The Fastlane Motorsports Forum

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theracer120 wrote: ↑3 years ago No, but I found these on the 1973 1000 race programme which is available online.

His (Bernie Haehnle) disagreement with local real estate occurred at XL (Griffins) Bend during the running of the 1969 Bathurst 500 classic when he ran out of road heading up the mountain.

With his trusty fence post, leverage, push-and-shove and the fall of the land Bernie was able to get the little GH Whitehead entered Mazda R100 back onto its wheels and into the fray after an hour of toil. He drove down the mountain and through a farm before rejoining the track.

It is one of those feats of never-say-die which has gone down in Bathurst folklore- and garnered far more TV coverage than a mid-field class car could have ever dreamed of!

Co-driver Peter Wherrett shared the car with him, the pair retired on lap 31 with PW not getting a drive but watching the drama unfold on the telly in the pits. The car was driveable, a tad second hand, but without a windscreen officialdom stepped in.

Everso Biggyballies wrote: ↑3 years ago One more from the big crash of 1969...




Another separate incident at the 1969 Bathurst was this crash and subsequent retirement of the GH Whitehead entered Mazda R100 of Bernie Haehnle and Peter Wherrett.

A bit of an amusing story surrounded the one car incident.

His (Bernie Haehnle) disagreement with local real estate occurred at XL (Griffins) Bend during the running of the 1969 Bathurst 500 classic when he ran out of road heading up the mountain.

With his trusty fence post, leverage, push-and-shove and the fall of the land Bernie was able to get the little GH Whitehead entered Mazda R100 back onto its wheels and into the fray after an hour of toil. He drove down the mountain and through a farm before rejoining the track.

It is one of those feats of never-say-die which has gone down in Bathurst folklore- and garnered far more TV coverage than a mid-field class car could have ever dreamed of!

Co-driver Peter Wherrett shared the car with him, the pair retired on lap 31 with PW not getting a drive but watching the drama unfold on the telly in the pits. The car was driveable, a tad second hand, but without a windscreen officialdom stepped in.

https://primotipo.com/tag/mazda-r100/
On an historic note, it was the first time a rotary engined car ever raced at the Mountain- in fact it was one of the R100’s first race appearances anywhere in the world.

hollie3sa wrote: ↑3 years ago
Thank you for the additional photo of the pileup!

Jesper Hvid wrote: ↑4 years ago Alan Hutcheson, 1962 Oulton Park Gold Cup. Bit funny.

6-pic sequence:



<--- that was the funny bit. Section he crashed in is called Knickerbrook. Maybe he's jumping over the actual thing.

Back in 1962, aged 15, I was on a homemade stand alongside my dad on the outside of Knickerbrook - our usual position - at Oulton Park. It was the day of the annual Gold Cup for F1 cars, won that year by Jim Clark in a Lotus 25 by the huge margin of a minute-and-a-quarter from Graham Hill's BRM.

Preceeding the Gold Cup was the 19-lap saloon car race, won by Graham Hill in a John Coombs Jaguar 3.8. A titanic battle ensued further down the field between John Love in a Cooper Car Company Mini Cooper and Alan Hutcheson driving a Barwell Motors Riley 1.5.

This duel was settled on the last lap when Hutcheson went wide at Knickerbrook and somersaulted into a reed bed. I was armed with a Russian Fed 2 35mm camera, while my dad had a borrowed Voigtlander Vito B. I'm not sure who took the pictures in this sequence but having both of us snapping away made up for lack of motor drives.

The driver emerged unscathed and executed a perfect dive to dry land from the roof of the Riley.