1,000 Greatest Drivers: Allan Moffat
The maple leaf down under.
I struggled to decide whether to list Moffat as a Canadian or an Australian, because I’ve seen him listed as both on various sources. Racing Reference, DriverDB, touringcarracing.net, Wikipedia, and Racing Years identified him as Canadian, while The Third Turn, Motorsports Magazine, my own site race-database.com, Racing Sports Cars, and World Sports Racing Prototypes identify him as Australian. I can kind of see why it’s disputed, as he was born in Canada and spent almost his entire career primarily racing in Australia, but he didn’t actually obtain Australian citizenship until 2004, long after he’d retired. Even though before I did my research on him, I had him listed as Australian on my master driver list, I decided to change it to Canada for this entry. It seems like most of the sites that identified him as Australian had a major focus on sports car racing, and he was clearly better as a touring car driver than as a sports car driver. I ultimately went with Canada because that is what the guy at touringcarracing.net said, and I trust his judgment better for information about touring car drivers.
I admit I largely just summarized Moffat’s Wikipedia page here, but I’ve also noticed that, particularly for Australian touring car drivers, the Wikipedia articles have a lot more entertaining anecdotes than for drivers in other series. I certainly wouldn’t have known about the news article, which caused Ford to shut down its factory racing operations in Australia, or the fact that Moffat lost his main car due to a transporter fire during his 1976 championship season, without it. Reading that, as well as discovering that he won the inaugural Australian Sports Sedan Championship (while still being an owner-driver privateer), has caused me to bump that season up to #4 and push Cale Yarborough one slot down to #5 and Sandro Munari from #5 down to E. I already had his 1977 season at #5 since he won 8 times as opposed to only 6 in the ATCC in 1976, but once I read about the fire and the fact that he won multiple championships (which I didn’t know about, as the Sedan championship had admittedly eluded me), I decided to make that his best season instead. On the other hand, Moffat’s Wikipedia page also had a lot of dross that was not really important enough to be worth mentioning, so I think the fact that I limit my word count to 500 (and it’s usually exact) makes this a lot more readable while still hitting all the high points.
ALLAN MOFFAT.………….…CANADA
Born: November 10, 1939
Died: November 22, 2025
Best year: 1976
Best drive: 1971 Hardie-Ferrodo 500 at Bathurst
Although Canadian by birth, Moffat moved to Australia at 17, where he became one of the country’s all-time greatest touring drivers and Peter Brock’s chief rival. Before his domestic career really took off, Moffat briefly moved to the US, where he earned an overall Trans-Am win in 1966 in the slower Under 2 Liter class while forging a major relationship with Ford and car owner Bud Moore before returning to Australia to race in 1969, when he almost immediately scored his first Sandown win.
The next year, he started his own team, where he remained for nearly his entire career. Although technically an owner-driver, his Fords were American factory imports built by their top engineers, including Bud Moore, and he officially drove factory Fords at Bathurst and Sandown. In 1970, he became the first driver to win at Bathurst solo drive, and he one-upped that in 1971 by becoming the only flag-to-flag winner there in his Phase III Ford Falcon despite briefly having a carton attached to his radiator. In 1972, Ford announced its new Phase IV model, but a hysterical news article warned against these cars driving on Australian roads, prompting Ford to cease development and withdraw their factory backing after 1973. Nonetheless, Moffat won his first ATCC title and the first 1000-kilometer Bathurst race that year.
As a privateer, Moffat remained highly relevant, winning back-to-back ATCC titles and 14 races in 1976 and 1977 despite having to borrow a car after a transporter fire in 1976, the 1976 Australian Sports Sedan Championship, and his last Bathurst 1000 in 1977. He then mildly struggled before switching to Mazda in 1982. Although this move was unpopular domestically, it revitalized his career, as he won two Australian Endurance Championships and his fourth and final ATCC title in 1983. In 1987, he won the first World Touring Car Championship race at Monza after the top six finishers were disqualified, and he won his last race in the Japanese Touring Car Championship two days after his 50th birthday. After retiring, he became an announcer and remained a team owner.
Although Brock had more ATCC wins (48-36), Bathurst wins (9-4), and Sandown wins (9-6), I actually think Moffat was better. Moffat’s ATCC winning percentage of 34.3% is more than double Brock’s 16.3%. While they both led ATCC drivers in my touring car model thrice, Moffat led overall in 1971, but Brock never did, and his career rating is much higher. Finally, being the only Canadian in a sea of Australians and an owner-driver for nearly his entire career and a privateer for most of it impresses me more than Brock’s successes for a Holden team that often had more factory support. Unlike Brock, he also had some major sports car wins, including a 12 Hours of Sebring overall win in 1975 and a 24 Hours of Daytona class win in 1982. The mere fact of dominating a domestic racing discipline on a foreign continent was unusual, and it makes Moffat an underreported goat candidate.
Touring car model: #166 of 1676 (.217)
Teammate head-to-heads: 38-10 (0-1 vs. Kent Baigent, 10-2 vs. Colin Bond, 0-1 vs. Graeme Bowkett, 0-1 vs. Peter Brock, 5-0 vs. John French, 1-0 vs. Ian Geoghegan, 1-0 vs. Leo Geoghegan, 4-0 vs. Fred Gibson, 0-1 vs. Dan Gurney, 1-0 vs. Alan Hamilton, 4-1 vs. Gregg Hansford, 3-1 vs. John Harvey, 3-2 vs. Neal Lowe, 3-0 vs. Bruce McPhee, 2-0 vs. Barry Seton, 1-0 vs. Garry Waldon)
Year-by-year: 1966: C-, 1969: C, 1970: E, 1971: E, 1972: E, 1973: E, 1974: E-, 1975: C, 1976: 4, 1977: 5, 1978: C, 1980: C+, 1981: C-, 1982: E, 1983: E, 1984: C+, 1987: C+, 1988: C-