Although it has been a long time since he raced, the impact the man they call ‘Mr Sprintcar’ made on the West Australian, and National, Sprintcar scene is indelible.
Famously, Alf is known for his 79.5 feature race wins at the Claremont Speedway which made him the most prolific driver across all divisions that raced at the Grand Old Lady. As has been well documented, the .5 comes from a dead heat with his fierce rival Ray Geneve back in November of 1970, but this tally only counts for part of his total of feature race success, with victories at many venues across Australia.
Alf had left school in Perth at 14 for an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic. His father thought it was only for the school holidays and when he found out that it was full-time he gave young Alf a hiding. Then, he says, “Mum stepped in and I told her I would go back to school but would still become a motor mechanic when I came out. She gave me a big slap and said, ‘If you’re going to be a motor mechanic, you’d better be a good one’.”
Alf’s love for racing started in the early 1960’s, when as a 20-year-old he went to Wattle Grove Speedway and was challenged by his then girlfriend to ‘have a go’ – where in a borrowed hot-rod he was forced off the track, over a dirt embankment and into a small pond.
This incident did not deter him, and he went on to become one of the most recognisable faces in Western Australian Speedway, regularly wheeling and dealing as he bought and sold plenty of the Nations best racecars, racing them with success along the way, all the while establishing a car empire with Barbagallo Motors.
“I had to work hard to sell cars then, to pay my debts and for the racing,” says Alf. “I would drive around other yards at night and see people looking there and introduce myself to try and sell them a car. For ten, maybe fifteen years I worked seven days a week. I would go east every few weeks to buy more used prestige cars”. He stopped racing when he turned 46 but says “I did well in the racing, and it was good promotion for the growing business” and would still make occasional appearances in Sprintcars when opportunity knocked.
By the end of his career, he had six Western Australian Sprintcar Championships to his name, not mention another three second place finishes, a second place finish in the 1987 World Sprintcar Championships, a second place finish in the 1980 Australian Sprintcar Championship and victory in the inaugural World Series Sprintcar Championship feature race in November of 1987.
The accolades kept coming for Alf, recording the most feature wins in a season on eight occasions at Claremont, inducted into the Claremont Speedway Hall of Fame and to cap it off, named the ‘Competitor of the Century’.
This weekend, we honour one of the greatest names to ever come out of WA Speedway: ‘Mr Sprintcar’ Alf Barbagallo.
Don’t forget to grab your tickets to this weekends Barbagallo Australian Mr. Sprintcar Nationals!
