Frank Gardner

Frank is another driver whose brief Grand Prix career did no justice to his talent, for here was one of the world's toughest, most determined and professional drivers, who was destined to enjoy an immensely long and successful career outside the sphere of Formula 1.

A typical Australian all-round sportsman, boxer, swimmer and motor cycle ace, Frank took up car racing in 1956-57 when he won 23 out of 24 races in a C-Type Jaguar to become NSW sports car champion. Inevitably he headed for England and found employment not as a driver but as a mechanic, for Aston Martin, Jim Russell and, in 1962, Jack Brabham's newly formed team, working on the Formula Junior cars. He drove the Brabham a few times that year but turned down Jack's offer of a full-time ride for 1963 (taken instead by Denny Hulme), opting to join Ian Walker for a massively successful sports and Formula Junior programme.

This had established Gardner as a serious proposition, and he moved to John Willment's team in 1964 to drive in Formula 2, also handling his stable of powerful sports and saloon cars. Ambitiously, the team went into Formula 1 in 1965, but were just not up to it, though they did take an aggregate fourth place in the Race of Champions. Frank felt he had made a bit of a fool of himself, and gave Grand Prix racing a wide berth except for a couple of drives in 1968. He contested the Tasman series in a Brabham during this period, giving a good account of himself against the likes of Clark, Hill and Stewart, and did more Formula 2 in the MRP Lola and a works Brabham, but really established a niche in saloon cars, taking a string of championships from 1968 with Alan Mann's Escort into the seventies with both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro. In fact Gardner seemed to be racing virtually every weekend, as he was also contesting F5000 in the works Lola, taking the championship in both 1971 and '72, before suddenly quitting single-seaters after the Tasman series early in 1973 ('I drove like an old woman' was Frank's over-critical assessment, having won one round and taken three second places).

He continued to thunder on in the Camaro, until returning to his native land to race in the sports sedan championships, inevitably winning the title in 1976 and '77. Frank Gardner was truly a 'racing' driver in the very best sense of the word.