Original subtitles

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."

Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk) www.opensubtitles.org