worshipped her.
Peter and Michelle
had a TV wedding
which was televised live,
which is pretty incredible.
The publicity machine
was very, very, very active.
We sort of became
the golden couple.
Peter was still very much
an unknown person
unless you were
a racing car fanatic
and then you would've known
who he was.
He enjoyed the attention
and he enjoyed being a public
person, very much.
He started to taste
what fame was like
through my profile.
Around that time,
Peter got a, a manager
who was being most difficult
with General Motors
a concern to Harry, and that
was upsetting everyone.
At race meetings he'd just jump
in the car after the race
leave all his clothes
in the marquee.
Expect us to pick up everything
and take them back to work.
He was married to Miss Australia
and I think he started to
believe he was Mr. Australia.
Peter wanted attention.
The more my profile lifted
the more resentful he became.
When something was happening to
him, like he was at a race
I would be pushed away because
he didn't want anyone
being distracted from him.
It was after we got married
that the violence started.
I had to go and be on television
and be the happy, you know,
weather girl
and all the publicity
and then I had to go home,
not knowing what I was going
to go home to that night
what sort of mood
he was going to be in.
If he'd won a race,
everything was fine.
If he hadn't won a race,
God help us.
Harry couldn't slow Peter down.
There was no radio
communication in those
days and it was just waving arms
and just ges...
Gesticulations and things
but Peter wouldn't slow down
and the motor blew up
six or eight laps
from the finish.
A sad sight
for the Holden Dealer Team
as Car One heads
for the back of the pits.
So Peter Brock is out
of the race.
Harry believed that
Peter didn't obey his orders
and slowed down,
if he had have slowed down,
he wouldn't have detonated
the piston.
Well, I don't think
it would've made any difference
from where we were sitting.
All of a sudden,
he was a car-wrecker.
So he would frustrate
Harry just by doing it the way
he believed was right and Peter
would do it in a way that
Harry wouldn't sort of
find out until later
which... which I think would be
a source of frustration.
Harry was a fantastic
manager, but I don't think
he had the skills
to sort Peter out.
And I think in the end
the falling out was just because
Harry wanted to control things
and he couldn't really
control Brock.
I don't think anyone
could control Brock.
I don't think Brock could
control himself, frankly.
You couldn't do
anything about it in those days
because you know, a husband
was allowed to beat his wife.
There was no such thing
as domestic violence.
I used to call the police
and they'd say
"It's a domestic. We can't have
anything to do with it."
It was almost a shameful thing.
You know, you didn't want
people to know
it was happening to you.
Very painful.
Very, very painful time
of my life.
Clearly, it was
a difficult relationship
and an unhappy marriage.
And the fact that
they were playing it out
in the general public
must've been
incredibly difficult
and incredibly painful.
He was the poster boy for Holden
and suddenly there were
newspaper reports appearing.
Race teams don't like
personal dramas
and there was a lot of personal
drama in... in that situation.
Holden, being part
of General Motors
very buttoned-down culture.
Very, well,
Midwest American values.
And image is everything
for a big company like that.
Perceptions were
not always reality.
Peter was a master, even back
then, of putting up a front
of the mask of what people
wanted to see he could present.
There were basically
two Peter Brocks.
One was, just a bloke who you'd
meet round the place
who was charming, intelligent.
And then there was another one
the personality full of rumor
and innuendo and you were
never quite sure
how to get to the bottom
of all of that.
And I would've thought
that the real Brock
was probably a combination
of both.
With the problems he's
giving General Motors
and Harry,
I think it came to a head.
From Holden's point of view
it was just too difficult
a situation.
Yes, it broke our hearts.
The mechanics bloody near wept.
We just couldn't believe
that we were going to lose
the best driver in Australia
at the time.
So what does he do?
He starts again.
Have a go.
Well, hang on,
privateers don't win Bathurst.
But here you are with
one of the only two full,
you know, professional race
teams in Australia
and you're given the boot.
Pete finds some people who,
who are gonna
have their own team
and I'll race their car and,
and, and we'll get some
sponsorship
and stuff and away we'll go.
And he just looked ahead.
I had a girlfriend
who lived in Melbourne.
I said I'd just met Peter Brock
so she told me of the,
you know, the media exposure
he was getting
and... and the stories
that were circulating and...
that took me aback
because I said,
"Well, that's certainly not
the guy that I've met."
I was seeing one side
of a man I'd just met
and then hearing that
there was this other side.
So I was apprehensive a bit.
He was at the early stage
of his career
and winning hadn't
become part of who he was.
Our real friendship started
when he was going through
turmoil in his marriage.
Peter had, you know,
gone out as a privateer.
Had no money.
When they came to Sydney,
they would stay with us
so they had accommodation,
free meals.
My husband was a mechanic
and, we had a service station.
They'd come and stay
and we would help them out
at the race team.
He drove cars
that weren't all that good.
He didn't have the support
of the factory.
He wasn't the works' driver
anymore.
He was a privateer.
He had to lift this team up
and make it competitive.
Very rarely were mechanics paid.
It was very much a labor of love
so people who were keen
on the scene would come along
and give their all
because they wanted to be part
of something bigger
than themselves.
Be fair to say that
when we got to Bathurst
in 1975
we really had to win
to pay the rent.
Away they go!
And Allan Moffat gets going
more quickly in first gear.
I don't think he's working
the car hard...
Gown and Hindhaugh,
a couple of engine
reconditioning fellows
very much a privateer effort
and we never had very much money
to sink into this project.
You had Rice, Bond, Harvey
Frank Gardner, Moffat.
You had all the big names
of the time.
Peter was at the back
of this 38-car field
and he drove past all of them.
They just said
would I drive with them?
Absolutely.
We never had any discussions,
never any arguments.
Really not even any tactics,
we didn't discuss.
Around the bend and
now Allan Moffat leads the race
and Peter Brock pulls out
and decides
that he might like to
lead for a change
and he goes up
on the outside of Colin.
And look at the distance
between these cars.
It's a real race
and Brock is the one
who wants to get to the lead.
He put it in the position
to win the race.
It was my job to make sure
the car got there.
One particular evening
they were all there.
I was out in the kitchen,
he came out
and sat on the kitchen bench
and opened up and he was quite,
uh, depressed at the time.
He didn't know
where his life was going
and I was a bit of a
motivational sort of person
and encouraged him to,
to believe in himself.
Brock in front now.
The bit that totally shocked me
was his vulnerability, his
insecurity in a personal sense
and I was very fortunate that
I got to see that side of him
because my perception of the man
was very different.
Last lap sign goes up
for the last time round
and the crowd acknowledge
the man
who's going to win this race.
Only a kilometer to go now
as Peter Brock...
You have to feel honored
when somebody
who is that capable
is game to let down the barriers
and be who he really
is with somebody.
You know that you're trusted
and you... you respect that.
I was going through
a not dissimilar situation
in my marriage.
We became good friends.
So he found that
he had somebody he could
lean on
and he could be honest with.
Peter Brock
goes for the last time
down through the Esses.
A moment of absolute triumph.
In his privateer car
Peter Brock just lifted it up
and carried it to
the finish line.
That's it, the
chequered flag for Peter Brock
in the 1975 Hardie-Ferodo
1000 Bathurst.
He managed to win
the grand slam.
Which I'm sure helped Holden
sell quite a few of those cars.
Peter was very big
on vindication
very big on
"I'll show you bastards"
and that was the essence
of being a great competitor.
It reminded Holden Brock
was a very merchandisable
sort of representative
for the Holden product
because it meant he'd won
two Bathursts
and was sort of up on a par
with... with Moffat.
And a few of them down there
were thinking,
"Why isn't he still
with the race team?"
I was beginning
to feel that Bathurst
and I had a very, very special
relationship.
You might ask,
what is the caper?
What's the similarity between
driving a car on the race track
and driving a car on the road?
I remember it
like it was yesterday.
He so desperately
wanted to be famous.
He really wanted to be loved
and acknowledged
and, and, and
so how can we do that?
And I said to Peter
"You know,
I reckon you should be
a spokesperson for road safety
because you're such
a brilliant driver."
Cars and driving. They're part
of the Australian way of life.
I said,
"Maybe you could even get .05"
as a number."
They were looking for somebody
to publicize his involvement
in a road safety campaign
promoting the ".05 drink drive."
You going to be hanging around
for a couple more?
We might as well have
another one.
- No, mate.
- We're all having one.
No, there's no way known you can
actually negotiate the traffic,
the trams and what have you
with a few too many inks in
the head, really, so I'm going.
By the time the .05 had actually
come out onto the car
our marriage was over.
And I watched this man
just get on with this life
like nothing had happened.
The .05 campaign
helped to put Peter back in
good faith with his public after
all the dramas of '74.
I think the magazine
that I was writing for
dubbed him "Super Brock."
And he looked the part
and he could switch from
one persona to the other
depending on where he was
and what he was on about.
You know, it's very important
to have the right attitude
if you drive a car like this.
You've got to blank everything
out of your mind.
No hassles, no dramas.
Hop in a car like this and just
drive it properly the whole way.
It was a natural fit
from a marketing point of view
for a drink-drive campaign
to recruit the best-known
driver in the country.
He was super clean.
I can only speculate
that one and one made two
or in this case .05
for the people
at George Patterson.
His life was so alien to mine
but there was this
just a comfortable
absolute trusting,
amazing friendship,
a bond that was very powerful.
And I guess it wasn't
until he told me
how he really felt about me
that I even allowed myself,
you know, because I was married.
I was brought up to believe that
you make marriage work.
I couldn't see somebody living
a life like he was
to take on a country girl,
with a six-month-old child.
He took me
completely by surprise
and was particularly persuasive.
He said to me, he said,
"This is going to be fantastic."
And I said, "Why is that? I
certainly hope so." And he said
"Well, I'll take care
of all the big things, Bevvo,"
"and you can take care
of the small things"
God bless him.
So I said to him,
"What's the big things?"
and he said, "Well, Bevvo."
He said, "I'll do the driving,
I'll earn the money and
I'll take care of the media."
And I said,
"Just out of curiosity,
what are the small things?"
He said,
"Well, you can look after me,
run the property,
raise the kids."
"I don't like
dealing with lawyers
and I don't like,
you know, bank managers."
"You can take care
of all those things."
And it turned out that way.
We were a good team.
Allan Moffat had
tremendous backing from Ford
with his Moffat Ford
Dealers Team.
Down the straight
they go, car one, car two.
An absolute demonstration
of the trust between Ford here
and the Allan Moffat Dealer Team
a scene we've never seen before.
That was the one that got away.
Peter spun, I think, a couple
of times early on in the race.
And Moffat from
the outside will sweep around
and take the chequered flag
first
for victory in the 1977...
Falcons were just too good.
They won just about
every race they did.
Holden were getting belted
every weekend
because they were putting
all this money in
and Ford were making them
look silly.
No car company
can put up with that.
Bathurst was a very important
part of the marketing.
Holden came calling.
It's pole position
car, Peter Brock, 05...
1978 was the return
of the prodigal son.
After three years away,
they could see that
Peter's popularity
was greater than ever.
Well, he was the perfect man
to front this revival
of Holden's race fortunes.
It was a massive positive stroke
for General Motors.
He was back in the fold.
Bathurst was the highlight
of the year.
It was what everything else
built up to.
If you could beat the mountain,
if you could win there
everything else paled
to insignificance.
You look very relaxed
and confident, Peter.
Oh, it's the outward
appearances, of course.
This is Hardie-Ferodo 1000
and it's a big event.
How much does the race
mean to you?
Oh, it's the event for the year.
Harry Firth was retiring
or Holden was suggesting that
he should retire.
They set up a new team
with John Sheppard at the helm.
So it was very important
for them
to turn their fortunes
around on the track
in order to protect their
fortunes in the showroom.
Standby Australia for the start
of the 1978 Hardie-Ferodo 1000.
I really had to prove myself
but I had to earn my stripes,
I can tell you.
When those red and
white cars were there, man,
you knew that was a serious race
and they really were
just iconic.
Think it was just the era
where I really started
to engage.
It's the Torana,
it's the A9X Torana, like
just basically one of the best
cars ever made on the planet.
It was the classic Marlboro
livery.
It's probably one of
the best-looking race cars
to ever have graced
our race tracks.
Holden was just
immediately back on top
and Brock was the name.
The winner of this
year's Hardie-Ferodo,
for the third time
for Peter Brock.
We had an agreement that
in the build up to Bathurst
and at Bathurst itself
would ever any issue be raised
that would bring him stress
we would take care of
between myself
and the guys in the team
all the stressful issues,
so that he could just focus
on doing what he needed to do.
I had found out I was pregnant
with our first child
but because we had
so much on the plate,
I wasn't going to tell him
because I didn't want to
distract him,
because the agreement was
that we would never shift
anything off the focus
of what needed to be focused on.
The emotional tension,
the demands on your time
physically
it is an absolute frantic,
controlled area of chaos,
uh, with everything building up
to the big day.
He started the race
and led every single lap
of the race.
¶ He was selling postcards
from a paper stand ¶
¶ The whiskey bottle
in his withered hand ¶
¶ Put his finger on a photo from
an old magazine ¶
He dreamt his races in the
weeks before they happened.
He drove his races in his sleep.
I would know where he was
on the circuit
from where he was leaning,
where he was braking.
¶ Shut him up in solitary
third degree ¶
¶ Take a long line ¶
Peter Brock is four laps ahead.
Couple of laps from the end
John Sheppard is talking
to Peter on the radio saying
"Okay, Peter, you've got a very
comfortable lead here."
"So just take it easy
and just get the car"
"across the finish line."
Typical driving style.
Driving around waving
to everybody in the crowd
and call on the radio and say,
"Hey, guys, there's a bird up
here with her tits out."
¶ Take a long line ¶
¶ Reel him in ¶
Things do go wrong.
Look at Allan Moffat.
He was worrying about
whether I'd last
and yet he was the one to fall.
His car had broken down.
I knew he was on that,
doing the TV commentary
and Moffat would be saying
"Peter will hear
every little squeak"
"and rattle
and he'll be going slow now"
"just to make sure he gets
over the hill," you know.
I thought, "I'll show him."
First man ever to
lead the race from go to whoa.
The crowd up there went berserk.
Down the pitch you could
hear them screaming
up at McPhillamy Park.
Here he comes.
Listen to the applause,
the accolades
for a man among when it comes to
race car drivers.
Still tidy.
So I really went
for it and the last lap
uh, I actually
set the lap record
purely just to show
to people that,
"Hey, this car's
running strong."
¶ Take a long line ¶
¶ Take a long line ¶¶
The winner of this
year's Hardie-Ferodo
and now he has four victories in
Australia's greatest race.
He won the race by six laps
and still broke the lap record
on the last lap.
Like, he was just in his own
little world, in the zone.
He was a guy who loved to drive
cars fast and he did it well.
That was,
that was his happy place.
People thought
he was being reckless,
driving that last lap so fast.
To do it in such
a convincing style, you know,
that's... that's no mean feat.
I don't think you can really
top that one.
It just worked beautifully
and it's one of those weekends
which is a race driver's dream.
People say to me what was
the best of his victories
and to me, they all meld
in together because
nothing was ever overlooked
in pursuit of that
ultimate chequered flag
at the end of the race.
When people ask me
what is my most
indelibly imprinted memory
of motor sport
it is, without
any shadow of doubt
the '79 Repco Reliability
Around Australia Trial.
It was the single-most
difficult, challenging
motoring event
you could imagine.
He was in there, boots and all.
Peter Brock and
the Commodore started that race
as underdogs.
In fact, it was him
and George Sheppard
who got Holden to say
we could launch
this new Commodore
to the public market
this would be the perfect venue
to do it.
These roads
aren't meant for cars
but the Holden Commodore
was engineered
to a level of toughness
that had never been seen
on an Australian car before.
It was an epic event,
without a doubt.
It's one of those disciplines
that, you know is
particularly
demanding on drivers
because you don't have, you know
tens or hundreds of laps
to get it right.
You have to get it right
the first time
and the only time you go over
that piece of road.
Driving by the seat of
your pants is something that
PB did exceptionally well.
And the cars were really very,
very standard,
very simple cars and were
you know,
pretty prone to breaking
when they went over some
of the most punishing roads
in the country.
What Peter Brock did with
the Repco Round Australia Rally
must have done a lot
to keep people
interested in buying this car
which was perceived to be
at a size disadvantage
for the Ford Falcon.
I'm just so focused on
doing it purely on adrenaline.
I had the sniff of victory
around about Darwin
and I thought,
"Oh, I can win this."
I'd had half a lap of Australia
to sort of figure it out.
Commodores have
been challenged by Ford
who lie first, fourth and fifth,
separated by Bell and Brock.
Sunday, August 19th
and the three Commodores head
the field with a police escort
for the trip to
the Melbourne Showgrounds.
The cars finished one,
two, three outright.
Fourteen days,
21,000 kilometers.
I was, I was just a skeleton
at the end of that.
He was already skinny
when he left home
to get started.
He was gaunt when he got back.
He was blessed as well.
He had a lot of luck
so, you know, Lady Luck
smiled on him
for a very long period of time.
He, he got away
with a lotta stuff.
That's when the Peter
Perfect era really began.
Peter, does this
win mean more to you
than any other win
in your motorsport career?
Probably similar to first time
at Bathurst.
Because he went and beat
the best rally drivers
in the world
in a one, two, three victory
that nobody ever expected
could happen.
He showed them that he wasn't
just there for the media.
You know, I had to tell him also
that he was going to become
a father.
There were so many layers to
this and what an amazing year.
I had no
comprehension of what it would
mean to step into a life
where you lived
in the limelight,
where you had to deal with media
and all the stresses that
involved in Peter's life.
I think she had a way
of putting things that
maybe did bring him down
to earth a little bit
and make him feel comfortable
with what was going on
around him.
Mum was there
in the pits doing timing.
Mum was there sewing new badges
to dad's uniform.
She was making sure dad ate.
She was feeding everyone else.
I, I don't know how they...
Most people get paid a lot of
money to do what my mum did.
She didn't get anything.
There was no doubt
that Bevvo, as he'd call her,
was the rock and basically
called the shots.
If you weren't on side
with Bevvo
well then you weren't getting
any access to the main man.
I suddenly discovered
that men have ownership
of somebody like Peter.
And so there were a few of them
who weren't happy with me
coming on the scene.
Peter was at the peak
of his powers.
He was the key to the Marlboro
Holden Dealer Team.
The Holden Dealers
were clamoring out
for cars with a bit
of the Brock magic
and maybe the Brock name
on them.
We went to a number of dealers.
I put it to them about
helping out, funding the team,
making it truly a dealer team.
The dealers agreed
to finance the team
on the basis that Peter start
a special vehicles operation
and use his racing knowledge
and experience
to develop some cars
for the road
that would appeal
to the punters.
I began HDT Special Vehicles.
We had the ability
to design with what we want.
A lot of that
was obviously Peter,
what he wanted in the cars
to make that standard road car
and just by altering
some of the componentry
to make it into a faster,
better handling
and more durable car
which is exactly
what it finished as.
It was based on the VC Commodore
using the five-liter engine.
So there was
a different inlet manifold
bigger valve cylinder heads
and a few other things
that were on these cars
that we couldn't race
until these cars
were effectively sold
or at least delivered
to the dealers.
So there was a relatively
short space of time
that we needed to produce
these 500 cars
get them out to the dealers
so that the cylinder heads
could be used
at the next Bathurst.
We had no idea what to do,
really
as far as to build a whole run
of cars all with the same spec.
We were young
and we're just into it
and no one had told us
we didn't know how to do it.
I never had any doubts. I...
You know, we just dived
in the deep end
and or as he said, "You bite
off more than you can chew"
"and you just chew like hell."
So he just did it.
It was just crazy
because no one had done
that sort of thing before
and I think
we hear a lot now
the term disruptive
in marketing or advertising.
Peter was a disruptor years
and years and years
ahead of his time.
His business was formed on
a handshake with General Motors.
It, it was a license
to print money for him.
It was a goldmine.
Every kid,
every middle-aged bloke
with a blood pressure problem
wanted a car like Brocky's.
Everybody was making dough.
The dealers loved it,
Holden loved it
because there was a huge halo
effect from the racing team
and I think Peter made quite
a nice living out of it
and employed quite a few people.
It was as time went on
the dealer input was so strong,
we realized
we had to just keep going.
Well, it was the beginning of
the best period of my life.
Absolutely loved it.
Australian touring car champion
last year's Bathurst winner,
car 05 MHDT Commodore
a time of 221.815, Peter Brock,
and so to the front row
of the grid.
Ford was back in the game
and they had a new star
in Dick Johnson.
He was a pretty good privateer
and he put together
a pretty good car.
No, Dick Johnson's
better than you!
Well, that's
a matter of opinion.
He's got a faster car
than you, I reckon.
Not for long.
The guy that I'm worried
about more than anyone
would be Peter Brock
because, he's...
Well, he's saying
he's worried about you.
Well...
It was virtually the start
of my career, to a point.
And Johnson has got the start
and it's a slow start by
Kevin Bartlett in the Camaro...
We went there with high
hopes of having a good result
and we were sort of
on track for that.
I was second on the grid
to Kevin Bartlett.
Brocky, his car was
really not quick enough
and we were sort of battling
away for the first
uh, ten laps or so.
He was driving the car
extremely hard,
which left me
cruising away out in front.
Dick Johnson, but
he has gone into the fence.
Dick Johnson, the leader,
he's broken
the left-hand front suspension.
You can see by the way
the car is leaning down.
And that changed the whole, uh,
the whole...
I suppose
the way the race ended up.
There was a rock.
It was, it was the size of
at least an overnight bag
and it was right on line.
But one of Peter's comments was
"The rock wasn't that big,
and I just drove around it."
So it was a little...
he was a little bit dismissive
of the whole rock theory.
I know you make your own luck
but, uh, certainly a lot of it
went his way.
When he won the '78, '79, '80
he had actually
achieved the pinnacle
of being the best driver
at Bathurst in Australia.
Brock became
a brand unto himself.
He just carried Holden
along with him.
The car itself became
an advertising billboard
even more so once the camera
went into the car.
Small and light
yet able to withstand
the enormous stresses that
will be fed into the Marlboro
Holden Dealer Team Commodore
of Peter Brock.
2-18 I would think to put him
on pole position.
There's our race cam
inside Brock's car.
Look at those hands
on the wheel.
And I can remember,
you know, sitting at home
when you first had
that in-car vision
of what the driver did
and how they did it
was really special.
This is one of the most
treacherous parts
of the circuit.
Oh, into the dirt on the side.
In-car cameras just took
the whole game to the next level
and Peter had
this beautiful ability
to be able to talk
to the camera to address
the fans at home
to talk to the commentators
as he raced around the track.
But the main thing is to give
your car a very easy time
but as you can see,
you can still go fast.
Now, I brake very late here.
There's a lot of time
to be made up just here.
He was the biggest thing
in Australia
that perhaps there'd ever been.
Sure, he likes
a bit of the worship
that he gets from other people.
- He loves it.
- Hero worship?
Yeah. Very much hero worship.
He's just great. He's beautiful.
I just love him.
I think he's
the most horniest guy around.
I think he's done great things
for motorsport in Australia.
I love him so much. Okay, I just
come here just to see him.
When it's over,
whether they've won
whether they've lost, everybody
likes to let their hair down
and relax, have a few beers
and enjoy themselves.
Now, that is the time
where the girls at motor racing
really go for him.
To get him to bed, to get him
round the corner on his...
they have no particular
qualms about where they get him,
as long as they get him.
Peter Brock had huge charisma.
You know, I saw it
many, many times.
He could turn the amp up to ten
and he was irresistible.
I mean, women swooned.
Men just wanted to be like him.
It'd be fair to say
that as time went along
he started believing
his own publicity.
But he was king of the kids.
You brought Phil in
as a driver for Bathurst
through a period
of incredible success.
Lou and Phil
Peter felt that he needed
to look after them,
create opportunities for them.
No matter what happened
in their life,
no matter what stuff ups
there were
he was always going to be there
for them.
And so he gave them
opportunities constantly
and sometimes they worked,
sometimes they didn't.
There was always a bit of
conflict because we...
you know,
we were three brothers.
It's almost like that stuff
that happened when you were kids
never goes away.
'83, Peter asked me to run
the second car with John
at Bathurst.
It was my first year running
the Holden Dealer Team
of Brocky's.
I was the workshop manager
and Peter's co-the driver.
You know,
everything was going well
until I think it was lap sixteen
and Peter's come down
the Conrod Straight
and the engine failed.
Hello, 05,
Peter Brock is in the pits!
When Pete's car broke down
I knew straight away
that he'd be in our car.
They pulled John in
and put Peter in the car.
I handed the car over
in second place.
It was looking good.
Peter chose to continue
with Larry rather than myself,
and that annoyed me.
Larry was this pushy bugger
who made sure that
he got his way
and he got in the car.
When you take over someone's car
it's no longer their car.
They don't get to hop back in.
Here's Peter Brock
now walking into the pit area.
To break the bad
news to brother Phil.
- Do you think?
- I think so.
It was Peter's team.
He could have stopped that
at any time
and said, "No, no, no,
Pin's gonna drive."
What was the bad decision
was putting Larry in the car.
He was the slowest
of the four of us.
Oh, he's almost
collected Perkins in car 25!
At the last stop,
Peter gets back in the car
and they go and win the race.
Yes, he's done it.
He's put seven on the board,
Peter Brock!
And I had a chance to win
Bathurst and never did.
Peter Brock with
the 1983 James Hardie 1000
at Mount Panorama, Bathurst.
I sometimes feel worse about it
now than I did at the time.
You get judged on, in some
ways, on things like that.
Peter didn't
make that choice lightly
but there were bigger,
wider responsibilities
and he had no choice.
Now Phil
was obviously disappointed,
and everybody would
understand that
but that's motor racing.
If it's your team,
you've put up the money,
you've got everything together
you've prepared the cars,
you take the risk
you take the responsibility,
you make the decisions
and sometimes those decisions
are not easy.
About three weeks later,
I did a very stupid thing.
I...
had a few drinks and then
for some unknown reason,
I drove home
and wrapped myself
around a telephone pole
uh, and
was in a pretty bad way for
oh, a few months.
And kept trying to go back to
work and I couldn't quite do it.
I'd get down and I'd last
about an hour or two and just,
just couldn't handle it so then
I'd just have to go home.
Then it was probably
around about, I don't know
I think it was round about,
uh, January or something,
Uh, Pete came out
to see me one day
and, and sacked me.
And so I decided
to leave Victoria.
I wasn't too happy with him.
You know, you've gotta
understand that Peter
was running the 05
so he was the face
of the road safety campaign.
It was obvious to Peter that he
you know, to have co-drivers
in his team
he had to have people
who were totally focused.
All of those things that
were necessary to be involved
as a face within the team.
I, I couldn't...
I couldn't tell people
he'd sacked me.
You know, it was...
The guy was my idol,
you know, and to...
I could never understand it
and... yeah, anyway.
The Holden Dealer Team
had decided we were going to go
and have a go at Le Mans
so we took the whole crew over
and we rented a Porsche.
Australia had just won
the America's Cup.
We could do anything.
And Brocky, our man
he was gonna show the Europeans
just what he was made of.
But at that stage
the bloke was what, 42?
And in a, in a racing driver's
career, that's getting on a bit
particularly if you haven't
looked after yourself
physically.
I remember taking a pic of Peter
in the back of the pits at
Le Mans, stripped to the waist
sweating, distraught,
gaunt, hollow-eyed.
He'd given everything he had.
There's an old adage
in motor racing, that
to finish first,
first you've gotta finish
and, you know, Larry was
circulating four seconds a lap
faster than Peter
but he crashed.
It was at 2 o'clock
in the morning
that struck the car off through
his own fault and he was, he
was big enough to admit that.
He was over what
anybody could physically take
so he's working in a workshop
where they're building the cars
so there's a lot of fiberglass
dust, there's paint,
we've got a paint shop.
Petrol, he was allergic
to petrol.
Not good for a racing driver.
His skin was giving off
all of this stuff.
He was coughing up.
He was, he was not well,
and he needed that time to
completely detox,
to get his body back in shape.
He needed time away
from everything,
so for a few weeks there
we did nothing else
but look after his health
and wellbeing.
Six months later, he reappeared
and the old Brock
was back in business.
Brock gave away cigarettes,
he gave away the booze
he stopped drinking 74 cups
of tea every day.
He got healthier. He was fitter.
In many ways he was improved
but I think some of this stuff
really played havoc
with his, his mindset.
Driving, to me
is... is a nice escape.
It's a means of getting
out of the office
and once I get behind the wheel
of the car, I am relaxed.
I just get behind the wheel
of that car
and I'm doing I know
what I can do best.
Bev had introduced him
to a chiropractor
who called himself a doctor,
Dr. Eric Dowker,
who not only fixed his body
and put him onto
a healthier lifestyle,
but had introduced
other concepts
in terms of his mental space
that were interesting,
to say the least.
Dr. Dowker was into
crystal technology.
They came to the idea that maybe
with crystals and magnets
they could improve
the performance of motor cars.
He and Eric would sit
and discuss philosophies
and stuff that, you know,
were outside the square,
that other people
had no concept about
and so he had found somebody
he could relate to.
He had a found, firm friendship
with somebody.
One shouldn't speak
ill of the dead.
He was a weird sucker.
Eric was a bit unusual,
but so was Peter
and so am I and, you know,
unfortunately when you put
your head up above the crowd
you're gonna get it pinged off.
I went in expecting to get
an engineering presentation
from a... a couple of
engineering blokes
and... and Brock maybe
a bit of whiteboard action
and... and here we go,
and instead he took me
into the office
and out comes this box.
Ah, the look on my face...
I went in and said, "Mate, look,
I'm... I'm not following
this stuff."
"We'll ring Bevvo."
"The laws of physics will
have to be rewritten."
"We are realigning molecules."
"Instead of being random,
"it's like flying
over the landscape
and instead of seeing random
trees, you see an orchard."
"It makes a shithouse car good."
To explain it in layman's terms
is very difficult
because you're talking about
a pretty complex,
uh, high tech product.
It was a little
plastic box with,
um, some magnets
and stuff in it.
A plastic box
with no wires going in,
no wires coming out
and you fix this box
in a particular place
on the far wall of the car
and miraculously it rearranged
all the molecules in the car.
There were a lot of crystals
in our house. A lot.
I... I mean, I definitely saw
lots of them
and helped make
some of them in the...
We started off making them
in the back shed
at home, in Eltham.
It was a bit of a worry to me.
A... a big worry, in fact.
But I have read,
I've read articles
which have sort of
tried to put together
with a whole lot of innuendo,
the fact that there's
something sinister
that he's master-minding you,
that you're programmed by him,
that you're into the occult.
I mean, you know, I mean...
I said, "Peter...
a... are you serious?"
"You're talking about
this energy
being a form of sexual release."
And he... he blew up and he said,
"Well, if you don't
bloody believe,
you don't bloody believe."
And I said, "Well, mate,
I'll tell it straight."
"That's what you want,
that's good, fine."
Back I went. I wrote the story
absolutely straight.
Caused an absolute sensation
and caused quite a
schism within the team.
One of my people
wouldn't allow me
to insult my eyeballs to read
the rest of the rubbish
that was written.
Well, you're talking
about Phil Scott?
I can hardly comment.
Don't, well it...
Phil's a fairly good journalist
and that's something that...
Well, I thought that particular
write-up was disgraceful
and I've got...
That's the only comment
I'll make on it.
Holden knew nothing
about this stuff,
so they were reading it
for the first time.
The theory was sound.
It's just there was
no real way to measure.
You'd kind of had to take faith
that it was working.
People don't trust
their own feelings anymore.
It's a very strange thing.
We need a scientific,
a needle there pointing at
something
before we believe that
what we feel is true.
Ian Leslie of 60 Minutes
came and did a test.
As he hopped out of the car,
he took out his check book
before even talking to anybody,
wrote out a check
for $20,000,
which I've still got
and he said,
"I want in to the business."
And there was all this
gushy stuff, you know.
"I don't know how it works,
but it works."
And this stuff was running in,
you know, national newspapers
and was later pulled out
and used in some of the ads
for this device.
It was an absolute
disaster scenario.
By the following year,
you know, 1985
we had Dr. Eric prowling the
pits in racing team colors.
Everyone in the
pits following you
going around the circuit.
Do you want to send them a wave?
Yeah... How are you?
Before that, it was a club.
After that, it became a cult.
You either believed
or you didn't.
He got more and more obstinate
and the Director
was the direct result of that.
The background music,
I'll never forget,
was Glen Miller's "In the Mood"
and I thought shit, this is,
this is pretty interesting.
There were various
celebrities there.
Most of the crowd were totally
in the dark
as to the significance
of what was happening.
This was just Peter Brock
launching a new car
so it was a bit of glamour
and a few flash bulbs
and off we went from there.
Brock was
modifying one particular car
putting his name on them,
but not submitting them
to General Motors Engineering
for them to be tested.
So there were all these design,
Australia design rules
that the car didn't meet
and he was gonna sell them
to the public.
And they said, "Well,
what are the specifications
for this new Holden Director?"
And he said, "Don't you
blokes read 'Wheels Magazine?'"
For anybody who knows anything
about the regulatory environment
around motor cars
that's just crazy stuff.
It was probably one of
the worst times of my life.
Holdens are trying to stop me
and I'm pretty determined
sort of person
and I'm pressing on.
They said to me
"If you, Peter Brock,
"announce this car
at the end of this week
we'll withdraw
all support for you."
Well, I've gone ahead,
and I've announced it.
Now I look at that
and just think
how the fuck could you do that?
I don't know
what more I can say.
I mean, you just
had to live with it
and do your best
and watch the place crumble
which is what happened.
So to the critics
and those within the industry
that say that
HDT is going down the gurgler,
what do you say to them?
I'd say you critics out there
would not have a clue.
We are a top company.
We are,
I've got a fantastic product.
We are profitable
and despite all these people
who would love to see us
go down the gurgler
we ain't about to do it.
His ridiculous naive optimism
in just believing
something was gonna work,
so therefore it would work.
That was what I found probably
the most frustrating.
Holden managed to
completely block up
any supply of cars to us.
Like if a Holden dealer
sold us a car
they were threatened with
the loss of their franchise.
It was a really testing time
and... and for Peter
it was sort of like
the giant slaying the underdog.
Excuse me?
It's like cutting off
your... your right arm.
Holden were making very good
money out of this business.
So was Peter.
They had millions upon millions
invested in this,
this charismatic racing star.
His identity and Holden
were... were fused at the hip.
To publicly divorce him...
was a... a commercially
very damaging decision
for those guys.
Brock was truly spontaneous
and he remained so
throughout his life
and often that spontaneity
combined with a kind of
larrikin lunatic streak
was his undoing.
There is obviously
orchestrated move
by Holden
to crush this business.
It all became a very stubborn
unfortunate dissolution
of the business.
At that stage
he didn't want me around anyway
because I didn't believe
in the Polarizer.
It was an uncomfortable
place to work
and I didn't want to be there.
It was just a sad, sad thing to
happen
to a great, great business,
a great man that had everything
going for him in life.
No more cars, no more business.
Not even parts for the race car.
He was starting from
ground zero again.
Peter Brock is a legend,
a motoring legend
of Australian motorsport.
Mobil did the consumer survey.
The Peter Brock brand
was still very strong.
Australia likes an underdog,
loves the battler
and Mobil made a
pretty savvy decision
to keep backing the guy.
It was early to mid-1987
when I got a phone call.
Peter and Bev asked me if
I would be willing to come back
and run the team.
Didn't take me long
to think about it really.
Peter was still Peter.
He threw it out there to me
as a challenge.
"You know what's gone on.
This is where it's at."
"Ah, it's not gonna
be an easy road."
I think we've probably
got a better team
than we've had for a long time,
we're extremely determined
and it's almost like "Hey,
Brock, you might've won it
eight times before, but this
time's the most important."
And that's the way
I thought about it.
We were going very much
as underdogs.
We were up against Ford Sierras
which had just
come on the scene.
We were up against
Dick Johnson's Sierras
and also a fella from Europe
called Rudy Eggenberger
had brought his Sierras
out to race at Bathurst.
Some of the journos
just absolutely
bagged the hell out of the team
and Peter basically
saying the team were
a bunch of rabble
not going anywhere.
On the way to the track
that morning on the bus
I held that newspaper up to
the boys and said
"Here, this is the shit
they're talking about us.
"Let's prove them wrong."
"Let's give it a red-hot go."
Bryce, Perkins and Brock
making one heck of a charge
up the mountain
but the Sierras have been
substantially quicker all week
coming down Conrod Straight
towards the new Caltex Chase.
Peter's car failed.
We transferred him across
onto the second car.
And Brock says, "I'm ready."
05 car is out,
the number 10 car is running.
Our guys would have friends
in surrounding townships
who they would be ringing up to
find out, "Is the rain coming?"
Yep, it's actually
hailing here at present.
It's freezing cold.
As soon as the rain came
I knew,
I knew what he was gonna do.
We were talking to
Peter on the radio
and Peter said, "Look,
let's just stay on the slicks."
James Hardie
1987, look at Brock.
Oh, would he
regret putting slicks on?
Yeah, I think
he's made a slight misjudgment
there because the track is still
very greasy,
very slippery on line.
He does have a
very desperate driver.
I think he can get himself
into great problems
if he doesn't watch it.
Peter had faith
that the track was gonna dry.
If he came in
to go onto wet weather tires
he was gonna waste
time on the track.
And he is gassing
in the Commodore,
he's got slick tires on.
He's in third position.
The drama continues...
The last 25 laps of that race...
well, I'm sure he was having
an out-of-body experience
because it was wet,
it was slippery.
It was a masterclass in car
control and concentration.
That really was
dancing on the edge of the
razorblade
lap after lap after lap.
It was an inspired piece
of work and an emphatic,
"Up yours. I'm still the man."
Brock just trying
very, very carefully
to stay on the only dry line.
Look how narrow it is.
He could do things at times
in a car that you can't fathom.
No matter how you drive around
that mountain
with slicks on in the wet
with one arm on the bloody
window sill is just...
You can't do it, but he did.
He was just pumped.
There was adrenaline oozing out
the back doors.
And just listen to the race fans
showing their favor to Brocky
as he goes over the hill.
We finished first
Commodore home.
We finished in third place,
behind Rudy Eggenberger's
two Ford Sierras.
We were in raptures. That's
what we went there to achieve.
We've done our job.
But you asked for
the man, you asked for him.
It's Peter Brock!
I gave it absolute heaps,
particularly in the wet there
in the finish.
And I thoroughly enjoyed myself,
I might add
and, uh, thanks for all your
support out there too.
I loved the way
you were cheering me on.
Just chanced on a
story a moment ago
about possible illegal fuel
in both the Texaco Sierras.
We were in
the pit beside Rudy Eggenberger
and watching sort of,
over the fence
while the race was going on.
I could see them mixing fuel,
which was illegal.
Back then there was a
young racing driver
getting around those days
by the name of Craig Lowndes.
Well, his dad Frank
was the head scrutineer
back in those days.
So I called Frank over, I said
"Oh, just stand here
and have a chat to me
for a while, Frank,
and watch a few things."
So sure enough,
it was proven that they were
mixing alcohol in their fuel.
So I can't even remember how
long later it was,
but we were all back in
Melbourne
and Brock called me up to
the office one day, said
"Oh, guess what?" "What's that?"
"We've won Bathurst." "Huh?"
Said, "Yeah, Eggenberger cars
have been rubbed out."
"We're the winner."
Well, shit, we'd better
have another party.
As he said at the time,
"Yes, that was a bit of
a vindication."
True motorsport fans
understood the impossibility
of the record
that he had built at Bathurst.
He could do no wrong. He was
the messiah of motorsport.
Brock was the number one
and he had been for two decades.
The fact that he no longer had
the equipment under him
to continue at his peak
didn't make any difference to
the people that loved Brock
and loved what he had done
before.
Didn't diminish
what he'd achieved.
Didn't diminish his record.
He's an iconic
Australian sports hero.
The Holden Race Team had
not been showing great success
and by getting Peter back
in the team meant that
not only did he come armed
with his sponsors,
who were extremely loyal to him
but he also came armed with
enormous media support
and a huge fan base.
The reason why
Mobil is the number one team!
Driving a Holden is something
I know a fair bit about.
I've spent 18 years
here with Holden
and getting back
into it of course is,
uh, old home week.
Complex,
like all families, rough times
but when the trouble's happened
you get back together.
You go from that phase of being
a person you looked up to
growing up
to then, you know,
rubbing shoulders
and he now being your mentor
inside of the car.
The young guns
were coming through
and understandably Peter was
not a young gun anymore.
But the way it was handled
was less than ideal
and he'd walk down the pits
in the race meeting
and the bonnets would be closed
and that was insulting.
Cars were being produced with
Peter's signature on it
that he knew nothing about.
He wasn't allowed to
go into the workshop.
He wasn't allowed to
talk to the mechanics
because they were putting
the latest developments
on the young blood's car
and phasing Peter out
so Peter's car wasn't
as competitive.
You've looked at
one perspective.
Well, the fans were treated
to something
there for an hour or two,
you know.
And, uh, but to come back
from here
will be pretty well
impossible, I guess.
I said to him, "Is this really
"what you want to be doing?"
"Are you prepared
"to put yourself
through this pain,
through this embarrassment?"
So on the way home we talk about
"Okay, if you announce that at
the end of the season
"you'd retire, this is gonna
give you the opportunity
"to go to every race track
around Australia
"say your goodbyes,
sign all your autographs
and go out the way
you wanted to."
This year, of course,
is a very special time.
It's, uh, one when you, uh,
decide to change
the direction of your life,
uh, you figure that it's really
only going to affect yourself
and perhaps your family
around you and a few,
you know, a few close
friends but, uh, well...
And it was the most
amazing, emotional year.
There would be grown men coming
in tears, wanting to hug him.
"What, what are we gonna do,
Brocky?"
"We're not gonna
have you here anymore."
The respect that he
had from everyone.
Doesn't matter whether
you're a Ford or Holden,
it was just a huge legacy.
To be able to do it
and just shut that door
would be quite incredibly hard.
He never really retired.
And the techniques
certainly have longevity.
But the physicality
and the mental acuity
they have a finite life.
He just didn't look like
the old Peter.
I could see a massive
change in... in him
and how he was and... and his
attitude and his...
Yeah, he definitely... definitely
didn't seem to be
the confident person that he was
earlier in... in his life.
What the public didn't
see was this man
who fell into this amazing hole.
His love of the sport
and his time to reflect on it
wasn't a positive thing.
I don't think he had the...
whimsical, child, wide-eyed glow
that he used to
always have to it
when he had his own team
and they could do
what they kind of wanted.
I genuinely felt that,
I was simply a commodity
and that I was not able to
make my own decisions, so...
Because he felt
he'd been controlled
and manipulated
by so many people
he needed to discover
his own strengths
and he made me promise
that I would no longer
solve his problems for him
or help him solve his problems,
that he needed to do that
himself.
He'd ring home and go, "Oh, I'm
gonna be home in 15 minutes."
"Can you tell mum I need lunch?"
I'm like,
"You can make your own lunch."
Can I just heat that up and have
that as a bit of backup?
I'd say you press that
for ignition.
You know,
this is an amazing person,
but he didn't have
a normal life.
Like he never went shopping.
There were basic skills in life
that he had missed out on
because he was in such demand
and worked so hard.
- Dee.
- Oh, hello.
Dee.
Look!
Hello.
He was turning 60.
He didn't wanna turn 60.
He didn't want anybody to
recognize it, and I said
"You're gonna have
to recognize it."
So we had probably 60-80
odd people at home that night.
It came to speech time
and his uncle
and another close friend
got up and spoke
and in their speech
about Peter
and how amazing he was
and here he is turning 60
and he, you know,
he's got all this potential
they both made it very clear
that he would not have had
the life that he'd had,
had I not been by his side
and been there for him.
And I'm sitting there thinking
"Please don't say this
because right now
he doesn't need
to hear that he's got where
he is because I've been there."
"He needs to hear that
he's achieved these things
on his own."
So when he gave his response,
I was devastated.
Nobody else picked it,
but I thought
"This is a... a farewell
speech to me."
I met Bev at basketball.
We both ended up playing
on the same team together.
It kind seemed like we
were both like-minded
and so we started spending
a bit of time together
and that's actually how
I got to meet Peter.
I guess it would be fair
to say that, um,
Julie's concept of friendship
was very different to mine
and on several occasions,
I suggested that maybe
she stop coming to our place.
He said that he just needed
to find himself,
he needed to live his own life
and make his own choices.
My biggest failing was, uh,
I guess over the years saying,
"Oh, I'm doing fine"
but are you really looking
at yourself honestly?
One morning Peter Brock
arrived at my house
and announced
that he was in love with me
and he wanted me to
come and live with him.
That was actually a shock to me.
You know,
my values in life were,
you don't go down that avenue.
You don't take those chances.
Peter said, "You know, Julie,
sometimes you need to
take risks in life."
The reality was that Peter
always needed to be loved,
needed to be valued,
needed to be appreciated
and could not be on his own.
I would think that, uh,
I've got a lot to offer
the world around me
and that the best parts
of my life
are now beginning to unfold.
Well, the day started off.
We did what we did every day.
We just went out
and did the first stage.
It was pretty twisty and bumpy
damp country roads,
north of Perth
and in the first stage
I... I remember
that wasn't the sort of terrain
that suited the car we're in
but we managed to do
the second-quickest time.
You know, the fact that we
finished second in the first leg
I mean, his wits were about him.
There was no, you know,
I didn't feel that he was,
you know,
slow or, you know, tired.
I mean, he was just
on the top of his game.
And I still don't know
why that corner, um,
didn't... didn't go right.
It was just a... a set
of circumstances
that even Peter couldn't
drive round.
The 61-year-old
lost control of his car
while navigating a bend...
The tree hit him in
absolutely millimeter
worst spot.
I think
it might have been the chaplain
that came up and said,
"Oh, there's been an off-road."
And I went, "Oh, yeah."
So I thought that means
someone skids off the road.
And he said, "Oh, it was Peter."
And I said, "Right. So..."
And they said,
"Sadly, he's passed away."
Well, I was standing up
and my body just let go.
"I want to go and see him."
I said, "I have to go."
I pick up the phone and there's
a woman on the other end
said, "There's been
an accident."
And as any parent does,
you instantly think
which of my children?
And she said, "It's not your
children. It's Peter."
and I said, "What do you mean?"
and she said,
"There's an event."
"What event?"
And she just said,
"He hasn't made it"
and she hung up.
I don't know who it was.
I... I don't suppose
I'll ever know.
I look outside, there's a
helicopter in the paddock.
I look down the drive,
there's cars.
Media coming up,
cameras whirring.
I haven't told the kids.
So I had to, you know,
suck it in and go outside
to deal with the media.
I was actually
doing an interview,
then the phone started
going off and he's like
"Sorry, I've just gotta
answer this"
and then he... he answered
the phone
and I was sitting like
just across my desk from him.
Ah, I just saw this look
on his face
and he just went white.
And, uh, because he had just
realized
that he had to tell me.
Trying to drive home
in peak hour traffic
with the radio on
listening to everyone going
you know,
"Put your lights on for Brocky"
and realizing that
the whole world had known
for a lot longer than me
that my dad had died.
I'm simply devastated
that the plans
that we had
for our future together
have ended prematurely.
I have full realization
that I shared a short part
of Peter's life.
He was such a unique
and wonderful man,
who I loved and adored.
All the pain that had happened
with mum and dad's split
was pointless.
It didn't mean anything now
and...
just sort of left this,
wasn't even a hole, it was like
a gaping wound in our lives.
I...
I miss him though.
He affected people
in... in such an amazing way.
Every single story
that I've heard
was about Peter Brock
the person,
not Peter Brock the race driver.
Motor racing just
happened to be the vehicle
that he used
to get his message across.
That's what we miss so much.
The tentacles are far reaching
and they still exist
to this day.
Every book that can be written,
every interview that can be made
everything that can be said
has finally been taken
into consideration
and hopefully the man is seen
and remembered for what he was,
an incredible, amazing
incredible individual
who deserves to be recognized
as somebody fantastic.
And as I said to my kids when
they've heard negative stuff
"Guys, your father was
95 percent perfect, amazing,
"five percent human and fallible
but didn't have a bad bone
in his body."