A LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
“Man, that was wild!” Doug Chivas was ‘amped’, bouncing around on the balls of his feet, eyes wide as he gave a rapid-fire account of his ride in the Australian Unlimited Sidecar Grand Prix at Bathurst. It was a sunny Easter Sunday, April 10, 1977. ‘Chivo’ had just hopped off the passenger’s platform of Peter Campbell’s Kawasaki Z1000-powered sidecar after what can best be called a torrid encounter with the top sidecar men in Australia. They had been in the thick of the action despite the four-stroke losing out down Con-Rod Straight to the TZ750 Yamaha-powered opposition.
When he found his way blocked by Stan Bayliss and Geoff Taylor in one run up Mountain Straight out of Hell Corner, Campbell went left, putting the sidecar wheel – and Chivo – out into the long roadside grass, a burst of dust marking the passing move.
Chivo also related how at one point he had been looking down on Barry Fraser, Taylor’s passenger, as they negotiated the Dipper – Campbell ‘flying’ Chivo in the chair through one of the trickiest sections of the Mount Panorama circuit. There was no doubting how hard Chivo had been working; his hands were blistered and bleeding from the effort.
Winning in New Zealand
The preceding summer, Campbell and Chivas had won every sidecar race they started in the Marlboro International Series in New Zealand. Graeme Crosby recalls they travelled New Zealand in a Ford V4 Transit van with Ross Hannan’s Yoshimura Kawasaki Z1000 Superbike in the back while the sidecar outfit rode on a trailer behind. Crosby drove a borrowed Austin A40 Farina with his then girlfriend Brenda Jury.
“The A40 topped out a bit over 50mph on the flat but by slipping it out of gear on downhills, it would get up to 60,” Crosby recalls. “Sometimes we’d get a ‘tap’ on the rear bumper – it was Chivo in the Transit, grinning like mad, telling us to speed up.”
Something else happened in New Zealand that summer: Doug met fellow sidecar passenger Margaret Halliday at the Pukekohe round. By Timaru the chemistry between them was obvious: Doug captivated by the quietly spoken 20-year-old who would eventually join him in Sydney.
The Bathurst challenge
Bathurst had a special attraction for
