Vale Damon Beck

Readers of AMC who do know the name Damon Beck probably best remember him for his start in the ’71 Bathurst 500 with speedway star Garry Rush in a Baldwin Ford-sponsored Falcon GTHO Phase III. It famously wasn’t the car they’d intended to race – the original car got written off a few weeks before the race when it hit a horse on the road! Beck qualified the re-shelled Falcon ninth on the grid (eighth fastest of the 13 Phase IIIs) and ran solidly in the race until a front suspension failure put them out.

That was the fourth of Beck’s five Great Race starts. But there was one other appearance, the following year, when he teamed up with Doug Chivas in a Valiant Charger. Back then Beck was running a Chrysler dealership at Katoomba. Chrysler itself had only just quit the sport (which was wonderful timing given they’d just spent all that time and money developing an E49 Charger that might just have given Peter Brock a real shake had there been a works-backed effort), but Beck was able to put together a modest regional dealer-supported effort, the ‘Country Chryslers Dealers’ Charger E49. Chivas had come into the deal as one of the discarded works Chrysler drivers, and it seems that on that basis he assumed quasi number one driver status. Both drivers qualified the car and Chivas took the start. As the race unfolded, Beck came to the decision not to drive. He was pleased with Chivas’ progress, and the way things were going they were on for a very good result. Chivas was in the groove; Beck could see little point in altering a formula that was working well. And so he let Doug do the race solo.

Chivas delivered, bringing the car home in third place. It was the highest result ever achieved by a Chrysler in the history of the race.

The name ‘Damon Beck’ can be seen in photos of the car from that race, underneath ‘Doug Chivas’ in big bold font of the Charger’s front guards. But you won’t find Beck’s name in the history books from that year – because he did not drive during the race.

This was a sore point with Beck himself, who always believed he should have been officially credited with that third-place result alongside Chivas. He made his feelings about this known in no uncertain terms to Chevron Publishing, the publisher of the annual The Great Race official history of the Bathurst classic (and which these days publishes Australian MUSCLE CAR magazine).

The irony of this is that it wasn’t as though Beck couldn’t have done the job that year. He was not your average owner/driver, weekend Bathurst warrior: he in fact was a very competent and quick driver.

Later on, in 1993, he did taste success on the Mountain, with a class victory in the Bathurst 12 Hour alongside Murray Carter and Brian Wilshire in a Nissan Pulsar SSS.

Beck mostly only raced production cars and Formula Vees. The latter was a personal passion, and Beck was always proud of having held the Amaroo Park and Oran Park lap records for lengthy spells.

To some, that might not sound like much of a claim, but lap records are never easily won regardless of the category - and that was certainly true of Formula Vee in NSW in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Back then it was a hotly contested stepping-stone formula, with big fields of young rising stars slugging it out with established top Vee specialists like Bernie Haehnle, Doug Angus, Frank Kleinig, Greg McCombie and Peter Radtke.

Behind the scenes Beck was a long-term NSW Formula Vee Association committeeman and president. He played crucial roles in the importation and distribution of the Bridgestone control tyres which Vees ran (it was a non-profit activity performed on behalf of the club but which sometimes entailed Beck going into personal debt in order to secure a pre-order of Formula Vee tyre stock), and in helping younger drivers starting out in Vees with advice and assistance. This included special (free-of-charge) race-driving tuition days at Amaroo Park from none other than Leo Geoghegan, with whom Beck had gone into business in a used car dealership in Sydney during the early '80s. Beck was awarded life membership of the Formula Vee Association of NSW in 1997.

He also held several senior positions with CAMS, serving for many years on the CAMS NSW State Council, and assuming the position of NSW Delegate to the CAMS National Council for nearly 10 years until 1992. In 2002 Beck was formally recognised for his contribution to the sport with the Motorsport Australia Service Award. Two years later he was made a life member of Motorsport Australia.

He enjoyed a long stint at the Australian Racing Drivers’ Club in the roles of general manager and president. He was club president from 1988 to 1990 and then general manager from 1990-1991. He was back as president from 1997 to 2003, helping to steer the club through the difficult transition from Amaroo Park to the Eastern Creek circuit.

When Beck was elected president for the second time, the ARDC was literally fighting to avoid bankruptcy. The income the Eastern Creek venue was generating didn’t even cover the monthly lease payments to the NSW government (when the lease deal was done, the NSW government apparently assured the club that it would enjoy huge profits from the drag racing meetings behind held on the main straight; the truth was that the drag racing ran at a huge loss). If that wasn’t enough, at the same time the ARDC was in the middle of the ‘V8s vs 2-litre’ battle for Bathurst. While that was a war the ARDC would lose, Beck and the club’s management were gradually able to turn things around at Eastern Creek to make the track profitable and secure the future of the ARDC in the process. Twenty-plus years later those turbulent times seem long ago as the ARDC-controlled venue thrives in its new multi-layout guise as Sydney Motorsport Park.

Beck was awarded life membership of the ARDC in 2004. It was during that decade that he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The severity of his illness forced him into early retirement. He died in October, 2023.