A REAL GENTLEMAN

Iwould like to congratulate the magazine and Donn Anderson on the excellent article on the late Tim Bailey in the January issue [Motorman, No. 337]. I first met Tim when I was a teenager; my late sister Beryl Barron had purchased a Fiat 1500 station wagon from the Rotorua dealership and in my desire to be the world’s best race driver I accidentally spun it and turned it on its side! This resulted in constantly failing rear wheel bearings. As the local dealer could not sort it, they suggested taking the car to Tim at Town and Country Autos in Auckland. It took the team there a week to realize that actually I had twisted the chassis!

A couple of years later, when we were towing the Mistral to Pukekohe for a race meeting, the clutch on the Falcon we had as tow car burned out. Tim offered to sort it on the Sunday to enable us to tow the race car home again.

Two instances at Levin come to mind, one of which I am sure Tim hoped would go away; that was when he was driving the Brabham, I think, and he inadvertently engaged reverse gear. When the flag dropped and everyone else shot off forwards, Tim took off backwards at high speed! Luckily he was on the back row of the grid. He received a standing ovation from the spectators. The second was when I walked past Tim and his father working on the rear brakes of the Barden special and asked what was wrong. The response was that one of the rear brake fittings had cracked and there were no spares so they were simply hacksawing the pipe off and rolling it up to stop any fluid coming out. I was asked not to say anything as, if I did, they would not be allowed to start the race!

I felt that Tim was a real gentleman, who exemplified the best in the top level of motor sport at the time, and I am proud to have considered him to be a friend. His passing was a sad loss to both motor sport and New Zealand.

Regards, Richard