George Fury
| George Fury | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Australian |
| Born |
31 January 1945 Hungary |
| Australian Touring Car Championship | |
| Years active | 1982–90 |
| Teams |
Nissan Motorsport Australia Glenn Seton Racing |
| Starts | 46 |
| Wins | 8 |
| Poles | 9 |
| Fastest laps | 5 |
| Best finish | 2nd in 1983 & 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship |
| Previous series | |
| 1975–80,90 | Australian Rally Championship |
| Championship titles | |
| 1977 1980 1986 1987 1990 |
Australian Rally Championship Australian Rally Championship Sandown 500 Sandown 500 Sandown 500 |
George Fury (born 31 January 1945, in Hungary) is a retired Australian rally and racing car driver. For the majority of his career Fury was associated with Nissan, twice winning the Australian Rally Championship, and twice runner up in the Australian Touring Car Championship. Fury, a farmer living and working in the New South Wales country town of Talmalmo, was nicknamed "Farmer George" or "The Talmalmo Farmer".
Fury rose to prominence during the 1970s as part of the Howard Marsden run Datsun Rally Team, racing Datsun Violet 710 SSS and Datsun 1600s, winning the 1977 Australian Rally Champion (tied on points with Ross Dunkerton), then later driving a Datsun Stanza, he won the Australian Championship in 1980. Fury also twice won the Southern Cross Rally in 1978 and 1979.
A shift in emphasis in 1981 saw the Datsun Rally Team abandoned in favour of a circuit racing program for a turbo charged Nissan Bluebird. Fury joined former Ford works driver (under Marsden) Fred Gibson as drivers and proved instantly competitive despite running in the mid-car class, though he was still seen more as a rally driver and less as a circuit racer. The team's first outing was the 1981 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst where the Gibson/Fury Bluebird qualified 43rd but retired after 30 laps with suspension failure.
Fury ran three rounds of the 1982 Australian Touring Car Championship in the Bluebird turbo and showed both his and the cars potential by finishing second behind the 5.8 L V8 powered Ford Falcon of eventual series champion Dick Johnson in Round 2 of the series at Calder Park in Melbourne. Fury would only contest one more round of the 1982 ATCC, retiring from Round 7 in Adelaide and he would eventually finish 12th in the championship on 14 points. In the late season Endurance Championship races, Fury failed to finish in the Castrol 400 at the fast Sandown Park in Melbourne (Gibson would finish 8th outright and first in Class C). Fury and Gibson then teamed up for the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst where they and their Japanese team mates Masahiro Hasemi and Kazuyoshi Hoshino proved how far both car and driver had come in 12 months, with both Bluebird turbo's qualifying in the Top 10 (Hasemi qualified 3rd, Fury 10th). Unfortunately for Fury and Gibson, their race ended on just lap 40 with a blown head gasket.
...
Wikipedia