Three Bathurst antagonists come together: Graeme Crosby
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Always a much-vaunted event on the Penrite Oil Broadford Bike Bonanza schedule, the 2015 edition of the Gala Dinner on Saturday night again proved to be a fantastic celebration of historic motorcycling in Australia.
In line with the Bonanza theme of ’50 years racing at Bathurst’, the three adversaries from the famous 1979 Australian Unlimited Grand Prix in Ron Boulden, Graeme Crosby and John Woodley came together with MC Alan Cathcart to headline the evening’s proceedings and discuss the race face-to-face 36 years on.
In the second instalment of this three-part series, we hear Crosby’s take on the race, which was eventually won in wet conditions by the 19-year old Boulden on his TZ750 Yamaha. Crosby on his KR750 Kawasaki finished runner-up, ahead of Kiwi counterpart Woodley in third (RG500 Suzuki).
“(Talking about the Australian GP held at Bathurst the day before) I was actually annoyed I won the wrong race. The thing about that was there were two races; the Unlimited Grand Prix and the Australian Grand Prix, which is was what the target was.
“And to be fair I can’t remember a lot about the Saturday race apart from the fact that we won by about 25 seconds.
“I was pretty confident obviously after having the result the day before. I set the lap record and that was pretty cool.
“The KR750 was actually really quite good off the line. It was a torquey three cylinder that really moved well.
“When you get three bikes of varying degrees of performance and you put them on a big straight, they all get sucked along; one gets a tow, the next gets a tow and it’s actually quite surprising that in those last two humps, there’s lots of pictures of us with the throttles twisted right up and helmets tucked right in near the screen in the fear of the thing going over backwards.
“I actually feel privileged to ride one of the fastest bikes down that straight and to be able to survive it; I couldn’t do it these days.
“The strategy I had was not to let them get away. Basically, if you led onto the straight and we couldn’t get the tow, then you would genuinely put a fair margin between us. Going up the hill, you couldn’t lose the opportunity to stay up there, so we would get right on the tail going up so I could get on the slipstream on the way down.
“As the race is getting to the end, you become so focused and you’re oblivious to anything else. You pick up an inch that’s totally noticeable because you’re totally in-tune. The problem was I was looking for it, but on this occasion it wasn’t there.
“In hindsight, I think it was my most exciting race. If you listen to what people told us about that event and the changes in the lead, it was a really cool race to be a part of. In some respects, I wish I was in the stands watching it.”
Continue through to the recollections of the 1979 Australian Unlimited Grand Prix from John Woodley using the buttons below. Click through to page three
