I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN THE OCCUPATIONS OF RACING DRIVERS, AND INDEED COMPETITORS IN GENERAL , I WILL LIST SOME I KNOW OF , AND AWAIT CONTRIBUTIONS .

Hughes de Fierlant , a diamond dealer .
Peter Voight , 70s british hilclimber , violin maker .
So how about contributions .

Interesting subject.
David Lange - Prime Minister NZ

Did you ever see him in his white driving suit? - I was always surprised Michelin didn't sue him for breach of copyright...

Interesting ( ) thread cross-reference, while we're waiting for the All blacks to start playing: could Helen Clark have been "the Streaker?"

21 - 3 guess who?

David Booth, Aussie F3 and Clubman driver of the seventies, chose to be a garbo...

"You get plenty of exercise, and you start early in the morning, so there's plenty of the business day left to get things done when you knock off. And the pay's very good!"

Allan Grice... pastrycook when he began racing.

Peter Brock was on a spare parts counter.

There's a stack of used car and new car salesmen became drivers, of course, and some mechanics and garage proprietors.

Gavin and John Youl... graziers... another popular one in Australia.

Lex Davison... grazier and also ran a shoe manufacturing empire.

Peter Hopwood was a cinematographer... sometimes he'd be out there filming a race then have to bolt to the pits and change because he was in the next race.

There's been the odd schoolteacher, I can think of a few of them. F5000 driver Chas Talbot, for instance. And out on a limb from that, the extremely rapid Brique Reed was a music teacher.

Is Bibendum on the Fulham Road still open - Lange depicted on every window.
But sadly as we remember - the French hated him !

We have little yellow faces kissing and making up, stoned, drunk and cool, among other poses.

We don't have a little yellow face throwing up.

Ray, - Grazier ? not a word I've ever heard before and it's not in my copy of the dictionary, is it common usage in Australia ? Is it in some way connected to cattle grazing ?

I think Ronnie Peterson was a lift engineer before going professional and Gunnar Nilsson was a submariner.

Peter Voigt is still hillclimbing, now in a Techcraft Buick, and still making violins

Very common use, though not as common an occupation as it used to be...

Cattle grazing to a lesser extent than sheep grazing. But cattle owners who concentrate on milk production are known as 'dairymen' or similar.

Ross Bond was a nurseryman, by the way, got among the flowers.

Colin Bond built roll cages. Racing was play and work for him.

Niel Allen was a property developer. Won and lost fortunes over decades, gained the accolades of Frank Matich who said, "I could never work out how he could come to the circuit after a full week of work and do as well as he did."

David McKay was a motoring journalist and gallery proprietor.

From what we have seen over the last few years, many of the drivers in historic racing could be categorised as - occupation: VERY RICH MAN!

You get that...

And what about Milldent Racing? The team was owned by and for Chris Farrell in England in the eighties... Chris is a dentist, went to England to make his fortune servicing folk on the NHS, the aim to be a 'milldent'... and go racing.

Frank Cantwell - Tojeiro Jaguar, Cantwell Creations - haute couture.

Tony Brooks - dentist
J.Palmer - doctor , but did he EVER see a patient ?

Hugh Dibley... airline pilot...

Ralph de Palma and Larry Cannon were hairdressers!

Tom Sneva was a teacher.

Unlikely if the patient met him first........

Bob Drake was a deep-sea diver

Roy James was a train robber (and silversmith)

John Maroulis and Tom Naughton were pharmacists... though Tom was a bit different...

He didn't have his own shop or work at one shop, he was a locum, filling in wherever a pharmacist wanted to go on holidays.

The late Dr. Roger Freeth was a mathematician [rocket scientist] of the highest level. Top man.

A top bloke.

... which reminds me of George Fury, infuriatingly referred to by Mike Raymond (of Channel 7) as: "Grong Grong grazier George Fury." Aaaaargh!

Why don't we do a 'match the occupation' variation...
List various occupations and then see if anyone can come up with a driver who did that?

Like...

Pig farmer
Goat farmer
Camel farmer?*
Newsagent
Checkout Chick
Optometrist
Cartographer
Orchardist
Dairy farmer
Auto Club Serviceman**
Computer technician
Refrigeration mechanic
Printing machinery technician***
Car transporter driver****
Accountant*****
Taxation investigator******
Driving instructor
Tailor
Sailor
Bricklayer*******
Carpenter

Okay... anyone want to add to that list?

Oh, right, the asterisks... yeah, I answered a few for myself:

* Not quite an answer... the mercurial Richard Carter was actually a colour separator, the guy who produces the colour separations for printing in 4-colour. You know, the job now done by the cheapest computer in the print shop? But a friend of his once walked from Darwin to Sydney. Along the way he picked up a couple of camels which had been let loose. He walked them across part of South Australia (or was it Queensland), most of New South Wales and then, as he approached Sydney wondered what he would do with them.

He phoned Richard, "Hey mate, I've got these camels here, can I leave them on your bush block at Kurrajong?" Richard rather obligingly agreed, so the camels were agisted on his property.

** Ben Simpson is one of these... with the RACQ, he works afternoon shift, which gives him some daylight hours every day to put in some work on his race cars. Not running at the moment, but when his Dodge is ready next year he should become a popular addition to the Appendix J fields.

*** Frank Ure. Not only Frank, but his accomplice in building his cars, Chris Dowd worked with him at one time.

**** Lynn Brown... and no, not in any illicit way at all.

***** The late Mike Burgmann, but I'm sure he wasn't the only one.

****** I wonder? Kevin Carrad never drove the cars, but he prepared them... and in his working hours found unusual solutions to the task of proving sales tax evasion by various miscreants.

******* Enno Busselmann... who never drove a road car while he was a racing driver. His brother, Udo, used to drive him everywhere so that he never risked losing his road licence. In those days that meant an automatic loss of your racing licence. The situation has changed today.

Dale Singleton

Red Dawson - and then his pig farm was rezoned residential - Mustangs - Z28's - Monzas followed until that terrible day at Manfield. Red was furious that the Aussie Corvair hybrid special was allowed to run.

James Hunt was a window cleaner....

Ronnie Peterson used to be referred to as an elevator technician.

That seems to be confirmed now...

Uh, ya mean "elevator" can be translated as "lift"?

As was fellow Swede Lennart Bohlin...(who I remember as a Superkart ace, who I think later did a bit in F3?)

Here's a thread on musicians who became racing drivers, and vice versa.

Former IRL driver Jack Miller was a dentist, and probably still is.

In 76 David Kennedy when racing FF and living in the Black Bus was a window cleaner , joking he only did bungalows as he didnt have a ladder .
Tom Walkinshaw was a market gardener .

Always, even when David McKinney mispronounces it as 'l'ft'...

And the 'I think' can be dropped from the first post.

When did you last hear me speak

Once removed: Parnelli Jones and others suppodrted by JC Agajanian, one of whose facilities' remnants now underlies the Torrance (California) Civic Center and an industrial area including PJ's shop/museum. Remember when "edible" kitchen garbage went in a triangular colander in the corner of the sink, thence into a garbage can that was put out for collection twice a week? I seem to remember JC had the concession for much if not all of Los Angeles. That's a lot of pigfood.

Was it Nick Craw (AACUS) who was the first director of the Peace Corps?

Quite a few racing drivers had part time work in the field of pharmaceutical wholesaling

Reg Parnell - also haulage contractor.

And isn't Paul Jaye a llama farmer? And Carroll Shelby was a chicken farmer.

J.P. did his year of "house jobs" post qualification, this (back in the 80's) was an horrendous experience involving ridiculous hours, poor pay and seeing far too many patients. By the end of this year his motor sport career had become "serious" and his medical qualifications became redundant. His late father was a doctor (GP) also.

Wasn't Clark a sheep farmer?

And I should have remembered that too...

Clark was indeed a grazier.

There must be some taxi-drivers somewhere.

Clark was certainly not a grazier
They exist only in Australia
Everywhere else the word means something different

OT for a minute but was Mike Raymond actually interested in motor racing or was his primary area making up rhymes and the sound of Mike Raymond's voice?

While Junior Johnson was quite famously in the spirits wholesaling and transportation business.

Dick Macarthur-Onslow took him to a number of sheep sales near Sydney, he had great understanding of Merino sheep in spite of I imagine only growing up with Scottish Black Face or Border Leicesters.

Its perhaps worth the mention that in the UK there is not the social difference that exists between sheep farmer (Grazier) and arable farmer (Cocky) that there is in Australia.

& while I am doing the farming thing, Carroll Shelby's Chicken Run was ended by the dreaded Newcastle Disease.


Andrew
ex UK spud farmer

A former South African production car champion, Tchops Sipuka (spelling??), was employed by an undertaker as a hearse driver .

He is probably the main reason we have a 2-make touring car championship in Australia today...

The principal interest he had, I believe, was that he wanted to make his mark on Australian racing, to show that he knew more about promotion and presentation than others.

What does it mean, pray tell?

Wasn't ETC Volvo pilot Ulf Gronholm a train driver by profession ?
I wonder where he learned how to steer ?