Fatal Grand Prix crash

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32810, 10 January 1972, Page 1

Fatal Grand Prix crash

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, January 9.

TW New Zealand motor-racing champion, Graeme Lawrence, of Hamilton, lies seriously injured in an Auck-

land hospital tonight after a two-car crash in the closing laps of yesterday’s New Zealand Grand Prix at Pukekohe.

The driver of the other car, Bryan Faloon, aged 28, of Tauranga, died on his way to hospital. He suffered multiple injuries. The photographs show Faloon, indicated by an arrow, slumped in his cockpit seconds after the crash and the wrecks of his Stanton Porsche (middle) and Lawrence’s Lola. The cars touched on the high-speed kink on the back straight of the 1.75-mile circuit, where the fastest cars exceed 170 miles an hour. INQUIRY SET UP Accounts of how Faloon’s Stanton Porsche and Lawrence’s Lola T3OO came into contact and the sequence of events that ended so tragically within a few seconds are, in many respects, conflicting, and it is unlikely that the complete story will be known until the committee of inquiry set up by the Motor Sport Association of New Zealand has sifted all the evidence. But it would appear that Faloon, who was being rapidly overhauled by the Australian Elfin Repco driver, John McCormack, at the approach to the very gentle curve in the long back

straight at Pukekohe, moved over to let him through, not realising that Lawrence was tucked in behind. McCormack said after the race that he passed Faloon and continued knowing nothing of the accident behind him. DEBRIS HITS TRAIN Lawrence’s Lola apparently ran up the back of the Stanton Porsche and then cartwheeled off the track to the right, debris from it hitting a slow-moving train. The car came to rest against a power pole. Lawrence remained securely strapped in it.

Faloon’s car, still on its wheels, continued in a straight line, and ploughed into a protective earth bank, also on the outside of the track.

According to one of the men first on the scene, Faloon’s safety harness was not fastened.

Both cars were twisted, smoking wrecks by the time track officials and firemen arrived, the Lola being almost unrecognisable. Before the race the Australian ace, Frank Matich, commented that no-one would ever get him to drive a Lola T3OO. There was '“nothing up front if you hit anything,” he said. His countryman, Neil Allen, winner of last year’s New Zealand Grand Prix, was lucky to escape from a serious crash in Australia last month, when testing a car identical with Lawrence’s RECENT MARRIAGE Faloon was considered one of the most promising racing drivers in New Zealand. Experts felt that he u>uld have followed in the footsteps of Denny Hulme, Chris Amon and the late Bruce McLaren. The Stanton Porsche he was driving was not as powerful as most of the other cars in the race, but Faloon drove it with considerable spirit. 1 Faloon and his wife of a I few months moved from . I Levin to Tauranga two J months ago.