Racing Gibsons are joint 2012 PI Classic Patrons

SYDNEY – Feb 10, 2012: Australia’s most famous husband and wife touring car team of Fred and Christine Gibson are joint Patrons of the 2012 Phillip Island Classic Festival of Motorsport from March 9-11.

Bathurst winner, Ford factory driver and later mastermind and owner of the team that won four Australian Touring Car Championships and three Bathurst 1000s, Fred Gibson is one of the giants of Australian motorsport.

Christine Gibson (ne Cole) remains Australia’s most successful female driver after a career that began in 1967 driving a Mini sports sedan and peaked with her competing as a Holden and an Alfa Romeo Dealer Team driver in the 1970s and a Nissan team driver in the early 1980s.

Today retired, but still very much on the pulse of the sport’s latest developments, the Gibsons fit perfectly with the 2012 Phillip Island Classic theme, celebrating the ‘Class of 1972’.

After his first Bathurst victory with Harry Firth in 1967 driving a new XR Falcon GT, Fred Gibson became a mainstay of the Ford team for the next six years, scoring major victories at Amaroo Park and winning the competitive Toby Lee Series production sedan series at Oran Park in 1970 and 1971 driving his own Falcon GTHO.

Christine competed in several events for the Holden Dealer Team in the early 1970s, including driving a ‘prototype XU-I’ GT-R Torana with Sandra Bennett at Bathurst in 1970 and competing in two Rallycross events at Calder and Catalina, the latter driving the ex-Peter Brock supercharged Torana.

She joined the semi-works Alfa Romeo Dealer Team from 1973 driving GTV 2000 coupes in the Manufacturers’ Series and she met Fred Gibson while racing against him in his Falcon at Surfers Paradise that year. They were married the following year in Sydney.

In 1975 Christine was in contention for the 2.0-litre class in the Australian Touring Car Championship, but was forced to abandon the final rounds to give birth to their first child, Shona. Fred took over the Alfa for the rest of the year, with the Gibsons’ Alfa finishing fifth outright in the ATCC.

The only time the pair have shared the same car occurred in 1978 when Fred was due to co-drive a Torana A9X in the Rothmans 500 endurance race at Oran Park with the car’s owner Joe Moore. But when Moore was injured just before the race, Christine stood in for him.

“We raced against each other many times in different cars, but this was the only time we shared the same vehicle,” recalled Christine.

Christine recalls that their times in the A9X were fairly similar and they were leading in the race’s final stages when the engine let go and John Harvey went on to win in the Dealer Team Torana.

Christine temporarily stopped racing shortly afterwards to look after their young family, while in 1981 Fred joined the newly-formed Nissan touring car team, headed by a colleague from his factory Ford days, Howard Marsden.

Fred became the team's regular number two driver alongside George Fury during the Group C era, pioneering turbocharged touring cars with the cantankerous Nissan Bluebird and when Marsden left, he became the team’s manager, then its owner.

Christine returned to the track in 1983, joining joined Fred at Nissan and driving her last race in the Nissan EXA with the team at Bathurst in 1985.

Fred then oversaw the Australian Nissan Skyline program during Group A era, bringing young drivers Glenn Seton and Mark Skaife into the series.

Success for the team, now known as Gibson Motor Sport, came at last with the 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship for Jim Richards. Along the way Gibson and his team developed the Nissan GT-R into the dominant car of the era, winning three successive championships, taking back-to-back Bathurst 1000 wins in 1991 and 1992.

Fred continued to run Gibson Motor Sport as a Holden team in the V8 Supercar era as a Holden team, becoming a championship winner again with Skaife in 1994.

The end of tobacco sponsorship forced an end to the team's lucrative partner, Winfield and Fred eventually sold his interest.

In 2004 he was inducted into the V8 Supercar Hall of Fame.

Both Fred and Christine are looking forward to their latest motor racing ‘partnership’ at Phillip Island.

“We both really relate to historic motorsport,” said Christine. “There’s less ballyhoo than in today’s motor racing, everyone is very friendly and they talk a language I can understand!”

With a record 573 entry applications received, the 2012 Phillip Island Classic will be the largest historic motor racing meeting every staged in Australia. The event remains one of the most respected historic motorsport events on the international calendar and it was recently short-listed in Octane Magazine’s inaugural 2011 International Historic Motoring Awards.

It is being organised for the 23rd year by the Victorian Historic Racing Register, again supported by Shannons, CoolDrive and Penrite