Gene Cook was arguably Tasmania’s best-known speedway sedan racer during the height of his career.

Winning a number of major titles and feature events around Australia in the 1980s, he became a household name in the world of oval track racing.

Starting as a 17 year-old circuit racer back in 1962, racing an early model FX Holden and later a Ford Customline and Ford Anglia, Gene competed with mixed success, but after he got married in 1968 and money was not as plentiful, Gene started to look for a cheaper alternative form of motorsport, and was attracted to speedway at the Carrick Speedway, not far from his home at Longford.

Gene met with instant success and within a few months was Australian saloon car champion after being invited to compete in the 1969 national title at Redline Speedway at Ballarat.

Over the next few seasons he cam­paigned a series of different sedans and finished second in the New South Wales ti­tle, also winning the Marlboro Grand Prix at Latrobe (Tasmania), in 1972 with the HR Holden he was running at the time.

In 1976 Gene started racing a car owned by local Tasmanian driver John Taylor.

With Taylor's car, he met with a great deal of success both in Tasmania and on the mainland over the next few seasons, winning a number of major features,

By 1979 he started to campaign his own super-charged Torana XU-1, but en­countered troubles with the powerful machine, which in his own words “just had too much grunt for the rest of vehicle - it broke everything.”

Later that season in a different car, led the Australian saloon car championships at Toowoomba for 46 laps of 50-lap journey before ending the race with a puncture.

In 1980, the start of the rail car era in Australian Speedway, Gene Cook brought a Chev Monza and for several years raced the big V8 around the country with much success, the most memorable being his first win in Australia's richest speedway race. the Marlboro Australian Grand National at Liverpool.

Gene went on to win two other Marlboro GN titles, in 1984 and 1985, to become the only driver in the history of the event to have won it three times.

He bought an imported American Howe car in 1983, and on the asphalt, won the Tasmanian championship, which was as good as an Australian title at the time with the likes of Cees Hendriks, Denzil Mead, Neville Harper and Chas Kelly at their respective peaks.

Gene also won another Marlboro Grand Prix at Latrobe and later that year he took out the Australian Pavement Grand National Championship.

Around that time, he also raced with some success on the circuit in the 1980s, campaigning a Ford Falcon, Chev-powered Torana and a Mazda RX-7 in touring cars and sports sedans, also competing in the 1983 Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000 races.

Back on the speedway tracks, when the Grand Nationals died out, Gene Cook quit speedway clay racing and stepped into NASCAR racing and eventually moved from Tasmania to Melbourne in 1993 to pursue his racing and to benefit his business of preparing and rebuilding race engines.

At his Melbourne-based business, Gene Cook Racing Engines, he became involved in building components for NASCARs, AUSCARs, midgets, sprintcars, super sedans, and HQ Holdens for both super speedway racing at the Calder Park Thunderdome and circuit racing, while still racing his own NASCAR.

Gene eventually retired from racing in 2001 when NASCAR and AUSCAR racing ceased at the Thunderdome.

Profile by Martin Agatyn

Pictures by Greg Blake and G Harrisson