Rodger Freeth's Fatal Crash @ Australia Rally 1993 (Aftermath)
- 6 months ago
Co-driver to Possum Bourne also from New Zealand, Rodger Freeth died of injuries sustained in a crash on the opening day of the Rally Australia, then a round of the 1993 FIA World Rally Championship.
The accident occurred on Saturday, 18 September 1993, near Perth in Western Australia, midway through the 32.2-kilometer special stage "Flynns", third of the event's 34. Bourne lost control of his #9 Subaru Legacy RS entered by the "555 Subaru World Rally Team", which went off the road and rolled into a pine plantation. Gravely injured, his co-driver Rodger Freeth was airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital, where he passed away shortly after admission, in the operating room.
Bourne, who was slightly injured in the accident, was kept in hospital overnight and released the following day. He returned to rallying only one month later, after encouragement from the Freeth family and, in memory of his friend Rodger Freeth, who was nicknamed as "Roj", Bourne displayed a "ROJ" license plate on the front of his rally cars, for the rest of his career. He and Freeth raced together since 1987 and were leading the Australian Rally Championship, before the event. Sadly, less than ten years later also Bourne would lose his life in a racing accident, while testing the course of the Race to the Sky hillclimb at the Cardrona Valley in New Zealand, in April 2003.
Dr. Rodger Vincent Freeth, 39-year-old, had a distinguished academic and motorsport career. He graduated with an Astro Physics Doctorate PhD in 1984 at the Auckland University. Freeth started as a teenager in motorcycle racing, winning the National Open Production series in the early 1970s on a Suzuki. Still an university student, at the age of 22 he designed a famous set of aerofoils to fit onto his Yamaha TZ750A. He practiced his high-winged motorcycle at Pukekohe and at Hawkesbury tracks, but shortly later the New Zealand Auto Cycle Union (NZACU) banned these controversial racing motorcycle experiments. Two-time winner of the Arai 500 endurance race held at Mount Panorama circuit of Bathurst, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, in 1982 and 1985 riding Suzuki bikes, he also won the TraNZam title in a Toyota Starlet fitted with a 327ci small block Chevy which he built with his friend Trevor Crowe.
Freeth alternated between two and four wheels until he decided to move to rally co-driving. He went on to become one of New Zealand’s most respected rally navigator, racing alongside different drivers, including country-fellows Neil Allport, Alan Mitchell and John Tee. In 1979 he was hired by the GM Dealer Team New Zealand to share a factory Vauxhall Chevette 2300HS with the Finnish rising star Pentti Airikkala in the Rally of New Zealand, but electrical trouble forced them into a withdraw.
R.I.P
The accident occurred on Saturday, 18 September 1993, near Perth in Western Australia, midway through the 32.2-kilometer special stage "Flynns", third of the event's 34. Bourne lost control of his #9 Subaru Legacy RS entered by the "555 Subaru World Rally Team", which went off the road and rolled into a pine plantation. Gravely injured, his co-driver Rodger Freeth was airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital, where he passed away shortly after admission, in the operating room.
Bourne, who was slightly injured in the accident, was kept in hospital overnight and released the following day. He returned to rallying only one month later, after encouragement from the Freeth family and, in memory of his friend Rodger Freeth, who was nicknamed as "Roj", Bourne displayed a "ROJ" license plate on the front of his rally cars, for the rest of his career. He and Freeth raced together since 1987 and were leading the Australian Rally Championship, before the event. Sadly, less than ten years later also Bourne would lose his life in a racing accident, while testing the course of the Race to the Sky hillclimb at the Cardrona Valley in New Zealand, in April 2003.
Dr. Rodger Vincent Freeth, 39-year-old, had a distinguished academic and motorsport career. He graduated with an Astro Physics Doctorate PhD in 1984 at the Auckland University. Freeth started as a teenager in motorcycle racing, winning the National Open Production series in the early 1970s on a Suzuki. Still an university student, at the age of 22 he designed a famous set of aerofoils to fit onto his Yamaha TZ750A. He practiced his high-winged motorcycle at Pukekohe and at Hawkesbury tracks, but shortly later the New Zealand Auto Cycle Union (NZACU) banned these controversial racing motorcycle experiments. Two-time winner of the Arai 500 endurance race held at Mount Panorama circuit of Bathurst, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, in 1982 and 1985 riding Suzuki bikes, he also won the TraNZam title in a Toyota Starlet fitted with a 327ci small block Chevy which he built with his friend Trevor Crowe.
Freeth alternated between two and four wheels until he decided to move to rally co-driving. He went on to become one of New Zealand’s most respected rally navigator, racing alongside different drivers, including country-fellows Neil Allport, Alan Mitchell and John Tee. In 1979 he was hired by the GM Dealer Team New Zealand to share a factory Vauxhall Chevette 2300HS with the Finnish rising star Pentti Airikkala in the Rally of New Zealand, but electrical trouble forced them into a withdraw.
R.I.P