Geoff Perry

For guys like me coming up through the ranks, Geoff was our Jarno Saarinen, he was in another stratosphere. He was smooth, he was fast; his results in Southeast Asia, Australia and America showed he was a superstar in the making. He was friendly and always had time to say hi. My mechanic John Allnatt was working with Geoff at the time. He was meant to be on the same flight but they couldn’t get him a seat. Geoff was the guy, he was better than special.

– Fellow motorcycle racer Stu Avant remembers Geoff Perry, Australia Motorcycle website, 25 September, 2016

He can still remember — and has it noted in his diary— as a child going with his car-crazy dad to see Bruce McLaren race at Sandown Park in Melbourne. "It's why I am still making movies about bloody motorcars," he says.

– Excerpt from an interview with Roger Donaldson about his love of cars and motorbikes, Sunday Star Times, 23 December, 2015

It's taken me until now to start to realise that that guy who is actually going around and past out there inside a helmet and in leathers is actually the guy that I sit with on the plane, all the way to and from a circuit. It's very hard to believe that it is the same person.

– Friend John Allnatt on watching his mate speed around a track

Before you marry a racer you put a lot of thought into this, and it's something that you just must completely accept while you are married, and while your husband is racing. Before a race it's very important to me not to show if you are nervous ... I want to be behind Geoff in every way.

– Janet Hendle on the reality of being partner to someone in competitive motorsports

It's very hard to follow where anybody is. I can't keep track of it.

– Mechanic and supporter John Allnatt, amidst the chaotic 1972 Daytona 200 race

I was very much impressed by something Bruce McLaren once said, at the time that his best friend was killed in a car crash in Tasmania. He said "to do something well, to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of one's life to do nothing with one's ability, for life is measured in achievement and not in years lived alone".

– Motorcycle champion Geoff Perry on mortality

Daytona seems to turn everybody on in that way — they like to drive cars round like maniacs, and slide in and out of the water on the beach. You've got to have something to get your mind right off racing.

– Geoff Perry on unwinding after racing at Daytona

Hello, how are you? What! You won? Oh Geoff, that's marvellous.

– Janet Hendle talks to her husband Geoff on the phone from Atlanta

I started riding motorbikes in 1966. The thing was, I wasn't really allowed to race until I'd got my school certificate, which was about the only reason I think I ever got it.

– Geoff Perry on his teenage passion for motorbike racing