David Hassall - Brocky

Peter at home with his beloved Border Collie dogs and two of the authors children, Kim and Ari. One of the offspring of Peters dogs became a Hassall family pet.

T HIS is Peter Brocks own story. It is by no means the definitive story of his life that would have been a full autobiography, which he unfortunately never wrote before his death and Bev Brock was certainly able to write a more intimate portrait after living with the great man for 28 years. But this is the story of Peters brilliant racing career, as he wanted it told.

It was written in three different periods, in three different decades, and most of the manuscript was checked by Peter himself, with all his notations and changes applied before being published. As I was for many years his ghostwriter, producing hundreds of Peter Brock columns for newspapers and magazines, we were very comfortable working together like this. We were also good friends and Peter was comfortable with me putting into words his thoughts and experiences. When it came to writing his life story, I was happy to present it from his perspective alone. It was not like a regular journalistic undertaking, where you speak with numerous sources and try to reach your own conclusions. This was his story, told the way he wanted it told.

With Peters full co-operation, knowing this would be his definitive story, we initially did many hours of taped sessions and I wrote the first half of his life in 1983. It was published by Garry Sparke & Associates as The Peter Brock Story, a glossy-style book for which he provided the foreword (not ghosted by me for a change!) and is now very hard to find, even though some 20,000 copies were sold. It was one of the first motor sport biographies published in Australia.

When Peter announced his retirement in May 1997, I was publishing Motorsport News magazine, so I suggested that we serialise the existing manuscript and then write the extra chapters necessary to bring the story of his racing career up to date, covering vital episodes such as the split with GM, the Polarizer and his return to the Holden fold. Again, Peter gave generously of his time to sit around a tape recorder for hours carefully discussing the events in question and ensuring his version was recorded for posterity.

Finally, after years of requests to again publish his life story, especially following his tragic death in 2006, I have updated the original manuscripts and added two new chapters as well as a new section in Chapters 6 on the very significant 1984 Le Mans 24 Hour program. With this new material, I have tried to remain true to the original concept and especially to stay true to Peter himself.

Author David Hassall listens in at one of Peters last press conferences as a full-time racer.

While the new final chapter covers his post-retirement comeback career in the spirit of the earlier chapters written as it was after his death but calling on contemporary quotes from Peter himself I have taken the liberty of being more subjective in the new Chapter 1 as this is my personal appraisal of Peter himself and uniquely touches on his personal life, which I believe is otherwise better left to people like long-time partner Bev who lived with him and therefore knew him better than anyone.

Peter and I were very much alike in many ways people even had trouble distinguishing our voices when listening to interviews so we had an almost fraternal relationship. We never disagreed about much, but you may detect that I never shared the views he held on some new-age philosophies, including the Polarizer. In his later years we had some lively but still friendly philosophical discussions about these very issues without, of course, either of us giving any ground, and were happy to leave it at that. I also tend to disagree with some of his assertions over the reasons for The Big Split when he fell out with Holden, so my comments in relation to this in Chapter 1 are slightly at odds with his version of events in Chapter 11, but these divergences were thankfully rare.

A lot of fond memories came flooding back in the process of producing this book, which was pleasant but made it that much harder to believe that Peter is gone. Nevertheless, our lives remain all the richer for knowing him, whether directly or just as fans. I hope you also enjoy reliving those great times.

David Hassall

November, 2009

This is the foreword that Peter wrote for The Peter Brock Story when it was first published in 1983.