Former DJR engine builder passes away

Former Dick Johnson Racing engine builder Alan Draper has passed away after a long battle with illness.

Draper spent around a dozen years at DJR across two distinctly different eras of the Australian Touring Car Championship, working on Group A Ford Sierras and then the V8 Falcons which replaced them.

The team enjoyed great success with both during his tenure, winning the Bathurst 1000 in 1989 and 1994, and the championship in 1988, 1989, and 1995.

Draper was himself a competitor in his younger years, and built engines for Formula Fords in the early-1970s, then Formula 5000 cars in the late-1970s and early-1980s, and also Cosworth-powered rally and Formula Pacific cars.

As well as the stars of the day in Australian touring car competition – such as Dick Johnson himself, John Bowe, and Allan Moffat – his engines also propelled the likes of rally legend Ari Vatanen when the Finn competed for the Masport Rally Team in the 1980 Castrol International Rally around Canberra.

In the ATCC/V8 Supercars Championship, Draper built engines for not only DJR but subsequently Precision Auto Engineering (more commonly referred to simply as PAE), Team Dynamik, and the Paul Morris Motorsport/Team Kiwi Racing alliance of the mid-2000s.

A New Zealander, he is said to have loved his rugby union and reminded his Australian colleagues of the Kiwis’ general superiority in the game.

Draper had been retired for some years before his death last Friday.

Fittingly, DJR’s first opportunity to pay tribute at a Supercars event is this weekend’s at Pukekohe, on his side of the Tasman, where the Shell V-Power Racing Team Mustangs are carrying an ‘In Memory of Alan Draper’ message on their rear bars.

In something of a coincidence, Bowe is also driving in a Sierra in the Historics category on the support card at the ITM Auckland SuperSprint.

Speedcafe.com extends its condolences to Draper’s friends and family.