AS a child growing up in Penola, Shane Wilson, now 60, would never have thought he would end up working with motor racing legend Peter Brock.
Shane spent four years building engines for cars driven by Brock, including during the period when Brock broke away from Holden and raced the Ford Sierra Cosworth.
Shane said he had a lot of admiration for Peter Brock.
“He was a terrific guy – he had a big ego, but it was a really attractive ego,” Shane said.
“He was just a very alluring person – he was really kind.”
Shane said he remembers when, at one of the race meetings, there was a boy in a wheelchair at the end of a line of hundreds of people waiting for Peter Brock’s autograph.
“Peter sent his staff around to the back of the line and escorted the boy into his trailer and spent 30 minutes with this boy,” Shane said.
“He did that sort of thing time and time again and it would just bring tears to your eyes.
“You would go… ‘oh my God, you are a beautiful man’.”
Peter Brock was not only admired by the blokes.
“He was very charismatic and you could see why the girls loved him,” Shane said.
“He was a good-looking guy…he could talk their talk… he was very suave.”
Shane said Peter didn’t suffer fools but was very respectful of anyone’s knowledge: “he would treasure good people.”
Shane began his apprenticeship at Mount Gambier Motors in 1978 when he was 16 years old.
“I first got interested in motorsport before my teens; I had some cousins who raced speedway,” he said.
“I would go to the speedway with my cousins, my aunty and dad occasionally – they were right into it and I just fell in love with motorsport then.
“Later, I got an invitation from Tony Noske from Portland, who was racing touring cars, to crew for him,” Shane said.
“That was my first introduction to touring cars which have since evolved into V8 Supercars.
“I would only go away for the weekend and it was not a paid job.”
In 1988, Shane received a phone call from Tony, who had just bought into a racing team, and asked if he would work for him – Shane said “yes”.
“I rocked up at the workshop in Melbourne and found myself standing in front of Mobil 1 Racing – to my surprise the workshop happened to be shared with Brock’s team,” Shane said.
Shane built one car from just a shell over a four-month period and later that year, when one of the Brock team cars crashed, the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth that Shane had built was transferred to the Brock team.
He then was invited to work for Mobil 1 Racing, which was Brock’s team, as an engine builder.
“We had 10 engines and 20 turbo chargers for two cars,” Shane said.
“Boy…those Sierras would consume engines like you wouldn’t believe.
“Almost every time you put fuel in the car – you had to put an engine in the car.
“It was a very small rear-wheel drive car putting out about 500 horse-power so you had to be very careful on the throttle or you would just smoke the tyres on lap two and go nowhere.”
Shane is very proud that his ideas were used to improve the reliability of the Cosworth while also increasing its power.
“My greatest achievement was by the end of 1990 we probably had the fastest Sierra in the world,” Shane said.
“We had some of the English and German guys come over and drive our cars and they were taken aback by how well we developed those engines.”
He said it was a highlight of his life to work for Peter Brock but is humble about any notoriety for doing so.
“I don’t like the limelight too much – I just like doing my stuff and if people notice, they notice,” he said.
Today, Shane still builds about 25 race engines annually in his shed in Mount Gambier along with undertaking consultancy work for racing teams.
Peter Brock was nine-times winner of the infamous Bathurst 1000 touring car race and he was known as ‘the King of the Mountain’.
He died in 2006 competing in the Targa West Rally in Western Australia.
