Colin Bond

So the a- actual peak performance I don't think really has changed very much.

You know, whether it was Dick Johnson or Larry Perkins or Peter Brock or Jim Richards or Alan Moffat or Colin Bond or whoever, um, those, those drivers at their very best, um, drove the cars really, really hard, and they drove them as well as you could possibly drive them of the day.

So, so I, I don't really ever like to compare eras, per se-

Yep

Well, I, I met Brocky way back in '71 when I was with Harry Firth.

Him and Colin Bond were the drivers in the Holden Dealer Team then and, uh, I always got on fine with him and when I ran his r- team, I, I, um, uh, yeah, the race team was separate to the- ... uh, business that he was building, and I had really had nothing to do with the car business.

And, uh, uh, we had a, a small-- only a small show, three or four mechanics when we started.

And, um, I, I was-- wanted to, you know, h-run the team my way and properly, and he let me do that.

So it was after Moffat.

Uh, Alan Moffat and Colin Bond.

Colin Bond in the second car.

Yeah.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

Very good.

131873 is the number.

Yeah, it was Colin Bond-

You know, we got to race against Brock.

Jim Richards, Larry Perkins, Dick Johnson, great Colin Bond, Alan Moffat.

We raced against them.

Do you learn things from racing from people or is it too hard to make adjustments based on what they do? Is it? No, you learn absolutely.

We would sit on those sort of picnic tables under the media centre and I would watch every race.

And when I think about those memories of watching Colin Bond, Peter Brock, Alan Moffat, Alan Grice, Jim Richards, Bob Morris, all the superstars of the day, driving cars right in front of you where you could see their technique and all their steering sort of um movements and the way that they drove the car like pete gagan for instance in that craven mild monaro i mean i would just watch him and go wow like he was just so skillful and and that really that grabbed me you know just that the art of driving the car properly really grabbed me so where where did it start from there what was the what was the big break uh well i did a lot of go-karting um And at the end of the go-karting thing, we bought a Toyota, sorry, we bought a Tirana.

I had Toyota in my brain with Neil Crompton haunting me at the moment.

We bought a Tirana and we made it into a little six-cylinder sports sedan.

Who had the biggest influence on you? That's a really good question.

I think as a young bloke growing up, I really loved, well, I was sort of a Holden man immediately because dad started at an XU1 and my first race car was a Toronto XU1.

I used to follow Colin Bond and Peter Brock because I just loved the Holden dealer team thing.

So they were sort of the guys that I viewed as the gurus until I really started properly In my first proper touring car race in 88, I qualified alongside Peter Brock.

Peter Brock is in there on 32.

Colin Bond.

[glass clinks]

Colin Bond is in there as well.

Uh.

Three to get.

And we thought, who else is going to drive? And we end up...

calling Colin Bond.

And it was a great choice, great bloke.

And, you know, I still see Bondy a couple of weeks ago.