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Man 1: Cars to watch Brock, on your right.
Morris alongside, Moffat on the far left.
Man 2: As more than a hundred drivers suffering
from pre-race tension listen carefully
to last minute regs and instructions.
Man 3: How much does the race mean to you?
Man 4: Oh, it's the event for the year and you get
tremendous disappointment if you lose it.
Man on PA: Lady and gentlemen, start your engines.
[engine revving]
Commentator: There's Brock, preparing to
race like the devil.
This is it, the great race.
Man on PA: But now, the one minute siren has gone
and all is ready for a start
with two Falcons and a Holden on pole position.
Commentator: The man who wants to win here
probably more than anyone else, Peter Brock.
Commentator: Thirty second warning's about to go up.
Man on PA: Sixty-two of Australia's finest drivers.
Commentator: It's a mad scramble.
Commentator: Literally the balloon's gone up.
Commentator: Start of the James Hardie 1000.
Engines are throbbing.
You can feel the crowd vibrating with emotion.
Man on PA: All set. Get ready.
Peter: 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.
Bev: This change would come over him
and his eyes would go black and nothing else counted.
Man 5: He was part of that car.
[instrumental music]
Peter: 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.
Man 6: Behind the wheel,
he seemed to be almost bulletproof.
Man 7: He had an amazing ability to feel the car,
to read the car, to understand the car.
The noise, the sounds, the feel.
Man 8: 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.
Man 9: He trusted everybody,
and there were people who weren't worthy of his trust.
Orchestrated move by Holden to crash this business.
James: He did an amazing job of inspiring lots of people.
Commentator: For all the Brock fans waiting for Peter Perfect
to come across the line.
Commentator: You asked for the man.
You asked for him. It's Peter Brock!
Phil: He could turn it on. Women swooned.
Men just wanted to be like him.
Bev: Peter needed to be respected, needed to be loved.
Man 10: The rise and fall and rise and fall
of Peter Brock.
Man 11: He could do no wrong.
He was the messiah of motorsport.
[music continues]
[engine revving]
Alexandra: 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.
Bev: 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.
John: 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.
Lewis: Fame has a price to pay
and the price you pay will depend on
how you view it and how you use that gift.
[instrumental music]
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.
Phil: 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.
Peter: 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.
Lewis: It's got no brakes.
Phil: 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.
James: 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.
Phil: 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.
John: In the 1950s, when Brock was growing up
Holden, Australia's own car,
put families on wheels.
Phil: 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."
Garry: 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.
Lewis: 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.
John: 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.
Jane: 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.
Lewis: 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.
[engine revving]
[tire screeching]
[instrumental music]
Peter: 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.
Lewis: 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.
Bill: 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.
Phil: 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?"
Man 12: 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.
Lewis: And he raced that for about two years
and won 102 races from about 65 race meetings,
which was an extraordinary number.
Garry: 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.
Commentator: In Rome, it was the Colosseum.
In Australia, it's Bathurst and a mountain circuit,
site of this country's greatest road race.
Ian: 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.
Commentator: Moffat powers up Mountain Straight already.
Phil: 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.
Tim: 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.
Phil: It was color, it was spectacle.
It was all of the things that a lot of that younger demographic
quite liked to see.
Man 13: It was just an incredible scene up there.
People would go there and set up these mobile townships.
Man 14: 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.
Phil: It was the glamour, the speed,
the excitement, the danger.
It was the whole lifestyle.
Lewis: People coming from all over Australia
to watch this race.
Phil: It was like a religion.
Commentator: Leo Geoghegan and Doug Whiteford
brush with spectacular results.
Phil: There were crashes, there was dust, there was drama.
Lewis: And back then,
there were no concrete retaining walls.
[crashing]
Greg: 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.
Brian: You went faster at Bathurst than anywhere else.
Certainly nowhere as safe as circuits are today.
But it was a thrill.
Commentator: ...Geoghegan attempts a miracle
and it appears Harry Firth believes in them too,
as he orders more speed.
Lewis: 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.
Harry: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Peter: 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.
Man 14: Harry picked Des West to partner Peter
so he could learn from an older guy.
Phil: 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."
Commentator: 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.
Man 15: To get the car through Bathurst for 500 miles
took an art and Harry knew how to do that.
Harry: 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."
Peter: I listened very carefully to everything
Harry told me to do. You know, he'd say, "Look..."
Harry: 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.
Peter: If he said don't use the brakes,
I didn't use the brakes.
Harry: The brakes are only there to get you
set up for the corner.
Craig: 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.
Harry: 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.
Peter: 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.
Phil: He figured if you could learn to drive without brakes
and go fast, it was going to be a pretty good technique.
Peter: 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.
Man on PA: The Monaro's main runner, the Holden Torana GTR,
gets you won and the story's the same.
Man 16: 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.
Commentator: Moffat has more than a lap advantage
so the XU1 faces an impossible task
as the Fords continue their dominance.
Man 17: 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.
Man 18: Ford very much Allan Moffat, one man.
They had drivers, of course, but Moffat
was, was really calling all the shots.
Phil: 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.
[laughing]
Commentator: 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.
Allan: 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.
Man 19: We didn't win, but from that time on he said,
"I can beat him. I can stay with him."
Man on PA: 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.
Commentator: We now take you direct to Bathurst
for the official telecast of the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500.
Man 20: 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.
John: 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.
Peter: I was really charging
hard around the top of the mountain.
Man 21: And I've got him down the bottom,
he's coming around Mountain Straight now.
Man 22: And Allan was a very dedicated, hard driver.
Allan: 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.
Peter: 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.
Allan: And I was quite conscious of it because it was
running through my rear-view mirror
every lap, that's how close he was.
Man on PA: They're pushing Moffat hard as he escapes
the big bend and down to the end.
Man 23: 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.
Peter: And I was nipping at Allan Moffat.
I was trying to come up the inside
and I was really pushing at him.
Man 24: 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.
Peter: 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."
Man on PA: Moffat's spun. He's off a bend
at Reid Park, near where Bond went.
Peter: As I sort of whistled by.
Man on PA: That puts Brock in the Holden Torana
into first place.
Peter: He finished up off the road, unharmed
and I was into the lead and away.
Man on PA: The second-last time,
Peter Brock at the wheel of a car that on this track,
this day, has recorded a classic victory.
Man 25: His driving in that race was just incredible.
Peter: I just dreamt of this thing.
Phil: It was just a ballsy but also very considered drive.
Man 26: I can remember him getting out of the car
and he was as fit as he was at the start of it.
Peter: 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.
Peter: 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."
Man 27: People were beginning to think
well, this kid from Eltham, this Peter Brock,
he'd got real car control, real skill.
Man 28: And that really put him on the map.
He'd earnt his stripes. He'd done his apprenticeship.
Phil: He'd announced he was here.
Man 29: 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.
[engine revving]
Phil: 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.
Lewis: Holden started to see that this young guy
could contribute to sales and to the development
of the Holden Motor Company.
Man on TV: Bathurst winner Peter Brock
tests the new Holden Monaro GTS four-door.
Peter: Well, this sort of motor car is my type of car.
Phil: 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.
Harry: At one stage he had his steering wheel in one hand
and his dick in the other.
Phil: 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.
Harry: When it started to interfere with motor racing
I sat him down and had a few words about it.
Phil: 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.
Man on PA: Miss Australia 1973.
Ladies and gentleman, Michelle Downes.
Michelle: 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.
Lewis: 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.
Michelle: 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.
Ian: 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.
Man 30: 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.
Man on PA: 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.
Man 31: 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.
Phil: 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.
Garry: 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.
Michelle: 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.
David: 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.
Phil: Holden, being part of General Motors
very buttoned-down culture.
Very, well,
Midwest American values.
Lewis: And image is everything for a big company like that.
Bev: 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.
Tim: 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.
Man 32: 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.
[instrumental music]
Ian: 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.
Bev: 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.
Lewis: 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.
Bev: 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.
Peter: Be fair to say that when we got to Bathurst
in 1975
we really had to win to pay the rent.
Man on PA: Away they go!
And Allan Moffat gets going more quickly in first gear.
I don't think he's working the car hard...
Peter: 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.
John: 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.
Brian: 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.
Man on PA: 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.
Bev: 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.
Man on PA: Brock in front now.
Bev: 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.
Man on PA: 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...
Bev: 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.
Man on PA: Peter Brock goes for the last time
down through the Esses.
A moment of absolute triumph.
Lewis: In his privateer car
Peter Brock just lifted it up
and carried it to the finish line.
Man on PA: That's it, the chequered flag for Peter Brock
in the 1975 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 Bathurst.
Lewis: He managed to win the grand slam.
Phil: Which I'm sure helped Holden
sell quite a few of those cars.
James: Peter was very big on vindication
very big on "I'll show you bastards"
and that was the essence of being a great competitor.
Phil: 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?"
Peter: 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?
Michelle: 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.
Michelle: I said, "Maybe you could even get .05"
as a number."
Tim: 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.
David: 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."
Tim: 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.
Phil: 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.
Bev: 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.
Lewis: Allan Moffat had tremendous backing from Ford
with his Moffat Ford Dealers Team.
Commentator: 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.
Phil: That was the one that got away.
Peter spun, I think, a couple of times early on in the race.
Commentator: And Moffat from the outside will sweep around
and take the chequered flag first
for victory in the 1977...
Lewis: 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.
Commentator: It's pole position car, Peter Brock, 05--
Lewis: 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.
Man 33: It was a massive positive stroke
for General Motors. He was back in the fold.
Bev: 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.
Lewis: 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.
Commentator: Standby Australia for the start
of the 1978 Hardie-Ferodo 1000.
Peter: I really had to prove myself
but I had to earn my stripes, I can tell you.
Man 34: When those red and white cars were there, man,
you knew that was a serious race
and they really were just iconic.
James: 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.
Lewis: Holden was just immediately back on top
and Brock was the name.
Man on PA: The winner of this year's Hardie-Ferodo,
for the third time for Peter Brock.
Bev: 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.
[upbeat music]
John: 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 ¶
Bev: 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 ¶
Commentator: Peter Brock is four laps ahead.
Graeme: 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 ¶
Peter: Things do go wrong. Look at Allan Moffat.
He was worrying about whether I'd last
and yet he was the one to fall.
Phil: 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."
Commentator: First man ever to lead the race from go to whoa.
Lewis: The crowd up there went berserk.
Down the pitch you could hear them screaming
up at McPhillamy Park.
Commentator: Here he comes.
Listen to the applause, the accolades
for a man among when it comes to race car drivers.
Still tidy.
Peter: 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 ¶¶
Commentator: The winner of this year's Hardie-Ferodo
and now he has four victories in Australia's greatest race.
Craig: 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.
Graeme: People thought he was being reckless,
driving that last lap so fast.
James: 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.
Peter: It just worked beautifully
and it's one of those weekends which is a race driver's dream.
Bev: 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.
[upbeat music]
Peter: 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.
Bev: He was in there, boots and all.
Man 35: Peter Brock and the Commodore started that race
as underdogs.
Bev: 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.
Phil: 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.
James: 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.
Phil: 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.
Peter: 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.
Commentator: 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.
Peter: The cars finished one, two, three outright.
Fourteen days, 21,000 kilometers.
I was, I was just a skeleton at the end of that.
Bev: He was already skinny when he left home
to get started. He was gaunt when he got back.
James: 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.
Phil: That's when the Peter Perfect era really began.
Interviewer: Peter, does this win mean more to you
than any other win in your motorsport career?
Probably similar to first time at Bathurst.
Bev: 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.
James: 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.
Alexandra: 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.
Phil: 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.
Lewis: Peter was at the peak of his powers.
He was the key to the Marlboro Holden Dealer Team.
Man 36: The Holden Dealers were clamoring out
for cars with a bit of the Brock magic
and maybe the Brock name on them.
Peter: We went to a number of dealers.
I put it to them about helping out, funding the team,
making it truly a dealer team.
Man 37: 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.
Peter: I began HDT Special Vehicles.
Phil: 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.
Man 38: It was based on the VC Commodore
using the five-liter engine.
Craig: 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.
Peter: 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.
Phil: 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.
Phil: 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.
Commentator: 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.
Phil: 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.
Boy: No, Dick Johnson's better than you!
Peter: Well, that's a matter of opinion.
Boy: He's got a faster car than you, I reckon.
Not for long.
Dick: The guy that I'm worried about more than anyone
would be Peter Brock because, he's...
Interviewer: Well, he's saying he's worried about you.
Well...
It was virtually the start
of my career, to a point.
Commentator: And Johnson has got the start
and it's a slow start by Kevin Bartlett in the Camaro...
Dick: 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.
Commentator: 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.
Craig: 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.
Dick: I know you make your own luck
but, uh, certainly a lot of it went his way.
Lewis: When he won the '78, '79, '80
he had actually achieved the pinnacle
of being the best driver at Bathurst in Australia.
Garry: 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.
Reporter: 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.
Greg: He was the biggest thing in Australia
that perhaps there'd ever been.
Bev: Sure, he likes a bit of the worship
that he gets from other people.
- He loves it. - Hero worship?
Bev: 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.
Phil: 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.
Phil: It'd be fair to say that as time went along
he started believing his own publicity.
But he was king of the kids.
Man: You brought Phil in as a driver for Bathurst
through a period of incredible success.
Bev: 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.
Phil: '83, Peter asked me to run
the second car with John at Bathurst.
Larry: 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.
Commentator: Hello, 05, Peter Brock is in the pits!
Phil: 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.
John: 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.
Man 39: When you take over someone's car
it's no longer their car.
They don't get to hop back in.
Commentator: Here's Peter Brock now walking into the pit area.
Commentator: To break the bad news to brother Phil.
- Do you think? - I think so.
Phil: 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.
Commentator: Oh, he's almost collected Perkins in car 25!
Phil: At the last stop, Peter gets back in the car
and they go and win the race.
Commentator: 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.
Commentator: 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.
Bev: 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.
Man 40: 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.
[speaking in foreign language]
Phil: 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.
Bev: 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.
Phil: Six months later, he reappeared
and the old Brock was back in business.
John: 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.
Peter: 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.
Bev: 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.
Bev: 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.
John: 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.
Man 41: 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.
Peter: One of my people wouldn't allow me
to insult my eyeballs to read
the rest of the rubbish that was written.
Man 41: 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.
Robert: 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.
Bev: 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."
Phil: 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.
Commentator: Everyone in the pits following you
going around the circuit.
Do you want to send them a wave?
Yeah... How are you?
Phil: Before that, it was a club.
After that, it became a cult.
You either believed or you didn't.
[instrumental music]
Phil: 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.
John: 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.
Phil: 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.
Peter: 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.
Woman 1: 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.
Lewis: 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.
Bev: 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.
Man 42: 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.
Bev: It all became a very stubborn
unfortunate dissolution of the business.
Tim: At that stage he didn't want me around anyway
because I didn't believe in the Polarizer.
Graeme: 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.
Lewis: 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.
Phil: 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.
[instrumental music]
Graeme: 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."
[audience cheering]
Peter: 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.
Graeme: 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."
Commentator: 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.
[instrumental music]
Graeme: Peter's car failed.
We transferred him across onto the second car.
Commentator: 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.
Graeme: As soon as the rain came
I knew, I knew what he was gonna do.
Man 43: We were talking to Peter on the radio
and Peter said, "Look, let's just stay on the slicks."
Commentator 1: James Hardie 1987, look at Brock.
Commentator 2: Oh, would he regret putting slicks on?
Commentator 1: Yeah, I think he's made a slight misjudgment
there because the track is still very greasy,
very slippery on line.
Commentator 2: He does have a very desperate driver.
Commentator 1: I think he can get himself
into great problems if he doesn't watch it.
Bev: 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.
Commentator: And he is gassing in the Commodore,
he's got slick tires on.
He's in third position.
The drama continues...
Phil: 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."
Commentator: Brock just trying very, very carefully
to stay on the only dry line. Look how narrow it is.
Phil: 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.
Commentator: And just listen to the race fans
showing their favor to Brocky
as he goes over the hill.
Graeme: 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.
Commentator: But you asked for the man, you asked for him.
It's Peter Brock!
[audience cheering]
[instrumental music]
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.
[audience cheering]
Just chanced on a story a moment ago
about possible illegal fuel in both the Texaco Sierras.
Graeme: 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.
[instrumental music]
Garry: 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.
[engine revving]
[indistinct chatter]
Bev: 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.
Commentator: 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.
[laughing] 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.
Bev: 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.
Peter: 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.
Bev: 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."
Peter: 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...
Bev: 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."
Man 44: The respect that he had from everyone.
Doesn't matter whether you're a Ford or Holden,
it was just a huge legacy.
[audience cheering]
Man 44: To be able to do it and just shut that door
would be quite incredibly hard.
[instrumental music]
Phil: 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.
James: 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.
Bev: What the public didn't see was this man
who fell into this amazing hole.
Alexandra: 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.
Peter: I genuinely felt that, I was simply a commodity
and that I was not able to make my own decisions, so...
Bev: 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.
Bev: 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.
Alexandra: Dee.
Look!
Hello.
Bev: 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."
[instrumental music]
Julie: 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.
Peter: 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."
Bev: 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.
Peter: 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.
[instrumental music]
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.
[instrumental music]
Man 45: It was just a-- a set of circumstances
that even Peter couldn't drive round.
Woman 2: The 61-year-old lost control of his car
while navigating a bend...
Mick: 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.
[instrumental music]
Alexandra: 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.
[instrumental music]
Phil: 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.
Bev: 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."
[instrumental music]
[music continues]
[instrumental music]