Macao motor racing history to go on exhibition in Sydney
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E-mail Xinhua, May 2, 2013
Sydney is gearing up for a showcase of six decades of motorsport history in celebration of the Australian motor sports connection with Macao, the home of Asia's motor racing.
From May 23-26, Sydney will host a free exhibition - Macao Grand Prix: 60 years of Motorsport History - for the sports-mad public, focusing on the upcoming Diamond Jubilee of the globally famous event.
The Lower Exhibitions Hall at Sydney Town Hall, the venue for this 60th Anniversary expo, will be decorated with a series of historic photographs, video coverage of Macao Grand Prix meetings and historic posters from the past.
Tourism information of Macao, including maps, guidebooks and details on the various attractions will be handed out during the four-day event, reflecting the former colony's grip on the Australian imagination.
In Sydney, previous Aussie winner Kevin Bartlett will launch the 60th Anniversary Macao Grand Exhibition at an invitation-only presentation on the evening of May 22.
"My recollections of Macao in the 60s are among my most treasured and favorite parts of my racing career...Up until that time my travel had been confined to the Southern Hemisphere and to arrive on a local liner (the Fat San) into a different way of doing things," Motor racing legend Bartlett told Xinhua.
"The race car was unloaded by many hands from the hold of the ship and placed dockside ready to be taken to the garage area, which was the local naval fleet work station," recalled Bartlett.
"The incessant chatter of strange tongues as orders were given to get the job done safely worried us at first but the crews turned out to be very efficient."
Bartlett, also known by his nickname "KB", took out the Macao Grand Prix in 1969 behind the wheel of a Mildren-Waggott in Formula Libre, the same year he was crowned CAMS Gold Star in Australia for the second successive year.
For consecutive years, Bartlett took out the Australian Drivers Championship and later teamed up with John Goss to win the arduous Bathurst 1000 in 1973. He was named in Wheels magazine's annual yearbook in 2004 as one of Australia's 50 greatest racing drivers, placed number 15.
Bartlett's victory at Macao was the first international Grand Prix victory for the popular Australian driver.
"So it reigns as the moment meaning the most significant race of my career up to that point," he said. "In fact, maybe it hasn't been surpassed by any other wins."
On reflecting his racing days in Macao, Bartlett said the race track was daunting for a first timer.
"They (the drivers) had to learn - and learn quickly - as the opposition had been there many times with race winners among them, ' he said.
"I went to the local motor-bike hire person and found a 125cc Yamaha that I was familiar with, hiring it in the lead up to practice.
"Riding around the track for hours late at night to beat the normal traffic seemed the solution. When I finished each night I was able to switch lights off and have no need to guess the next curve."
Bartlett said if a competitor wanted to compare Macao's road circuit with others, he would name Monaco and Pau in France as stand outs.
Bartlett said the atmosphere at Macao when he was racing was not typical of many venues of the day.
"The people were eager to be of assistance, government and race organisation people were happy for you to be at their race," he said
It will be 45 years since that race win by Bartlett and he can still see so many pictures in my mind's eye as if it was last week.
"I went back to race there many times and my next best result was a second place," he said. "The challenge of doing well at such a venue lives with me forever and I appreciate that people still have that sense of history to include me in the celebration.
Over the past six decades, the Macao Grand Prix has grown from an event for a gathering of amateur racing enthusiasts to "a shining jewel in international motorsport".
From its humble beginnings in 1954, when a group of the Macao automotive enthusiasts held a motorised treasure hunt, it has evolved into a truly world recognised Grand Prix attracting drivers who would become the world's best and household names.
Those to cut their teeth in competing on the notorious six-km road circuit have included Australian former world F1 champion Alan Jones, Mark Webber, Riccardo Patrese, Gerhard Berger, Martin Brundle, world champions Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen, Damon Hill, Jenson Button, David Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and current world champion Sebastian Vettel. Endi
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