Classic Motor Sport

With the sun flashing off the bodywork of his Formula 2 McLaren, Len Goodwin accelerates out of Creek Corner at Warwick Farm during the Australian Grand Prix, November 22, 1970. (Photograph by Nigel Foote)    

Goodwin drove a fine race in front of a smaller than usual crowd to be the first F2 home, and sixth overall behind Frank Matich, Niel Allen, Graeme Lawrence, Leo Geoghegan and David Walker.

Although a fine and purposeful-looking racing car (in the author's opinion), note the squarer, more angular style that was beginning to replace the beautiful, classic lines of the sixties cars. Things were changing ... the Golden Era of motor racing, the swinging 1960s, was slipping away into the sepia mists of time. When the international drivers stopped coming Down Under to contest the Tasman Series, the crowds began to dwindle and the rising costs of continually having to install and remove Warwick Farm's two 'crossings' for the horse-race track, meant that 'Headquarters', as it had come to be known, was under the threat of closure. 

With the advent of the TAB filling its coffers, the AJC no longer needed the modest revenue it received from motor racing, and although plans were made to save The Farm, it fell into the lonely silence of neglect. The proposed round of the Formula One World Drivers Championship at Longford, Tasmania didn't eventuate and by the time the international drivers finally returned to Australia, motor racing as we knew it was over. Gone was the style, the beautiful lines of the cars, the glorious sounds of their engines – Formula One cars these these days sound like mosquitos on steroids!