Long time Sydney racer Peter Byrne has teamed up with John Gauci for a crack at Supercharged Outlaws after Gauci purchased Rob Coote’s beautiful supercharged altered earlier in the year.
“John Gauci – Rick Gauci’s cousin – purchased the Rob Coote’s Supercharged Outlaws Altered back in January and asked me to drive,” said Byrne.
“After going over everything and making some changes to suit me in the car, we will be taking the car out for our first time to the Atura Championship race this weekend at Sydney. We plan on also running the World Fuel Altered event and the East Coast Thunder.”
Over the last couple decades Byrne has competed in a myriad of race cars starting at Castlereagh, where he first met Gauci.
“John and I first meet at Castlereagh when we both started racing in Modified Eliminator in 1982. Me with a Holden six cylinder dragster, and John, a Holden 6 cylinder altered,” he said.
“I then drove a number of Charles Van Ysseldyk’s cars. A/D, B/D, BB/A – the BB/A is now owned by Mike Watkins – and my own altered and dragsters. And I drove Steve and Wendy Turners’s Nostalgia Top Fuel Dragster.”
It is not the first time Byrne has driven for Gauci either. “I previously drove John’s funny car that he co-owns with Jim and Cathy Holley in Supercharged Outlaws,” Byrne said.
“When Steve Turner decided to stop running the Black Widow Nostalgia Top Fuel car in 2013, John and Jim asked me and my brother Marty to come racing with them on their Supercharged Outlaw Funny Car. While helping out with the funny car, I have driven the car a number of times with a win at the East Coast Nationals in 2015 and by wining that I picked up the ANDRA NSW Divisional Championship for SCO – so I’m back in the seat again.
John Gauci on the right in the white shirt talking to Peter Byrne in the staging lanes of Castlereagh in 1982.
