VICTOR BRAY – DRAG RACER

“OUTSIDE of my family, there have been two people in my life who have assisted me with advice on my career: Mick Atholwood and John Peterson. I was down in NSW to check out a show, maybe in the early 80s. I walked into the venue with my mates and we heard this screaming engine and headed over to check out the action. We see this black Zephyr come out of the smoke, sitting on 8000rpm. We thought his throttle must have been stuck! He did a doughnut and then headed back into the smoke.

“Later on, we made a point to go and talk to this guy. I asked him: ‘What was wrong with your car?’ He shot back: ‘What do you mean? Nothing was wrong.’ I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and get thumped, so I asked: ‘So you meant to do all that? It’s a beautiful car, but you were doing 8000rpm, destroying the tyres.’ ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s a burnout.’

“To me, a burnout was what we drag racers did to warm up the tyres – this was the first time I’d seen it done properly. So I asked him how he did it, how to not blow the engine and get the tyres to last. And to his credit, he came out and told me everything. I thought, man, this guy has all the answers. This is what I want to do!

“I told John I would have a go at doing his kind of burnout when I got home. He asked me what kind of car I had and I replied that it was a ’57 Chev. He said: ‘Well, good luck with that.’ [laughs] Of course he gave me shit for being a Chev guy, but I was really taken with him and how generous he was with his knowledge.

“I was lucky enough to sit down with him many years later and talk about that day and a lot of other stuff. He influenced my life in a big way – he set me on a path that I made a career out of, so I have to thank him for that.”