The career of this fan favourite was marked by soaring heights and terrible luck
Known the world over for his stunning victory over Giacomo Agostini at Oran Park in December 1971, Bryan Hindle was a popular rider who was something of an outlier in the matey world of motorcycle racing. An industrial chemist specialising in printing inks and a devout Christian, Hindle would spend hours at NSW distributor McCulloch Yamaha going through every head and barrel in the spares department to find the ones with the smoothest ports and best matching surfaces for his Yamaha 350.
Len Atlee rode to victory in the augural 1970 Castrol 1000 Six Hour race with Hindle, and spent years dicing with him. “Bryan was very religious and I think he had a special relationship with his saviour. He used to do things in front of me and I’d think, ‘how did you get away with that?’” At Bathurst in 1974, he pushed that faith to the limit. Injured racer Garry Thomas watched some of Saturday’s racing from the marshalling point located on the inside apex at McPhillamy Park. He took in the terrific duel between Gregg Hansford and Hindle, and was an eye witness to the terrible crash that devastated Hindle’s promising F750 race career.
“Bryan wasn’t the sort of bloke to sit behind someone and watch and learn what they were doing, he would pass them at the first opportunity,” says Thomas. “So he tries to go around Gregg on the outside, and not that he intended to, but Gregg runs him wide. Bryan gets pushed out into the dirt and that was it. We saw the bike go into the gates, and the tank go flying over the fence.”
Waiting for his turn at the ’74 Six Hour
Hindle suffered a broken pelvis in four places, four broken vertebrae and two breaks in his left arm in the 150km/h spill. Speaking from his hospital bed three days later, Hindle said, “The last thing I remember is fighting the bike as it went over on its side. I thought I had got the bike back up when it went over. But it was too late. It all happened in a tenth of a second. I had no time to think of crashing or to feel afraid.” Hindle surprised doctors with his recovery and it was hoped that he would be fit to ride in the fourth round of the Australian championships at Sandown in mid-July. But he was readmitted to Parramatta hospital in June after it was discovered that his fractured arm had not begun to knit. He underwent immediate surgery to have the bones re-set.
Hindle later returned to racing at the 1974 Castrol Six Hour where he claimed a historic win with Clive Knight aboard a BMW R90/6. The pair was soon stripped of the victory when the record number of 346 laps was revised down to 344, behind Ken Blake and Len Atlee’s Z1-900 who were proclaimed the official winners. Hindle and Knight were later disqualified after it was found that their BMW was fitted with optional factory fork spacers that had been illegally inverted in order to gain additional ground clearance. The disqualification deeply soured Hindle’s attitude to big-time racing.
Hindle loved winning, here sporting the laurel wreath at the Castrol Six Hour
Just weeks after that ill-fated Six Hour, Hindle entered a TZ700 in a meeting at Surfers Paradise as a shakedown for the Pan Pacific Cup at Oran Park. His return on the big two-stroke didn’t go well. Four days after breaking his arm in a crash during a practice session at Oran Park, Hindle, 35, announced his retirement from national racing on 13 November 1974, claiming that his record-breaking dice with Ron Grant in a 1972 Pan Pacific Cup race at Oran Park was more satisfying than his shock win over Ago. After doing the odd club meeting in 1975, Hindle returned to the Six Hour in ’76 without luck. He crashed heavily in practice when his BMW R90S locked up, but bravely fought on to claim fifth with Helmut Dahne in the race.
His race career over, Hindle took up flying motorised hang-gliders. He was killed after his machine crashed to the ground at an air show in Dubbo, NSW in February 1978. He was 38.
En route to victory in the 1971 Six Hour, securing his second successive Castrol win
By Darryl Flack