Allan Moffat

Allan George Moffat OBE (born 10 November 1939 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) is a Canadian-born Australian racing driver known for his four championships in the Australian Touring Car Championship, six wins in the Sandown 500 and his four wins in the Bathurst 500/1000.

Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Moffat moved to Australia as a 17-year-old college student with his parents when his father, who worked for Massey Ferguson, was transferred to Melbourne for work and in the early 1960s embarked on his record-setting motor racing career.

He started his racing career at the wheel of a Triumph TR3.

Allan Moffat and Jon Leighton drove a Ford Cortina Lotus to fourth place in the 1964 Sandown 6 Hour International at Melbourne's Sandown Park.

The race was the first of what would eventually become the Sandown 500.

Moffat first entered the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) in 1965, driving a Lotus Cortina.

Although Moffat and a number of other drivers raced Mustangs for ATCC competition - the five ATCC titles from 1965 to 1969 were won by Norm Beechey (1965) and Ian Geoghegan (1966–69) driving Mustangs - this car, modified to CAMS Improved Production Touring Car regulations was ineligible for the Bathurst 500 (later Bathurst 1000), which was restricted to standard production cars prior to 1973.

Following this Moffat spent time in the United States where he drove in the new Trans-Am Series in 1966, showing his talent by winning the 3rd round of the series, the Bryar 250, at the Bryar Motorsports Park, outright in an Under 2L division Lotus Cortina on 10 July 1966, leading home Bruce Jennings driving a Plymouth Barracuda by over a lap.

Moffat returned to Australia but also spent more time in the US, continuing to drive the Cortina as well as Ford Mustangs for Carroll Shelby in Trans-Am with various Australian co-drivers including Trans-Am regular Horst Kwech and Ford Australia's, and future Holden rival, Harry Firth.

Moffat's time in Trans-Am included competing with Kwech in the Trans-Am class at the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring and driving four Trams-Am races in a Mercury Cougar for Bud Moore Engineering.

By 1969 Moffat had returned to live full-time in Australia and from 1969 he had become a regular ATCC competitor and his bright red Coca-Cola-sponsored Ford Boss 302 Mustang, which was supplied brand-new to Moffat from Ford's American 'in-house' race car fabrication and engineering facility "Kar Kraft" and finished off by Bud Moore Engineering, was unmistakable at circuits around Australia.

With the help of Tom Hamilton and chief mechanic Lou Mallia, he would go on to win 101 championship and non-championship touring car races from 151 starts in this car between 1969 and 1972, including the first-ever win by one of the seven factory Boss Mustangs built for racing in its debut at the Southern 60 at Sandown in May 1969, yet his dream of winning the ATCC in the Mustang eluded him.

He failed to place in the top 10 in 1969, finished 6th in 1970, 2nd in 1971 and 3rd in 1972.

Moffat and his Coke Mustang were involved in two of the most memorable ATCC races on record.

Moffat, therefore, made his debut in that race in 1969 in a Ford works team entered Ford Falcon XW GTHO.

He and co-driver Alan Hamilton finished fourth.

Due to the severe tyre problems suffered by the works GTHOs, Moffat was called into the pits early to change tyres.

To the amazement of Ford team manager Al Turner, Moffat's tyres were not as near worn as those on the lead Geoghegan brothers or the Gibson/Seton Falcons, showing that Moffat was a driver who could be kind to his car and still go fast.

Moffat maintains the view that he never wanted to pit at the time and that had he been left "to his own devices", he and Alan Hamilton would have won 1969 500.

Moffat had actually been near last on the first lap of the race after his Falcon became stuck in neutral as he was powering out of The Cutting.

This turned out to be fortunate as it allowed him to avoid the Bill Brown rollover going over Skyline which blocked the track and took out approximately a quarter of the field who had no warning of the impending disaster.

The following two years would see Moffat come into his own as one of Australia's most dominant race drivers, and the Falcon GTHO as an almost unbeatable car.

For 1970, Ford Australia had made significant improvements to the Falcon XW GTHO Phase II over the previous year's model and Moffat, racing without a co-driver, took the car to two crushing victories in both the 1970 and 1971 Bathurst races, and also the 1970 Rothmans 250 Production Classic endurance race.

In 1971 he went into the 7th and final round at Oran Park only 4 points behind three-time ATCC champion Bob Jane in his 7.0 litre Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1.

Both started from the front row (Moffat on pole) and entered into an enticing duel.

At mid-race, Moffat was forced to slow in order to free a jammed gearbox but battled back to only be six-tenths of a second behind Jane at the finish.

In 1971 he became the first driver to lead the Bathurst 500 from start to finish while driving the famed Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III.

Then in 1972, he was involved in a race-long dice with Ian Geoghegan at the Easter round of the series (Round 3) at the 6.172 km Mount Panorama Circuit at Bathurst.

Up against Geoghegan's more powerful, 5.8L "Super Falcon", Moffat, while being left behind on the long Mountain and Conrod Straights, was able to keep with the Falcon using its superior handling and brakes and again only lost by less than a second.

Moffat drove for over half the race with his safety belts undone so that he could put his head out of the driver's window in order to see where he was going, the Falcon having a small oil leak which saw some oil sprayed onto the Mustang's windscreen.

By his own admission, Moffat did the wrong thing and turned his wipers on which only made the situation worse as it smeared the oil over the window, and with the race only being 13 laps long he was forced to carry on.

Following the race, Moffat protested Geoghegan's Falcon but the protest was dismissed after Geoghegan's crew had time to wipe away the excess oil before the scrutineers could examine the car.

Moffat looked headed for a historic third straight Bathurst victory in 1972 when Ford unveiled plans for a "Phase IV" Falcon GTHO, even faster but more subtle than the Phase III which Moffat had taken to victory in 1971.

Sydney-based motoring journalist Evan Green caught wind of these plans however and his article, with headlines across the country that screamed, "160mph Supercars on Our Roads!"

created the Supercar scare.

Facing pressure from the media and government not to produce this car, as entering it at Bathurst would also require at least 200 units to be sold at dealerships in Australia, Ford scrapped production of the Phase IV and forced Moffat and other Ford drivers to resort to year-old Phase III cars for Bathurst that year.

Peter Brock won the race that year for arch-rival manufacturer Holden after wet weather and brake dramas hobbled the Fords.

Moffat was inducted into the V8 Supercars Hall of Fame in 1999.

Moffat and his long-time friend and rival (and later co-driver) Peter Brock are the only drivers to have won The Great Race at Bathurst in both its 500-mile and 1000-kilometre formats.

In October 2018, he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.