Australian Grand Prix: Gold Coast’s Southport hosted 1954 race won by Lex Davison
The Gold Coast has loved its motor racing for decades, with its love affair going back to the day the streets of Southport hosting the Australian Grand Prix. SEE THE PICTURES AND VIDEO
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Gold Coaster Jack Doohan endured a tough start to his Formula One rookie year last weekend.
Under pressure to keep his seat at the Alpine team, the 22-year-old was hoping to put in an impressive performance to solidify his position against the threat of being replaced by highly rated reserve driver Franco Colapinto.
Instead, it all went wrong during the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, where he crashed out in slippery wet conditions during the first lap.
Doohan will be hoping to bounce back this weekend in round two of the championship in China.
It is the latest chapter in the Gold Coast love affair with motorsports.
That race weekend, across its various incarnations from CART racing to Supercars, has long been a highlight of the events calendar and a major tourism drawcard.
But few will recall that the Gold Coast held the distinction of hosting the Australian Grand Prix more than 30 years before Formula One arrived in the country.
The year was 1954 and the region was known as South Coast at the time, still years away from becoming known as the Gold Coast.
The Grand Prix, which began in 1928, had no permanent home and was raced on a variety of tracks across the years, including Phillip Island and Bathurst.
This continued after a six-year hiatus during World War II.
For the 1954 race, on November 7 that year, it was decided to return to Queensland for only the second time ever with the event to be held on what became known as the Southport Street Circuit.
The Southport track – actually in Bundall and Benowa – was 9.1km long and began on Ashmore Road near Racecourse Drive, running north along Ferry Road to Benowa Road, turning at the present-day location of Southport Park shopping centre and looping back around.
The area looked radically different in that era with few houses and little in the way of safety with wooden fences and hay bales lining the dirt road course.
The only entrant of the 30-strong grid who is widely known outside motorsports circles today is future three-time Formula One champion Sir Jack Brabham – who later lived on the Gold Coast in his final years – though he was forced to retire two laps into the 27-lap race after engine trouble with his Cooper car.
Instead, the star of the event was Lex Davison, driving his Hersham and Walton Motors (HWM) Jaguar, who notched up his first Grand Prix win, with only 12 of the drivers able to finish the race.
Davison would go on to win the Grand Prix three more times before his death in 1965.
Sadly, while the Grand Prix itself would return, the Southport street circuit would not.
The Gold Coast was picked as the location of the 1975 race but by this time it was held at the Surfers Paradise International Raceway in Carrara – a purpose-built track developed by Sea World founder Keith Williams.
It was the opening round of the 1975 Australian Drivers championship and was held on August 21 that year in extremely wet conditions. The race was won by “jolly green giant” Max Stewart while racing in his Sharp Corporation Racing Team Lolo T400 despite qualifying sixth.
Today, nothing remains of either early race tracks, with today’s GC500 instead held on the famous Surfers Paradise street circuit, which has become internationally known to fans.
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