Tasman Revival blasts from the past

Hundreds of the fastest cars from Australia's racing history will blast back into action next weekend at the Tasman Revival meeting at Eastern Creek.

About 400 racing, sports and touring cars from the 1960s and 70s, valued at more than $2million, will turn back time, with 11 different categories of cars contesting more than 60 races over three days.

Organisers say they have also attracted more than 40 cars from overseas including entries from the US, the UK, Japan and New Zealand.

While the focus is on the grand prix cars of the 1960s reliving the international Tasman series that was contested in Australia and New Zealand at famous long-gone tracks such as Warwick Farm in Sydney and Longford in Tasmania, Formula 5000 open wheelers from the 1970s will also be racing.

Unlike today the Formula One stars of the 1960s including Sir Jack Brabham, Jim Clark and Graham Hill regularly contested the Tasman series in their off-season.

Sir Jack and Lady Margaret Brabham will attend the event - which is effectively an open wheel version of the successful Muscle Car Masters retro touring car event also run at Eastern Creek.

The organisers says one of  Sir Jack's most famous cars, a Brabham BT24 that he drove to second place in the 1967 F1 world championship, will be racing at Eastern Creek.  It is now owned and raced by Sydney enthusiast Brian Wilson.

Champion racer John Bowe, who won Australia's highest open wheel honour the Gold Star, before becoming a household name after winning the Bathurst 1000 in touring cars, will return to the open cockpit next weekend.

Bowe will drive a Brabham BT 23B.  He has a strange tie to the Brabham lineage. As a child the Tasmanian regularly went to Longford to watch the Tasman series and recalled how he got lost in the crowd one year.

"A very nice old lady comforted me and returned me to my parents. The kind lady turned out to be Jack Brabham's mother.''  Half a century later he will drive one of the cars her son built.  For more information go to tasmanrevival.com