11 replies to this topic

[island]

Hi!
Burke was Warwick Brown`s longtime F5000
entrant. Also his mentor/sponsor? Did he
leave racing when Brown moved on to VDS?
Glen Abbey was KB`s "ace mechanic", I have
read. Did you know him, Ray? Did he also
work for other F5000 drivers?

[Ray Bell]

Now you ask something where I can put some meat into the answer.
Pat Burke was Warwick's neighbour. He owned a Lotus Elan, and they got around together. Then they decided that going racing would be fun... I think it turned out that Warwick was faster, so Pat took the back seat and they got into an 1100cc Brabham. It all grew from there.
Pat was quite wealthy, I don't know from what source. Warwick came from a family with some money, too. His father died when he was young and left him a construction business.
Pat did stay around after, but more distantly and he didn't sponsor anyone else. He kicked in a little, I think, when VDS raced in Australia. I'm not altogether sure of that, though.
Glenn Abbey was Alec Mildren's mechanic and long time employee/friend. When KB raced for Mildren they became close, naturally, but the only F5000 I know of Glenn touching was the Mildren lump. He may have subbed briefly with someone else, perhaps Max Stewart would have been the most likely as he was also on the Mildren team. Come to think of it, I think he did do some time with Max.

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Barry Lake]

In 1969-1970 I worked as a mechanic at Geoghegan's. We serviced Lotus Elans, Sevens. Super Sevens, Datsun 2000 Sports, and BMWs, plus their used sports cars, and we assembled new Lotus Europas from imported kits.
Warwick Brown used to bring in that Lotus Elan and would stand around telling us about how he was going to become a racing driver.
"Rich wanker", we would all say after he had left...
Next thing I knew I was interviewing him as a top driver for stories I was writing for motor sport publications.
I occasionally bump into him these days, usually at the Gold Coast Indy Car GP. He always loved flying and has for some years now been making a good living as a charter pilot with his own aircraft.
All of this reminds me of someone on another thread criticising Warwick's efforts in his one-off drive with Williams in F1.
I think that is extremely unfair. A one-off drive in anything is almost always a disaster - for any number of reasons. There are just so many things that can be wrong.
Make no mistake about it, Warwick Brown was very quick and very brave - even after that huge crash at Surfers Paradise.
That would have been one of the most horrific crashes in motor racing history - both the crash itself and the injuries Warwick received to his legs. He came close to dying that night, in the same way so many other drivers have died from blood clot problems with massive leg injuries.

[island]

Barry,
did Warwick retire after the 1979 Rothmans
Series? There is a story in the 1979/80
Aus MR Yb that his performance was not on
a par with his dominant 1978 form. For
example, he crashed at Sandown without
apparent reason. Maybe Count van der Straten
did not like it...He hired Geoff Lees for
the 1979 Can-Am Challenge.

[Ray Bell]

Barry - interesting that you should mention the 'rich wanker' thought. That was exactly what the nurses thought at Surfers that night... or more correctly 'spoiled brat.' He was insisting there was something wrong, they were saying he was just spoiled..
The problem was fatty embolisms - bone marrow and stuff in the blood stream.
Same thing happened to Tomlinson in 1940.
island - I think perhaps Warwick had thoughts of home and business crowding him...

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Barry Lake]

Ray is the man to ask on those things. He seems to have it at the top of his memory bank. I have to go and read the books and magazines again to jog my memory and I don't have the time. I always have to be reading things relevant to what I have to write next.
So many technical stories, so much research...

[Barry Lake]

There's that Ray again, sitting up late at night punching in an answer before I can come up with one!
This fatty embolism thing is apparently common with this type of injury and, as I said, has been the actual cause of death of a number of drivers - Ronnie Peterson included, if my memory serves me correctly.

[Ray Bell]

Were you there the day I went out to Haberfield and had a test drive of a Europa... Pete patting me on the head as I climb aboard and saying 'don't b.b.b.end it!'
A yellow one, it was, and I didn't really like the all-four-wheels-sliding-at-once feeling through the curves in that road along the bay there... what's it called? Henley Marine Drive...

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[island]

Warwick`s 1974/1975 Lola T332 is currently
for sale in the US. 65000 dollars and you
own F5000`s most successful design complete
with "Berrymans Products, Molloy and BP"
stickers...

[island]

Ray,
why was the 1971 Mildren F5000 a "lump"?

[Ray Bell]

Probably because it was an orphan that was always going to be hard to sort out. It was, like the earlier 'yellow submarine' monocoque Mildren Alfa, a Len Bailey design (hope that was the right name). Without the backing of a factory like Lola doing development, anything like that would need a pack of genii behind it to do well... IMO.
One thing it did obviously have right came to light when Bartlett spun on the Causeway at the Farm. While rotating between the fences, he plucked reverse gear and shot off the Causeway backwards before doing a front end throw and continuing on his way... the thing could actually be put into reverse gear!

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Ray Bell]

KB has just added a little to my knowledge on the Mildren F5000...

"At Surfers the diff broke and with drive to one wheel only it tried to drive me into the fence. It had me a bit spooked after that," he said.