I am the greatest

Gary Patterson made his first trip to Australia in 1971, billed as the Hostile Hippie. “Two guys got upside down and a switch clicked,” he explained after causing riots in Adelaide. “I knew what everyone wanted. If you’re a bad guy you don’t have to win. Hell, the crowd love to see me lose.”

With his Grateful Dead hair style, moustache and general air of arrogance, he was perfect for playing the part of the loudmouth American villain, even if he was really a sensitive soul underneath. He loved Australia and came back every year throughout the seventies, preferring to drive his beloved Super Modifieds and Sprintcars, only racing those `damn taxi cabs’ if necessary. By his second or third visit he had the words 'The Great GP’ stitched on the front of his racesuit and liked to claim that he was the best racecar driver in the world except for his hero AJ Foyt.

Patterson first appeared in a brutal Super Modified which he sometimes used as high-speed battering ram.

His philosophy was win or crash, but even those whom he crashed into seemed to like the guy after he'd shouted them a post-race Southern Comfort or 15. Patterson was a real racer with the aura of a wild west gunslinger, traveling the world in search of fast cars and exotic women. He claimed that he never owned a car of his own, but there were more than enough owners happy enough to let him loose in their very expensive toys. The Great GP died in 1983 in a race crash at Calistoga in California.