1,000 Greatest Drivers: Ian Geoghegan
Won a mind-boggling array of titles, but almost all of them came in one-race championships.
I was not in the mood to write. Had a rough visit at the nursing home on Monday. I had been using the bathroom in my mom’s room whenever I visited, but even though her first two roommates didn’t complain about this, apparently her current roommate was upset. Her current roommate has had a nurse supervising her in the room constantly, which isn’t anything I’ve seen in any of the other rooms, and it feels to me that the nurse had a bigger problem with me than the roommate did. My mom’s room is on the fourth floor while the visitor bathroom is on the first floor, so I’d have to change three floors to go to the bathroom, that elevator takes a while to come, and boy, I hope I don’t have some IBS attack there sometime. I mean there is a public bathroom on the fourth floor I think but it hasn’t been working since she came in. I told the nurse I could just leave immediately if my mom’s roommate needed to use the bathroom and she was saying I didn’t understand, then when I only mildly argued with her and didn’t even raise my voice, she said I was showing “attitude”. I had absolutely not been showing any kind of attitude, and I found that incredibly galling, particularly when comparing my own behavior to my mom’s behavior. My mom has said racial slurs (nowhere near as often than she was at home thankfully), I heard her make violent threats against her previous roommate, and just the previous day she apparently mouthed off at one of the other residents and he slapped her, and they’re upset about my behavior? Whatever, man. I just can’t bring myself to want to write right now and I don’t think this is one of my best entries by any means (although surprisingly little has been written bout him, and I guess this is still technically only a day behind). And I did spend most of the day doing work for my real job, still spent a lot of time entering data for this albeit not writing, and I also finished watching Malcolm in the Middle (I typically always multitask by listening or watching something when I’m entering data; usually it’s podcasts, but lately it’s been this...) I’ll review it someday soon after I finish the sequel. I definitely have thoughts.
IAN GEOGHEGAN………….AUSTRALIA
Born: April 26, 1940
Died: November 19, 2003
Best year: 1969
Best drive: 1972 Australian Touring Car Championship Race #3 at Mount Panorama, Bathurst
The greatest driver from the pioneering decade of Australian touring car racing, Ian followed in the footsteps of his brother Leo, but they had different specialties with Leo focusing on open wheel, where he won four minor league titles in Australia, while Ian won the Australian Touring Car Championship five times in six years from 1964-1969. Most of Australia’s championships in the ‘60s were held over a single race with the exception of the Australian Drivers’ Championship, the country’s top open wheel title, which Leo won twice.
Geoghegan’s first major race came at the inaugural Australian Touring Car Championship in 1960 in a self-owned Holden where he didn’t finish, but he did finish third in the inaugural Australian GT Championship later that year while Leo won. After a runner-up finish in the 1961 ATCC, the brothers teamed up to win Class F at the one-off Bathurst 6 Hour in 1962. Although they completed four more laps than anyone else, race officials for some reason decided not to declare an overall winner. Geoghegan’s first solo win came in the 1963 Australian Tourist Trophy, the country’s most important sports car title at the time, but his competition was terrible.
Geoghegan’s greatest performances came in the ATCC. After Jaguars won the first four races, Geoghegan’s win in 1964 was the first of six consecutive Ford championships and they were all his except for Norm Beechey’s 1965 win. Geoghegan and Beechey had a storied rivalry as Geoghegan took the lead from him with seven laps remaining to win in 1964, Beechey lapped him in 1965, Geoghegan passed Beechey again with six laps to go to win in 1966 and he inherited the lead when Beechey crashed in 1967. After winning again in 1968, he won the first multi-race ATCC championship in 1969, but his 1972 win at Bathurst was his greatest as he and Allan Moffat lapped the field and made repeated slipstream passes throughout what many call the most exciting touring car race ever where Geoghegan kept taking the lead uphill while Moffat repassed him at the summit. Geoghegan ended up winning by 0.6 seconds because his car was leaking oil while he led and Moffat had to remove his belts and look over his windshield to see. This was also Moffat’s only ATCC win as an owner-driver. Moffat and Geoghegan later teamed up to win the 1973 Bathurst 1000.
You can ignore the poor touring car rating here as his sample size is very small and the fact that Geoghegan tended to dominate single-race championships more than multi-race championships didn’t help. Besides his touring car titles, he also won two additional sports car championships, another Tourist Trophy in 1965 and a multi-race championship in 1976. He held the ATCC win record until Bob Jane overtook him in 1972 and the title record until Jamie Whincup overtook him in 2014. Although the competition was certainly nowhere near what it would become in the Supercars era, he remains one of Australia’s greatest racing legends.
Touring car model: #926 of 1676 (-.106)
Teammate head-to-heads: 7-8 (1-0 vs. Greg Cusack, 0-2 vs. Harry Firth, 1-1 vs. Fred Gibson, 0-1 vs. Alan Hamilton, 1-1 vs. Bob Jane, 2-0 vs. Spencer Martin, 1-0 vs. Jim McKeown, 0-1 vs. Allan Moffat, 0-1 vs. John Reaburn, 0-1 vs. George Reynolds, 1-0 vs. Barry Seton)
Year-by-year: 1961: C-, 1962: C, 1963: C-, 1964: E-, 1965: C, 1966: C+, 1967: C+, 1968: E-, 1969: E, 1970: C+, 1971: C, 1972: C+, 1973: C, 1976: C-, 1978: C