George Fury

In the late season Endurance Championship races, Fury failed to finish in the Castrol 400 at the fast Sandown Park in Melbourne (Gibson would finish 8th outright and first in Class C).

Fury and Gibson then teamed up for the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst where they and their Japanese team mates Masahiro Hasemi and Kazuyoshi Hoshino proved how far both car and driver had come in 12 months, with both Bluebird turbo's qualifying in the Top 10 (Hasemi qualified 3rd, Fury 10th).

Unfortunately for Fury and Gibson, their race ended on just lap 40 with a blown head gasket.

George Fury (born 31 January 1945, in Hungary) is a retired Australian rally and racing car driver.

For the majority of his career Fury was associated with Nissan, twice winning the Australian Rally Championship, and twice runner up in the Australian Touring Car Championship.

Fury, a farmer living and working in the New South Wales country town of Talmalmo, was nicknamed "Farmer George" or "The Talmalmo Farmer".

Fury rose to prominence during the 1970s, first as part of the Bruce Wilkinson, and then Howard Marsden-run Datsun Rally Team, racing Datsun Violet 710 SSS and Datsun 1600s, winning the 1977 Australian Rally Champion (tied on points with Ross Dunkerton), later driving a Datsun Stanza, he won the Australian Championship in 1980.

Fury also twice won the Southern Cross Rally in 1978 and 1979.

A shift in emphasis in 1981 saw the Datsun Rally Team abandoned in favour of a circuit racing program for a turbo charged Nissan Bluebird.

Fury joined former Ford works driver (under Marsden) Fred Gibson as drivers and proved instantly competitive despite running in the mid-car class, though he was still seen more as a rally driver and less as a circuit racer.

The team's first outing was the 1981 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst where the Gibson/Fury Bluebird qualified 43rd but retired after 30 laps with suspension failure.

Fury ran three rounds of the 1982 Australian Touring Car Championship in the Bluebird turbo and showed both his and the cars potential by finishing second behind the 5.8 L V8 powered Ford Falcon of eventual series champion Dick Johnson in Round 2 of the series at Calder Park in Melbourne.

Fury would only contest one more round of the 1982 ATCC, retiring from Round 7 in Adelaide and he would eventually finish 12th in the championship on 14 points.

Bathurst 1982 had shown that both George Fury and the Bluebird were going to be competitive against the outright Holden Commodore's, Ford Falcon's and Mazda RX-7's in 1983.

With the benefit of running in the "Up to and including 3000cc" class which gave bonus points for outright placings, Fury narrowly lost the 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship by six points to Allan Moffat after the Nissan team decided not to attend the final round of the series.

Helped by the controversial point scoring system (e.g. Fury had scored 27 points for finishing second in the opening round at Calder while Moffat had 'only' scored 25 for winning), Fury led the entire championship despite not winning a race until the Nissan team boycotted the final round at Lakeside in Brisbane.

As a mark of its continued development and competitiveness, the turbocharged Bluebird had qualified 3rd at Bathurst in 1982 (Hasemi), 2nd in 1983 (Fury) and 1st in 1984 (Fury).

Fury scored his first two race wins with the opening two rounds of the 1983 Australian Endurance Championship at Amaroo Park (Silastic 300) and 2 weeks later at the Oran Park 250, before going on to qualify 2nd for the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst.

Partnered with Garry Scott, the Bluebird failed to finish after gearbox failure on lap 130.

The Bluebird carried an in-car Racecam camera for race broadcaster Channel 7 with Fury being able to talk to the commentary team while driving the car.

During the race while stuck behind a slower car, the microphone captured him calling the driver of the slower car a "f***ing bastard".

While Fury would later drive other cars with Racecam units, it was the last time he would use a live microphone while in the car.

At the end of the year, Fury would win the "Berri Fruit Juices Trophy" Group C Support race at the Australian Grand Prix meeting at Calder, defeating the Holden Dealer Team Commodores of Bathurst winners Peter Brock and Larry Perkins.

Fury would give the Bluebird program its finest moment at the 1984 James Hardie 1000, qualifying on pole position for the final Group C Bathurst 1000 with a time of 2:13.85 in Hardies Heroes.

The Bluebird was the only Group C car to ever lap the old 6.172 km (3.835 mi) Mount Panorama Circuit under 2:14.00 (Peter Brock got closest with a 2:14.03 in his V8 Holden Commodore in the same Hardies Heroes).

George Fury gave both Nissan and turbo charging its first win in the ATCC in 1984 when he won Round 7 of the championship at Lakeside.

Fury later claimed pole for the 1984 Castrol 500 at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne before going on to claim pole at Bathurst.

Fury's pole time of 1:46.2 would remain the fastest ever touring car lap of the new 3.9 km International Circuit at Sandown.

Driving his Bluebird turbo, George Fury won the last ever competitive Group C Touring Car race on the Australian mainland when he won the Group C support race at the 1984 Australian Grand Prix at Calder Park in Melbourne on 18 November.

Fury led from pole and wasn't headed in the entire 25 lap race and won from the previously unbeaten HDT VK Commodore of Peter Brock with the VK Commodore of Warren Cullen finishing third.

In 1985 the adoption of International Group A put Fury on the sidelines for a year while the Nissan team developed the Nissan Skyline RS DR30 into competitive touring car.

Longhurst's time of 2:13.84 was set after the circuit was extended to 6.213 km in 1987.

George returned to rallying at the Australian championship level in 1990.

Driving the Ged Beckton-owned Mitsubishi Gallant VR4 in the first two rounds of the championship.

Ross Runnalls navigated.

George and Ross were immediately successful, winning the BP Rally of Tasmania.

Next up was the BP Alpine Rally (Victorian round of the championship.) George and Ross won this event by 6 minutes and 32 seconds.

Fury's lap time at Bathurst was not bettered by a touring car until qualifying for the 1990 Tooheys 1000 by Tony Longhurst in a Group A Ford Sierra RS500.

Fury's time was not bettered in the Top 10 runoff until 1991 when Nissan team driver Mark Skaife recorded a 2:12.63 in a 4WD, twin-turbo Nissan GT-R.

With the Nissan team missing several rounds of the championship to concentrate on engine development of the 1.8-litre Straight-4 turbo engine to improve both power and reliability, Fury could only finish 11th in the championship.