Moore than meets the eye

NO TRIVIAL PURSUIT

Graham Moore’s colourful career provides much fodder for motor sport trivia buffs. For example, who is the only driver to race in the Bathurst 1000 with two world champions? Which driver’s Great Race career includes competing in each of the classic’s eras – Series Production, Production Touring Group C, International Group A, Group A 5.0-litre V8 (what’s now V8 Supercar) and 2.0-litre Super Touring? Which driver lies equal sixth on the Great Race’s most starts list with 26 starts, alongside legends Larry Perkins, Allan Grice and Dick Johnson?
Get the idea? Moore can’t lay claim to a record anywhere near as distinguished as multiple Bathurst winners Perkins, Grice and Johnson. But he did partner the latter pair – as he did with many of the sport’s big names – and often raced Perkins-built cars.

Moore was a prolific Bathurst campaigner over a 32-year period, whose business commitments and limited race funding prevented him from competing full-time. That didn’t stop him winning races in his Series Production days and battling the greats at Mount Panorama on occasions. That was during his first decade in racing, when he competed regularly.
From the mid 1970s, his outings were more spasmodic. Bathurst became an annual adventure rather than a climax to his racing season, and he limited his participation to occasional outings in other enduros, like the annual Spa 24-Hour touring car marathon.
The Sydney smash repair workshop owner’s intermittent drives didn’t stop him from posting impressive privateer results, or stitching together campaigns for world motor sport’s biggest names. His entrepreneurial streak, credibility and passion saw the likes of Wayne Gardner, Alan Jones, and no less an organisation than Williams-Renault readily hook-up with him at Bathurst.
This is the story of a racer whose name most AMC readers would recognise, but may struggle to connect to his wide-ranging feats. It’s a tale of quirky Bathurst campaigns (he somehow got the fragile and otherwise unloved Triumph Dolomite Sprint home inside the top 10!) in a wider range of vehicles than any other driver. Above all, it’s an insight into one of the Great Race’s great characters, whose only two factory rides came a quarter of a century apart!
Read on to discover some surprising accomplishments, including how he earned thanks from Peter Brock during the 1972 Bathurst 500 victory speech, for keeping him, literally, on the straight and narrow.
We learn who Moore considers his best co-driver and of his desire to extend his 45-year racing career towards an even half-century.
Moore also tells of his one racing regret - turning down an invitation to join Australian racing’s leading operation. All that and a whole lot…

EARLY CAREER

Like so many Sydney-based racing folk of his generation, the Ryde-born Moore’s first race was at Warwick Farm, in 1963 in a Holden 48-215.
“It was my road car and I just took off the number plates and put on my mate’s second-hand B7 Dunlop tyres and off I went – and ran third. I was 18.”
A couple of seasons of racing Holdens at the Farm, Catalina Park and Oran Park brought him to the attention of Cooper S owner Ray Kaleda for the 1965 Armstrong 500. We’ll deal with his Great Race outings elsewhere, but it was the start of his love affair with the Mountain, which continues to this day, some 43 years later.
Moore quickly came to realise that tin-tops were his thing, after dabbling in open-wheelers in the late 1960s, in a Lotus 20B Formula Junior.
“I didn’t really enjoy that,” Moore says. “It was the car that Pete Geoghegan end-over-ended at Warwick Farm. It was repaired, but probably not properly and I was never really happy with it. I did pretty well with it, but I was never comfortable like I was in a touring car.”
That era saw Moore race a HK Monaro GTS 327, including to eighth place at Bathurst’s 1969 ATCC round.
“We were faster in that car at Easter than the Holden Dealer Team were with it the year before,” Moore says.