A Pictorial look at the 1976 Castrol 6 Hour Production race..held at Amaroo Park Raceway on the northern outskirts of Sydney...

I've always been a rather keen photographer, especially in my earlier days for black and white images and some of my early work was done with Voigtlander Bessamatic M cameras,  Zeizz Ikon Icarex cameras, Leica M3 camera... all 35mm format as well as a Mamiya C3 2¼” square 120 format camera.

I used mostly Ilford FP3  125ASA B &W film, developing it myself and utilised a Durst enlarger with Schneider lenses for printing photos on Ilford paper.

I have some some years back converted to Canon digital SLRs, progressing through EOS350, EOS450, EOS550 to my current EOS6D. 

Enough of this technical stuff....

Many of the film rolls I shot were cut into strips and filed into envelopes for later printing but for some reason this didn't always occur and recently looking through my negative collection I've come across the unprinted ones...

Using a Microtek 1000XL larger format scanner with negative capability and software I quite like, the images have finally "come to life"...

In the early 1970's I rode BMW motorcycles and a friend, John Galvin who was the Metzeler tyre importer to Australia became involved in the Castrol 6 Hour production machine race. A race for standard and I emphasis standard motorcycles...little in the way of modifications were allowed. I rode in the 1971 event on my 1967 Velocette Venom Thruxton 500.

People from the NSW BMW distributor, Tom Byrne, Don Bain in particular who I knew from my interest in Velocette and it's earlier successes in Australian racing from 1930-1955 when he was a  champion rider, asked me to lap score for them in the event.

So let's look at my "photographic involvement" in the 1976 event. One which carried the hopes of some of the major motorcycle distributors in Australia...as this list from Jim Scaysbrook's excellent book on the race series from 1970-1987 shows....

 

The practice period for the event is in the week leading up to the race on the Sunday. Riders mill around awaiting a practice session to start...

Joe Eastmure and Dave Burgess on their R90S #8

 Murray Sayle, Bryan Hindle (back to camera) Greg Hansford and Helmut Dahne.

 

Preparing for the Le Mans start....

 

The start sequence....

Tony Hatton #2 BMW R90S and Roger Heyes #3 Team Avon Z1-B Kawasaki

The first two hour stint over, the Hatton/Blake R90S refuels....

Team Avon had  to refuel every 1.5 hours, 4 stops to the BMW teams two stops....

Team Avon had practiced the refuelling stops and they did their stop to take off in 6.5 seconds...you read it right...!

As shown in an earlier post of the tyre war between Metzeler and Avon, the Avon on the 4 cylinder Z1-B 900 Kawasaki was marginal to last the distance...they had to be able to get out of the pits after their last refuelling stop avoiding being ordered to change the tyre, a certain loss of the race.

Their last refuelling stop caught the chief scrutineer, Chris Peckham, off guard and he's pictured rushing up to look at the rear tyre, but they got out before he could see the tyre and below shows the tyre or what remains of it after the race....!

The results of the 1976 Castrol 6 Hour race from page 103 of Jim Scaysbrook's excellent book of the race's history 1970-1987 and also from Jim's book, p.92, the poster by artist Alan Puckett depicting the winning tactic for the race that year by team Avon...the 6.5 second fuel stops.....

 

The cover of Jim Scaysbrook's excellent book.....

Velocette and a re-eneactment, come revival of the 17 years of the Castrol 6 Hour production race at the Motorcycling Victoria's Broadford complex, some 70 km north of Melbourne

The Castrol 6 Hour race was an event in Australia that ran for 17 years from 1970 to 1987. It was a production machine race with very strict compliance rules which, to avoid hassles for the pre-race scrutineering, some entrants had a new out of the crate motorcycle sealed by the then ACU of NSW and raced it.....
The first event in 1970 saw a Triumph Bonneville 650 take the line honours with Len Atlee and Bryen Hindle the victors.
For the next event in 1971 I entered my 1967 Velocette Venom Thruxton  with co-rider ex international Dennis Fry and good friends, John Herrick as reserve rider and Jim Day, our pit crew.
I detailed the event in a previous 6 Hour race post....
So lets forward to this years Easter weekend....
Motorcycling Victoria has a 420 acre tract of land some 70km north of Melbourne, Victoria and Motorcycling Australia with sponsor Penrite Oils made "a celebration of The Castrol Six Hour, 1970-1987" the theme for the weekend open practices on all the circuits on the complex....

The complex has multiple circuits as mentioned, but the theme was centered around the road race circuit...

I took a partial panoramic view of part of the circuit....

There was a good representation of the many hundreds of bikes that entered the event over the 17 years as well as some of the riders of that time.... Joe Eastmure, won, well took the chequered flag first in a solo effort in 1972 on a 315cc Suzuki, only to be disqualified for having removed the horn from the bike....tough regulations! 
Len Atlee won the first event in 1970, Dave Hiscock from NZ, Graeme Crosby...Croz to many, from NZ. Bill Horseman from Adelaide South Australia and so on......
Yes DQ was there and while we couldn't get my original VMT458 Velocette which is still in Perth, Western Australia,John Jennings stepped up onto the plate and having engine number VMT457 Velocette Thruxton ( both his and my bike came out in the same crate to Burling and Simmonds the Sydney motorcycle dealer in Feb.1967) with the bike in a similar patina paint wise to mine of the time, a set of racing numbers to the colour and spec. for the 1971 supplementary regulations for the race, and his bike became my old race bike.....!

John Jennings VMT457

DQ aboard VMT458 during the 1971 event...

While there were no races on all the circuits, per se, open practice was on in various classes of motorcycles and in the road race area, from the 6 hour class; pre 1963; pre 1975;pre 1990; road bikes, novice;road bikes,intermediate.
Lots to see and so come with me on a photographic stroll through the areas around the pits and up to the fence on a section of the circuit for a look.....

Fancy a cup of coffee first? An enterprising local with a Yamaha and replica Dusting sidecar equipped as a coffee bar did a roaring trade all weekend...mind you he worked his butt off....

A racing 1954 Adler MB250, with owner, Otto Muller, head cut off by DQ, looking on....

 

Jeffery Richardson's mk.8 KTT slides off the starting rollers.... 

John Jennings slips out for some practice......

An old friend, Phil Vergison was also there with his camera and sent some pix along for me to utilise....

 

Joe Eastmure, to the right with his ( unsure about this...) 315cc Suzuki, 

 1972 6 hour bike....

 Joe out on the Suzuki with #9 Jim Scaysbrook on the former Hailwood/Scaysbrook Ducati entry from the 1977 event.

The Carbury.... a home made V twin royal Enfield....

JJ brought along his little racing MAC Velocette...

Nic-named "Li'l speedy".....

So how did DQ and crew get to Broadford....?

Well my C4 Citroen trailered down my 1960 Venom and Jim Day's 1965 Venom Clubman....with Peter Underwood riding his 1960 Venom the 750 km from Sydney and back...a sort of "running in"...we had Ben Wolven trailering his Norton Interstate with us...

Pictured is Jim Day, front with Peter Underwood having a well deserved 

"cuppa".

So we'll finish off with some pics of Mitch over from Western Australia for the event having a run on #34 while Tony Keene and John Jennings prepare to load VMT457 for the trip home...

Thanks John....VMT457 was a worthy replica for my old warhorse VMT458....long gone.

 But I've still got the crashed silencer from the 1971 race...

Ouch....!