ITS INTELLIGENT TRACKING SOLUTIONS
Www.gpsworld.co.nz
It proved to be the perfect place to stroll to after lunch — check it out on classicthrottleshop.com.
The other motoring delight to visit in Sydney is the Automoto Bookshop on level 9 at 428 George Street — in other words, the main drag. There are motoring books both old and new, and, while I busied myself in the motor-racing department, my wife chatted away to Anan, who runs the place. Shortly afterwards, I was summoned to the counter, where it emerged that their discussion had revolved around a book I’d been searching for for years. It hadn’t occurred to me to mention it, but Sandy had been on to it in a flash, and, to my amazement, it had “just come in as part of a collection.” Out with a bang: Nigel Mansell’s tyre explodes during the 1986 Australian Grand Prix
I’ll review the new books I bought once I find time to read them, but I could have spent a small fortune just on new books, even before getting to the second-hand gems. The selection is vast, and Anan is an absolute enthusiast and a total delight — when you visit, ask him to tell you the story about being Australia’s fastest Indian … Check the place out at automotobookshop.com.au.
Three decades passed
It’s a little hard to believe that 30 years have passed since I was in Adelaide for the second running of the Australian Grand Prix there. Unlike in 1985, when we fried in the grandstand, in 1986, the race was run a little earlier in late October, and it was pretty damn cool. That was the race that Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, and Alain Prost all went into with a shot at finishing the day as world champion, and in which the Englishman had that almighty tyre blow-out in the final stages. Prost then became Formula 1’s first back-to-back world champion since Jack Brabham, who had achieved it in 1959/’60.
Before the days of big screens, much of the crowd where I was, on the last corner before the front straight, was clearly upset when the announcement was made that Mansell was out. Strangely, for a country with zero tolerance for the whingeing Pom, Mansell — the ultimate version of that very thing — always had a terrific following in Adelaide.