Peter Brock, RIP.

September 7, 2006 10:26 PM

In another shock for Australians this week, car racing legend Peter Brock has been killed in a fatal car crash at a race in Western Australia. May He Rest In Peace.
posted by cholly (29 comments total)

I just heard this too, but you've linked to a stub article and a wikipedia article that even admits that this is unconfirmed. I hope it's not true, but can't we wait until we have an official report before we start mourning for the man?
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:30 PM on September 7, 2006

Like this one.

.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:31 PM on September 7, 2006

Holy shit. Whaaaat? Jeezus.

R.I.P
posted by liquorice at 10:33 PM on September 7, 2006

These things come in threes.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:42 PM on September 7, 2006

I'm not quite sure how I feel about getting the Oz news from an Americo-centric site intended to point out the best things on the web. Brocky was a great driver but I saw an interview with him just recently and he sure wasn't the pointiest javelin.
posted by peacay at 10:46 PM on September 7, 2006

The race was in Western Australia, not Tasmania.
posted by peacay at 10:48 PM on September 7, 2006

Peacay, I had just come on to correct that. The initial news I had heard said it was in Tasmania. My Apologies.
posted by cholly at 10:57 PM on September 7, 2006

I'm beginning to think Andrew Denton is cursed...

.
posted by Jimbob at 11:00 PM on September 7, 2006

as an australian that lives in NY, i'll translate:

peter brock == dale earnhardt
Bathurst 1000 == nascar
posted by bhnyc at 11:03 PM on September 7, 2006

Okay, what's with the respected celebrities being bumped off?

We've got some annoying ones too, fate!
posted by tomble at 11:06 PM on September 7, 2006

These things come in threes

Or fours - Colin Thiele (author of Storm Boy) also died last week.

Is it the moon? Or something in the water?
posted by goo at 11:25 PM on September 7, 2006

I'm not quite sure how I feel about getting the Oz news from an Americo-centric site intended to point out the best things on the web.

yeh, this one goes straight into the *who cares?* bucket for anybody outside Oz, i think.

Brocky was a great driver but I saw an interview with him just recently and he sure wasn't the pointiest javelin.

maybe he accidentally reversed the polarity in his famous engine ion polariser?
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:36 PM on September 7, 2006

Man, you invest in one crazy new age ion polarizer technology, and people never let you live it down. . .
posted by Jimbob at 11:40 PM on September 7, 2006

oh, and how did that boonie prayer from the late show go?

*faces bathurst*

legend, legend
top bloke
dead-set legend
(etc)
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:43 PM on September 7, 2006

I think it's not so much crazy that we've had a few notable Australians die in the past few weeks but that they've all been, if you'll forgive the use of the term, rather 'extreme' deaths. I mean a sting-ray barb through the heart while swimming with dangerous animals or crashing during a rally?

Maybe not so much for Chipp, although some might say keeping bastards honest is extreme in its own right.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 12:34 AM on September 8, 2006

Wow. I'm a New Zealander who grew up watching Brock at Bathurst (back in the heady Nissan GTR days before V8s became NASCAR clones).

Big fat . for that guy.
posted by pivotal at 12:54 AM on September 8, 2006

[corrected the FPP to read western australia]
posted by jessamyn at 2:40 AM on September 8, 2006

Another good guy who exited way too soon. RIP Brocky.
posted by Onanist at 4:12 AM on September 8, 2006

Steve Irwin killed by an animal he was filming...
Peter Brock killed in a motor accident...

What's next? Ian Hewitson falls into a vat of sizzling butter? Don Burke gets eaten by some kind of carnivorous plant? Barnesy tries for a high note and hits the resonating frequency of human bone, shattering his skull into a pile of quivering fragments?
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:32 AM on September 8, 2006

Johnny 'the hunt' Coward chokes on (pseudo) Texan dick?
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:36 AM on September 8, 2006

Brock, 61, from Melbourne, became Australia's best known motor sport personality and a dominant figure in the sport.

He was a dominant figure in Australian motor sport, winning the Bathurst 1000, Australia's most prominent domestic motorsport event, a total of nine times through the 1970s and 80s.

He won six Bathurst 1000 wins in seven years, including his victory in the 1979 event, which he won by a record six laps.

He retired from full-time driving in 1997.

Since 1997, he had made two return visits to Bathurst in 2002 and 2004 and returned to top-level touring car racing as a team owner of ``Team Brock' in 2002 in the V8 Supercar category. A year later he sold his share in the team to Kees Weel.

In recent years, he occasionally competed in various motorsport events such as the Targa Tasmania.

"Known as 'Peter Perfect' and the 'King of the Mountain', Brock retired from full-time racing in 1997 but returned to Bathurst to win a 24-hour race in 2003.

The editor of Wheels magazine, Jed Bulmer, says Peter Brock was the consummate driving professional who won many accolades, but will best be remembered for his mastery of the race circuit at Bathurst.

"You know the great Australian touring car race and a race which is regarded as one of the most difficult touring car races in the world and Peter was the nine-times winner there at what is known these days as the Bathurst 1000," he told ABC radio.

"He had a long and very successful career there, he was the 'King of the Mountain' as he came to be known."(www.smh.com.au)

The deaths of so many Australian icons, from many different fields, in such a short time can make Australians stop & think about their effect on our identity.

Vale: Don Chipp, Colin Thiele, Steve Irwin & Peter Brock (whom I did meet & was a good bloke).
posted by fullysic at 4:44 AM on September 8, 2006

.
posted by sien at 6:15 AM on September 8, 2006

From the Wiki entry (for now, at least):

Brock was born in the Victorian country town of Hurstbridge. His father was a horse, and instilled in him his love of carrots.
posted by schoolgirl report at 7:06 AM on September 8, 2006

And now it's gone.
posted by schoolgirl report at 7:07 AM on September 8, 2006

yeh, this one goes straight into the *who cares?* bucket for anybody outside Oz, i think.

It's kind of the opposite to Irwin's death. For Australians, Irwin was as famous for being famous in America as anything else. Much of the media coverage seems fixated on the American reaction to his death. If he weren't famous for his appearances on American telly, he'd be an unknown back home like a million other obsessive eccentrics.

I wonder who's next though. Fraser? Whitlam? Lou Richards? Pity is that the bigest arseholes back home at the moment are fighting fit or old but will hang on out of spite. Tuckey and Howard have longer half-lives than carbon-14.
posted by Jenga at 7:30 AM on September 8, 2006

yeh, this one goes straight into the *who cares?* bucket for anybody outside Oz, i think.


Not so. As a life-long motorsport fan, and an amateur racer myself, I am disproportionately saddened whenever a racer dies behind the wheel.

Not to say that this is as FPP worthy as Irwin's death was, but that kind of dismissal is uncalledfor.
posted by jammer at 8:51 AM on September 8, 2006

Pete Brock?!

Shit!
posted by Relay at 10:16 AM on September 8, 2006

he wasn't driving one of these, was he?
posted by pyramid termite at 10:28 AM on September 8, 2006

that kind of dismissal is uncalledfor

ok, i'll qualify: there is surely a massive disproportion between his fame here (a true household name, if ever there was one - he raced for years & years & years and seemed to almost always win) & his likely almost-total nonrecognition in the states.

the situation would be reversed if a nascar driver died, or an ice hockey player, or something - "*who* died? oh, somebody famous in his own pond. that's sad in an abstract sense..."

His father was a horse, and instilled in him his love of carrots

typical bloody ford driver.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:03 PM on September 8, 2006