ALAN HAMILTON GONE

He turned down the chance to be a factory racer with Porsche to run the family business in Melbourne.

He finished second at Bathurst in 1977 alongside Colin Bond in the 'other' Falcon.

He lost the Australian Touring Car Championship to Norm Beechey in 1970 after scoring more points – because the rules meant he had to drop a round.

He was the Australian Sports Car Champion in 1977 and also a multiple national hillclimb champion.

But Alan Hamilton was so much more than a super-talented racing driver.

He was an old-school gentleman who championed Porsche in Australia for much of his life, as well as a motorsport team owner who set standards for presentation and success.

He always had a warm welcome and was great for a chat. He had many great stories, like the way he became the head of Australia's Porsche importer.

He and his mother convened a company board meeting in the family kitchen and then voted his father Norman, who was the first in the world to import Porsche cars after a chance meeting with a test team in Europe, out of the CEO's spot.

Alan took the reigns and turned Porsche into a powerhouse in Australia, until an economic downturn and over-spending on his brilliantly restored headquarters at the Bryant & May match factory in Richmond, forced him to sell to Germany.

The deal also cost him his fantastic collection of historic Porsches, including a 917/30 CanAm racer he built up in Australia from spare parts.

When Alan Jones came home to Australia as a Formula One champion, Hamilton put him into a Porsche 935 and, for good measure, also fielded a 944 Turbo with Colin Bond as his team-mate.

There were good times for Hamilton in Formula 5000, firstly in a McLaren M10 and then in a string of cars including the one that nearly killed him when he was running second in the 1978 Australian Grand Prix at Sandown.

The crash left him as an insulin-dependent diabetic but did not stop his competition career, as he created a brilliant single-seater team that raced – and invariably won – in Formula 5000 and then Formula Pacific, usually with Alf Costanzo as his driver.

In later years he established a winery business on the Mornington Peninsula outside Melbourne but still maintained a keen interest in Porsches and motorsport.

Now he is gone, aged 82.