REMEMBERING JOHN HARVEY

Remembering John Harvey

John Harvey was one of our most versatile drivers ever. From Sydney Showground to Mount Panorama, he was fast and fearless. ‘Harves’ was also fated as the great runner-up.

APPRECIATION By MARK FOGARTY

Sadly, John Francis Harvey OAM has succumbed to an insidious illness, aged 82. He lived a good life and his loss will be widely mourned.

We were prepared for his death – just not so soon. His family alerted us to his plight on social media last month, which can’t have been easy, revealing that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

It was distressing news because Harves was liked and admired throughout racing, as well as by his many fans going back nearly 60 years.

Learning of his impending demise gave me, and others, the chance to pay tribute to him while he was still alive.

I dedicated most of my column in the latest issue of the magazine to an appreciation of Harvey the man and the racing driver.

Regrettably, he died just a few days after it was published. I hope he was able to read – or at least be told about – the homage, and others like it, to bask in the respect and popularity he earned.

Thanks to his family’s courage, it was a privilege to be able to celebrate his career and write an acclamation while he was still here.

It is with a heavy heart that the tribute has become an obituary. This eulogy is an expanded version of what I wrote in the magazine.

Harvey’s achievements in racing were honoured with an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) and induction into the Australian Motor Sport Hall Of Fame.

Surely, he will enter the Supercars Hall Of Fame posthumously.

Sydney born but Melbourne-based for most of his life, Harvey emerged from the dirt track speedway bullrings in the early 1960s to become one of the country’s best road racers in open wheelers, sports cars, sports sedans and touring cars.

Yet, despite his virtuosity, he lived in the shadows of titans like Bob Jane and Peter Brock.

Harvey was a team player, a professional who accepted his role and followed the rules of his employers.

A gentle, laconic person, Harves took life’s ups and downs as they came.

Never more so than when he worked with Brock, who christened him ‘Slug’. Most would take offence to the apparently pejorative nickname. It was a warped term of endearment that Harvey wore without rancour or resentment.

To most, though, he was Harves, the easy going racer who could excel in any kind of car. And motorcycles, about which he was passionate. He was an accomplished rider who probably could have been competitive in Superbikes.

I was fortunate to know and report on Harves since the mid-1970s.

From his days as the Bob Jane team’s all-rounder – open-wheelers, sports cars, touring cars and sports sedans – to Peter Brock’s right hand man and ultimately a founding senior executive of Holden Special Vehicles.

I enjoyed our interactions over decades – and as recently as a few years ago – because he was open and honest. A journo can’t ask for anything more.

Harvey was one of good guys. Great bloke, great driver. Despite his virtuosity, he was an under-valued achiever whose talent and potential were subsumed by team loyalty. He was one of the very best who played second fiddle in his prime.

Harves could have been an open-wheel star worthy of F1 consideration. A huge crash at Bathurst in 1968, which left him partially deaf, ended that promise.

He was Bob Jane’s jack-of-all-cars in the late 1960s and early ’70s before joining HDT full-time in ’77, staying through the turbulent Brock era.

He shared victory at Bathurst in 1983, when Brock took over his car. He worked dutifully with and for Brock until Peter was no longer perfect in early 1987, reluctantly leaving the HDT madhouse.

Harvey famously teamed with Allan Moffat to win the opening round of the 1987 world touring car championship in a Holden Commodore surreptitiously secured from Brock.

It was by default after the top six BMW M3s were thrown out, but the sheer gumption of the rogue effort deserves ever-lasting praise.

He retired from racing at the end of ’88 after a driving career that began in desperately dangerous speedway speedcars in the late ’50s.

Perhaps the most iconic images of him were in Bob Jane’s gorgeous Sebring red – aka orange – McLaren M6B-Repco, in which he won the 1971/72 Australian sports car championships.

Harves is a Holden legend who deserves more recognition than the record book portrays. He was a smooth stylist, as fast as anyone on his day, who played by team rules, often to his cost.

I admired him as a person and respected him as a racer. I hope history remembers him for the dignified superstar he was.

John Francis Harvey, RIP.