[Rev28K]

He was definitely one the best touring car drivers in the world (top ten of all time).

Like a lot of our drivers there is a possibility that others could’ve done more if given the chances and opportunities that Brock had – but they didn’t did they. At his peak he was very good at doing what he did, other drivers may have been as capable but they were a bit one-dimensional all they could do was race cars well without beating them up. John Bagshaw said that they shipped PB off to a finishing school to round off the rough edges and make him more media presentable and they did an exceptional job on PB. He was incredible to watch with the fans, I met him a few times and each time it was a “WOW” moment.

Don’t forget he was initially hired for his rally abilities (anyone remember the Round Australia win with the then new Commodores), he also dragged up the 3.0CSL BMW way up the field with Team Brock at Le Mans. I’ve had occasion to talk with Ron Bentley (who built his first race car) and he said that he stood out as being more gifted than the average race driver. While he had his faults (very superstitious about the Bob Jane Porsche at Le Mans – some of his mechanical sympathy was a bit opportunistic – I thought setting quickest lap at Bathurst in the A9X on the last lap when he had the race by the balls was a bit dumb - he never liked Nascar racing (then again neither did Johnson while Jimmy Richards LOVED it) – In the later days at HRT he would try to simply drive around a problem rather than identify it and solve it) on his day he was a very good racer and a wonderful ambassador for the sport. Like a lot of Australia’s “greats” (Moffat, Johnson, Perkins, Bowe, etc) he also carried on far longer than he should have.

It’s always hard to rate people from different eras. Some people say that one of the things about champions is that they have the good gear and can drag the good people towards them then lift a team up while others argue that a champion will drag a car up far above where it should finish. I’ve spoken to someone who’s team raced against HDT (he wound up working for HDT for a while) back in the ATCC days and he said that Brock (and HDT) was always the one they measured themselves against.