M
AKING a new race car run the way
you want is never easy, and new
engines and experimentation only
add to the complexity. Add to that
the traumatic sudden loss of your
race team’s inspirational leader,
and the hurdles seem even higher.
So it came as little surprise that the debut of
the Sainty team’s new Top Fuel car at Sydney
Dragway in early November was fraught with
difficulties, with the crew still deeply emotional
from their chief’s funeral the previous day.
In life, Stan Sainty seemed unconquerable.
He was big and strong, with the hands of a man
who made his living by hard work. He was quiet,
generous, uncomplicated; a humble figure who
was just doing what he loved. Over the years
he had pushed, cajoled, dragged, finessed and
bullied his Top Fuel race engine from a seeminglycrazy concept – that you could design and build
a world-beating mill from scratch in a suburban
workshop – to a reality that, in the eyes of the
NHRA’s technical team, needed to be banned
almost as soon as it showed promise. This thing
looked too good to be out of the control of their
best race teams.
The Sainty race team was never a major player
in the sense of setting records or winning major
events, though they enjoyed success with some
major runner-up spots and a third-place finish
in the 2004-05 Top Fuel Championships. They
lacked the funding of some other race teams,
but their homespun family-based operation was
also never to be taken lightly and was always on
the verge of suddenly living up to its promise.
So, who was Stan Sainty?
Born 17 April, 1946 in Western Sydney
to an engineer father, Stan showed an earlytendency for breaking all the rules, along with a
capacity for imaginative problem-solving. Even
before he could talk fluently, he told his parents
that the “clock” had stopped ticking, and they
subsequently discovered that his attempts to
modify the water meter in the front yard – with
a hammer – had left it a wreck. Over the coming
years he spent every possible hour turning billy
carts into planes, pedal cars into boats, and
pushbikes into submarines.
An apprenticeship as a fitter-machinist was
barely completed before he was called up for
national service in 1967. He applied for the Royal
Australian Electrical & Mechanical Engineers
but was allotted to the catering corps. Two
years later, his military service complete, Stan
returned to civilian life as a fitter-machinist,
moving through several employers.
Along the way he’d started a sideline businessSTAN SAINTY SEEMED UNCONQUERABLE. HE WAS BIG AND STRONG,