Two Australian Drivers' Championships, a Macau win and a 1974 Bathurst victory, followed by a long run in Camaros, Mitsubishis and Holdens.
Kevin Reginald Bartlett (KB) was born in Coffs Harbour in 1940, and his two Australian Drivers' titles came in 1968 and 1969. He later raced Camaro, Mitsubishi and Holden cars in the years before his career ended in 1990.
Kevin Reginald Bartlett, known as KB, was an Australian open-wheel and touring car driver who won the Australian Drivers' Championship in 1968 and 1969. He also won the 1974 Bathurst 1000, sharing the Ford XA Falcon GT with John Goss. Wheels magazine ranked him 15th among Australia's 50 greatest race drivers in its 2004 yearbook.
Who was Kevin Bartlett?
Kevin Bartlett was born on 25 May 1940 in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales. He started racing in 1958, when he entered the Touring Car Scratch Race at Bathurst in a 950cc Morris Minor. Those early outings led to a career that spanned open-wheel and touring car racing for more than three decades.
He moved through the Australian ranks before a major break arrived in the Tasman Series, a step that changed the direction of his career.
A Bathurst winner in 1974 whose career ran from Morris Minors to Formula 5000, Camaros and Holden Commodores.
How did Bartlett break into the Tasman Series?
His big break came when he was hired by Alec Mildren, the 1960 Australian Grand Prix winner, to drive in the Tasman Series of open-wheel racing. Bartlett proved competitive, and he became a fixture of Alec Mildren Racing for the next decade.
Over that decade he raced a long line of open-wheel cars and Alfa Romeo touring cars. In 1965 he won the International 6 Hour Touring Car Race for the Mildren team with Frank Gardner, driving an Alfa Romeo TI Super. In 1967 he took the Surfers Paradise Four Hour with Doug Chivas in a similar car.
Bartlett had earlier got his first works drive through Evan Green, a motoring journalist and part-time rally driver. In the 1965 Armstrong 500 at Bathurst he drove a Morris Mini de Luxe for the BMC team.
Did Bartlett race at Indianapolis?
Bartlett went to the United States in 1970 to compete in the USAC Championship, which is also known as Indy Car racing. He attempted to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 but failed, and he competed in three other Indy Car races without finishing any of them.
Formula 5000 remained a fixture of his programme through the 1970s, with a series of Lolas and, briefly, the unusual Brabham BT43.
What was Bartlett's Bathurst record before 1974?
At the 1967 Easter meeting at Bathurst, Bartlett became the first driver to lap the 6.172 km mountain circuit at an average speed above 100 mph. He was driving a 1964 Repco Brabham BT11A Climax at the time.
In 1969 he took his Mildren-Alfa Romeo to victory at the Macau Grand Prix, in the Formula Libre class. He considered that win one of the highlights of his racing career, and he returned to Macau in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the result.
For the 1973 Bathurst 1000 Bartlett was chosen to share a new Ford XA Falcon GT Hardtop with Goss. The pair took pole and led for more than three hours before a crash on lap 110 ended their race.
How did Bartlett win Bathurst in 1974?
The pair returned in 1974 and won the Bathurst 1000, with Bartlett holding off the Bob Forbes Torana and Goss then nursed the car home in wet conditions. The win came despite hip and pelvis injuries that he had suffered in a Pukekohe Tasman crash nine months before.
That result turned the earlier disappointment into victory, and it stands as the high point of his Bathurst record.
What happened during the Camaro years?
As the 1970s wore on, Formula 5000 declined, and Bartlett returned to touring cars. He bought a Chevrolet Camaro Z28 new from Unser Chevrolet in New Mexico and developed it for Australian Group C racing with the backing of the Nine Network, which was controlled by Kerry Packer. Bartlett had bought the car new, so it was very much his own project.
The Camaro debuted at the 1979 Bathurst 1000 without him. His autobiography, Big Rev Kev, was published in 1983 and gives his own account of those years. A heavy Formula 5000 accident in a Brabham BT43 at Sandown, during the Gold Star round on 9 September 1979, broke his arm and leg, and John McCormack drove in his place.
Bartlett was back in 1980 and became the only driver to seriously challenge Peter Brock's Holden Dealer Team Commodore in the Australian Touring Car Championship. In a television interview after the 1980 Gemini incident, he blamed CAMS rules for the lack of rear disc brakes. He took pole for the 1980 Bathurst 1000, but drum brakes at the rear forced an early pit stop after only 14 laps, and later a collision with an Isuzu Gemini on The Mountain saw the Isuzu roll.
He contested only two ATCC rounds in 1981 and then took a second straight pole on The Mountain in wet conditions, 15.46 seconds slower than the year before. The car finished 13th, 11 laps down on the winner.
Where did the Camaro career end?
The 1982 season brought an equal third in the points with Allan Moffat. Bartlett won his final ATCC race at Oran Park in Round 4. He then teamed with Colin Bond for the Australian Endurance Championship and went to the 1982 Bathurst 1000 as a serious contender, qualifying fourth after a tyre blew during qualifying and sent Bond's car into the guardrail.
His race ended on lap 27, when a rear tyre blew at Reid Park and sent the Camaro into the fence and onto its roof. The 1983 Oran Park round was his last race in the Camaro, and by then he was no longer competitive, finishing ninth. He later co-drove with Dick Johnson at Bathurst in 1983, but a crash at Forrest's Elbow destroyed the team's car, and the replacement retired on lap 61.
What were the Mitsubishi and Holden years like?
In 1984 Bartlett led Mitsubishi's first factory-backed attack on Bathurst with the Starion turbo. The cars were uncompetitive at Bathurst, but in 1985 he finished third in the opening ATCC round at Winton before the established teams caught up.
Later in 1985 he drove a ground-effects De Tomaso Pantera to fourth in the Australian GT Championship, and he finished ninth outright at Bathurst with Peter McKay, taking second in class.
His 1986 and 1987 drives were less successful. In 1986 a BMW 635 CSi he co-drove did not finish at Sandown or Bathurst, and in 1987 a Maserati Biturbo for Pro Team Italia lasted only 29 laps.
In 1988 he teamed with John Harvey in a Bob Forbes Racing Holden VL Commodore SS Group A SV at Bathurst. They started 22nd and finished 14th, 21 laps down on the winners.
How did Bartlett's racing career end?
Bartlett's final drive came at the 1990 Bathurst 1000, driving for Bob Forbes Racing alongside Russell Ingall and Rohan Onslow in a VL Commodore. The team had left the heater tap on after bleeding the car's water system, and the resulting dehydration hit both Bartlett and Ingall.
Bartlett collapsed in the pits and was placed on a drip, and his water bottle had been knocked over during his stint. A couple of months later he suffered a heart attack that required a quadruple bypass. His specialists linked it to the trauma of that race, and it effectively ended a racing career of 32 years.
What did Bartlett do after racing?
In retirement Bartlett worked part-time to maintain the Bowden collection of historic racing cars, which includes his Chevrolet Camaro. On 24 October 2000 he was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for his motor racing achievements.
What is Bartlett's legacy?
Bartlett is remembered for his two Australian Drivers' Championships, his 1974 Bathurst win and his long career across open-wheel and touring car racing. He was ranked 15th in the 2004 Wheels list of Australia's 50 greatest race drivers.
His Macau win and his 1967 lap above 100 mph are among the notable achievements of his career.
