After an international driving career blazing the circuits of Europe and Australia, surviving the most exciting yet dangerous era in the history of the sport, Frank Gardner largely achieved his ambition and eventually retired happily with his wife Gloria on the Gold Coast, where he has died after a long illness, aged 78.
The multi-talented Gardner was one of Australia’s greatest motor sport exports, winning more than 100 international races and numerous European titles as a driver, heading development programs for major manufacturers as an engineer, and taking out Australia’s biggest races as a team owner.
Gardner, a gifted athlete, represented his native NSW in swimming, won national surf lifesaving titles, and was a handy if reluctant boxer. He earned enough from seven professional bouts to open his own garage. He also taught Brabham how to dive and sail, and maintained a single-figure golf handicap well into his senior years.
Fate led Gardner to race: he was 12 years old when his father was hit by a car and killed. He moved in with his uncle, a noted racer in Sydney, who later provided an old MG for his nephew’s first car race, which he duly won.
After numerous sports car wins in Jaguars that he had rebuilt, Gardner decided to try his luck and followed Brabham to Britain. He leased out his garage and “decided to give it five years” - but ended up staying two decades.
Formula one success eluded him - he made eight World Championship starts in 1964-65 driving an underfunded Brabham Team racing car, with a best of eighth in the British Grand Prix - but Gardner won in almost everything else.
Between 1967 and 1973, he won three British Touring Car Championships, the European Formula 5000 Championship, and finished runner-up in the European Formula Two Championship. He even became the first Australian to contest a NASCAR stock car race in the United States.
But after attending too many of his colleagues’ funerals, Gardner and his famous white towelling hat returned to Australia in 1975. He built a radical rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair that he drove to 41 wins from 49 starts, taking out the Australian Sports Sedan Championship before finally hanging up his helmet at the end of 1977.
Gardner, a winner all his life, may not have been perfect but he was always perfectly Frank.
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