As you know, I have about 3000 scanned images of the photos of road racing on the east coast that I took from 1976-1981. Most of these are from Oran Park, Bathurst, Amaroo Park and Hume Weir. I never got to Winton but I did photograph the Swann Series races at Sandown Park in Melbourne each year. I only once went to Surfers Paradise Raceway but not until 1985 to see the Swann Series race there and I didn’t have press credentials that weekend. And, of course, I have heaps of them from Macarthur Park even though I also did commentary each year..
So my photos tend to be fairly narrow focussed (see what I did there?) into the NSW tracks. I used most of my film at the two big NSW events each year, Bathurst and the Six Hour and I have so many of both of these that I sometimes get confused with what year the photos actually are. That is largely my fault because, even though I kept my negatives and slides in good condition, they weren’t always in chronological order so the scanned result in the folders on the computer reflect that jumble. Some are easy but the Six Hour and Bathurst ones do defeat me sometimes.
This one is a no-brainer, of course. Kenny Blake on the Honda 900 during the 1979 Castrol Six Hour. Ken shared the bike with Queensland ace, John Warrian, and, for reasons that I can’t recall, they finished way down in 8th position, Ken’s 2nd worst Six Hour result apart from the disastrous 1980 race when he finished 24th with a bent bike.
As with every Six Hour, the published entry list often looked quite different by race day. It certainly was in 1979 with the #5 bike having both listed riders changed by Sunday morning. Entered by Metzeler and Mick Cochrane’s Jean Country team, the Honda was originally to be ridden by veteran hotshoe, Tony Hatton and rising star, John Pace. Pace ended up racing with another up-and-coming star, Wollongong’s Wayne Gardner, riding a Z650 Kawasaki. Against all the 1000cc bikes, the two youngsters stunned everyone by finishing 7th overall, just 4 laps behind the winning Hales/Chivas combination on the GS1000 Suzuki.
With Pace out of the Metzeler team, Ken was drafted in to partner Hatton. In truth, Blake was the very best choice as his Six Hour record remained unbeaten until the races finished in 1987. Hatton and Blake, definitely a winning combination. That was so until Saturday morning’s practice when a con-rod let go on the 900 as Tony was booming up Bitupave Hill. I witnessed the incident from the first floor of the Control Tower and it wasn’t pretty. With oil and smoke spewing out of the engine and the gearbox locked up, the bike stood up and went straight ahead. The run up Bitupave was a long right hand curve so the bike headed for the cliff below the spectator area on the left hand side of the track. The only thing that saved Tony from horrible injuries was that the bike flung him down on the track just before it impacted the cliff, sideswiping it several times before coming to a stop against the rock wall.
The bike needed a major rebuild but that wasn’t the real problem. Critical to the team was that the crash had left Tony with three broken fingers on his right hand. Tony is a superman but everyone knew that 360 laps around the 1.9km Amaroo layout with a broken hand simply wasn’t going to happen. Fortunately, 1975 race hero, John Warrian was on hand, having come down from Queensland to “spectate”. Funny thing was that he raced on Sunday morning with his own TAA leathers so I think that there was more than just spectating in mind when the wily rider left Brisbane.
The record book shows that John and Ken finished 8th as I’ve said, the result illustrating how out-gunned the Honda had become against the XS1100 Yamahas and the GS1000 Suzukis. I can’t recall what explanation was given at the time but I feel, on reflection, that the Metzeler tyres may not have helped when bikes in front were running the brand new hot-shot Pirelli Phantoms along with Avons and Dunlops.
For the record, the Overall Results for 1979 were Hales/Chivas on the Suzuki, Pretty/Budd on the XS1100 and Atlee/Coleman also on XS1100. The Suxuki team became the first team to do the Six Hour in 360 laps, a lap per minute.
There’s some more 1979 pics in the gallery below. Enjoy.