Peter Brock

Peter Brock

Peter Brock AM was one of Australia’s best-known and most successful motor racing drivers. He won the Bathurst 1000 endurance race nine times, the Sandown 500 touring car race 9 times and the Australian Touring Car Championship three times. Brock was inducted into the V8 Supercars Hall of Fame in 2001.

About Peter Brock in brief

Summary Peter BrockPeter Brock AM was one of Australia’s best-known and most successful motor racing drivers. He won the Bathurst 1000 endurance race nine times, the Sandown 500 touring car race 9 times and the Australian Touring Car Championship three times. Brock was inducted into the V8 Supercars Hall of Fame in 2001. He was most often associated with Holden for almost 40 years, although he raced vehicles of other manufacturers including BMW, Ford, Volvo, Porsche and Peugeot. Brock’s business activities included the Holden Dealer Team that produced Brock’s racing machines as well as a number of modified high-performance road versions of his racing cars. Brock won the second Bathurst 24 Hour race in 2003 driving a 7.0L V8-powered Holden Monaro 427C for Garry Rogers Motorsport. The #10 Monaro won the race, which although not the tenth Bathurst race, is regarded as his tenth win by many as a result of the record-breaking lap time. Brock also won a string of seven consecutive races from 1975 until 1981 in the AustralianTouring Car Supercar Championship. He also claimed a total of 37 races during his career in the Touringcar Supercar category. Brock is survived by his brother Phil and his sister-in-law, the former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. He is buried at the Epworth Hospital, Richmond, Victoria, the son of Geoff and Ruth Brock. His brother Phil also became a racing driver, and co-drove with his brother in the Bathhurst 1000 on two occasions.

He died in a car crash in 2011 in Melbourne, New South Wales, the same year as his brother. He had a son, Lewis, who is also a professional racing driver and a father-of-two, and a step-son, Jake Brock, who also raced in the Supercars. Brock died in 2011 at the age of 53. He has a daughter, Emma, and two step-children, Lewis and Jake Brock Jr, who are both professional racing drivers and also live in Melbourne. Brock has three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Brock served two years of National Service at the Blamey Barracks near Wagga Wagga in NSW in 1965 and 1966. He first visited Bathurst in 1966 to watch the 500-mile production car race that was to become the Bathbush 1000. It was after watching the race that he decided that he wanted to become a race driver when he left the army. Brock made his debut at Bathurst in the 1969 Hardie-Ferodo 500 in a Holden HT Monaro GTS 350 alongside Des West, with the pair finishing third behind their winning HDT teammates Colin Bond and Tony Roberts. Brock would win the event atotal of nine times between 1972 and 1987, a feat that has not been equalled. His 1979 win was remarkable in that he and Co-driver Jim Richards claimed victory by six laps, a record that, due to changes in race regulations introduced in the mid- to late 1980s, may never be broken, and broke the circuit lap record for touring cars.