[Fot] RIP - Don Brick

[yellow04]

Responding to Brian McEldowney, the new owner of the Don Brick TR4, 
prompted me to do a google search. I just realized we lost Don six weeks 
ago on March 27, 2022.

The last of the original Beady Eye gang. Sad.

While the stories of the shenanigans Bill, Bob and Don got into are the 
stuff of legend, there is one story about Don I will never forget.

More years ago that I care to admit, I am beginner racer who bought a 
derelict TR4 racecar and was trying desperately to figure out how to 
prepare it so it would finish weekends, and more importantly trying to 
figure out the art and science of race craft. I show up at Grattan for 
the first time, and I am not sure I can say I was struggling, but the 
Beady Eye boys thought I needed a primer on the track. VSCDA had a 
practice of doing lunch time parade laps at Grattan, so they cooked up 
the idea that I needed to get driven around the track by their resident 
hot shoe, Don Brick. Yes, Don was the fastest of the bunch.

These parade laps were done in race cars, and the premise was the racers 
could put their family, friends, crew, etc. in the passenger seat to get 
a birds eye view of the track. No passing, just some leisurely laps. 
Apparently, Don didn’t get the memo... Don and I climb into his TR4, my 
memory is telling me we had no fire suits or helmets, and proceed to the 
false grid. We are waived onto the track, and Don nails it. We get 
decent speed for turn one, and Don is narrating. "This is where I 
usually have to brake, but since we are not at speed yet...", he brakes 
late, turns into 1 with tires at full chat. We slide around turn one, 
and on the little straight heading for 2, we come up on the first car 
doing parade lap speed, Don just passes them! At this point, Don is at 
racing speed, and he continues to narrate his way around the course 
passing everybody. As we round the corner for the start/finish straight, 
the flagger is waiting for us, and no surprise to me Don gets black 
flagged. As we are going down the straight for turn 1, I tell Don I 
don't think we are supposed to be going full tilt, everybody else is 
going much slower. Don was not deterred, he needed to show me his 
braking point for turn 1 at speed! We proceeded to do that second lap 
way too fast, then Don dutifully pulled into pit lane and was directed 
to the black flag station where he was given the stern warning that 
lunchtime parade laps were not to be driven at speed. Don's reply with a 
smile, "Oh, OK, I didn't know."

Anybody else remember running with Don and watching his red wire wheels? 
Don insisted on running that same set of red painted wire wheels. He 
claimed he finally got a set of wheels that didn't break spokes, so he 
just kept running them. It was disconcerting to see Don in the seat 
sawing on the steering wheel, and you could see the hubs on the car 
moving with his motions, but the rim and tires couldn't keep up the 
hubs, you could almost see the spokes stretching with every turn of the 
steering wheel!

Farewell, my friend.