Alastair you should come to England and give
it a go.
1966 Encouraged by mechanics
at the Tasman series
The Tasman Series runs in New Zealand and Australia with teams such as Brabham and McLaren taking part.
The Tasman series. In the off-season (winter) in Europe the Grand Prix teams sent cars and some of the drivers out to Australia and New Zealand. We had people like Moss, Clark, Hill and Bandini; all of the overseas stars coming to race in the Tasman series. The great thing was the locals used to race against them. They loved it. You’d own a little car and you could go in the same Grand Prix as Graham Hill and Jim Clark and try and beat them. Denny Hulme, Bruce McLaren and Jack Brabham were there competing in the same race as your mates. There was a big Australasian influence in Grand Prix racing in the 60s just like there is now. There was Amon, Hulme, Brabham and McLaren – so one third of racing teams on the Grand Prix grid were Australasian. The same was true with the team managers and mechanics.
The mechanics used to come out to Australasia for the Tasman series and they would say to me: ‘Alastair you should come to England and give it a go.’ I had no intention of doing this until my brother was killed. This made me think about life a bit.
