I appreciate that not everyone was around to remember it all, but I thought there'd be more...
Niel was instrumental, by the way, in having harnesses mandated in open-wheelers in many parts of the world. It was his survival after the mother and father of all crashes at Lakeside that set things going. I was there that day, very much horrified at what I saw taking place before my eyes, I've written about it many times:
Niel bought the M4a from Piers Courage. With its 1600cc FVA engine, it was nearly a match for the 2.5 Repco V8 and FPF Climax-powered cars running in the Gold Star series.
Bob Levett and I were elated when we stopped at Tweed Heads en route from Sydney to Lakeside for the Gold Star race there. We had driven through the night in my 203 (it was freezing cold, and there were frogs everywhere in the sugar cane area north of Grafton), so getting the paper before breakfast we found that Niel was fastest in practice, having done a lap in 52.7 seconds - the best lap ever to that time, if I'm not mistaken (the International race that year was as Surfers).
We got to the circuit and went to our favourite viewing point, near the toilet on the inside of the circuit high above the kink at the end of the straight and before the Karussell. When they came out, Niel was getting into his stride well enough. We watched him come up the straight, through the kink. At the exit, the cars went out of our sight as they were obscured by the embankment, and we saw a large puff of dust.
Moments later we saw the McLaren - 30' in the air, upside down and backwards, its silver underside and chromed suspension parts glistening in the sun!
It came down, tumbled and flipped itself to destruction. The ambulance driver in the pits was driving around trying to find a way onto the circuit, while the ambulance designated to serve that part of the place was still. Eventually, it moved. By that time Wayne Eckersly had run all the way from the pits and was cradling Niel's head as he lay in the tub on its side. Everything else was off the car, and the back was even torn out of the tub.
It was our first sight of a crash that big where the driver wore a proper harness. We had to believe the worst, but it transpired that he had broken a finger. The McLaren was rebuilt, and among other things it achieved in later life was to hold the outright lap record for Racing Cars at Warwick Farm.
I don't think Niel ever recovered memory of that day. Today he is something of a recluse, his rather glamorous wife left him and his real estate empire crumbled yet again (he developed high-rise office buildings). I don't know what he does these days, the last time I saw him he was driving an Elwyn Formula Ford in a demonstration day at the AARC's (the club who ran Warwick Farm) 20th anniversary day (or something like that) at Amaroo Park, where they went to hold their meetings after the Farm closed in 1973.
In the same issue of
Racing Car News as the report on the Lakeside race meeting at which Niel had his biggest crash appeared, Dr Michael Henderson had this article about the results of it...
Of note in the pictures is, as I have described elsewhere, Niel in the remains of the tub lying on its side...
Also of note is the fact that the whole crew and a marshal have run to the scene. I described previously how the ambulance at the other end of the circuit was running around in circles looking for a way to get there while the one serving this section sat beside the control tower, its driver unconcerned, and when moved to action he drove quite slowly to the scene.
Wayne Eckersly, as I recall, was first to reach the scene. Peter Molloy is at the left in that pic, apparently supporting Niel's head.
Peter was to have nightmares for years that the crash was his fault, I have recently learned. He had lightened the steering arms on the front uprights and one of them was broken, though who's to say whether it broke and caused the crash or it was broken in the crash.
Niel later on consulted Jim Bertram, showing him an original steering arm and asking Jim if he thought it could be safely lightened... basically Jim said, "No, I don't think so."
