Vale Graham ‘Cassius’ McRae

Motor racing in this part of the world has lost one of the titans of 1970s Formula 5000 racing with the passing in August of Graham McRae.

Affectionately known as ‘Cassius’ – a kind of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) alliteration on account of McRae’s penchant for letting everyone know he was ‘the greatest’ – McRae was famous for his forthright and abrasive demeanour, but he backed up his words with deeds. He was a kind of New Zealand equivalent of Australia’s Frank Matich: a master behind the wheel but also a canny engineer who built – and won races in – his own cars. The careers of McRae and Matich paralleled during the early ‘70s although the two were not friends – at best, a grudging respect existed between them.

Remarkably both men enjoyed success in the US L&M series – arguably the world championship series for F5000 cars at the time. While Matich won the opening round in 1971, McRae was victorious in the following year’s opener in his McRae GM1-Chev – going on to win the entire series.

That year McRae also won the Australian

Grand Prix, held at Sandown. Uniquely, McRae’s other two AGP wins were also at Sandown – in 1973 in the new GM2-Chev and in 1978 with the GM3, with its trademark transparent cockpit surround.

In his personal rivalry with Matich, McRae enjoyed the upper hand not just with his US success but also in the Tasman Cup Series. Matich never cracked it for a Tasman Cup win but McRae scored a hattrick of series wins between 1971 and ’73.

He also made one F1 grand prix start, in a backmarker Frank Williams-entered car in the British Grand Prix in 1973. The same year he drove an Eagle-Offy in the Indy 500, nishing the rain shortened race as the Rookie of the Year.

Later McRae returned to US racing with a the GM3 reworked into a single-seater Can-Am car with ground effects, renamed as the GM9. McRae raced it in the 1980 and ’81 seasons but without success on a limited budget.

He also made two Bathurst 1000 starts, with Warren Cullen in the latter’s Torana A9X in 1979 and in 1986 in a Volvo 240T with Neville Crichton and John Bowe, in what was Bowe’s Bathurst debut. The openwheeler careers of Bowe and

McRae had brie y intersected in 1979’s nal round of the Gold Star, where McRae made his last F5000 start.