Ben There, Done That

An Icon of Australian Drag Racing, Ben Gatt Celebrates 50 Years of Quarter-mile Mayhem This Year

- Peter Bateman

BEN Gatt is the rarest of breeds: a drag racer who has been catapulting himself down the quarter-mile for 50 years. A legend that’s still competitive. Yes, there are sports people who have played cricket, lawn bowls, golf or darts for 50 years. But Ben is still at the top of his game at the rawest, most powerful end of motorsport. And the man is as good humoured and friendly as the day he first laid the rubber down.

Ben was born in Malta and was three when the Gatt family arrived Down Under in 1950. There were only five young ’uns then. Parents Nina and Paulo initially set up home in Sydney’s Smithfield, but eventually Paulo built a house at Fairfield Heights to house the ever-growing family.

Long before he could reach the foot pedals, Ben was pulling apart engines and machines under his dad’s watchful eyes. Paulo loved cars and owned an immaculate ’39 Ford.

“Dad had that car over 30 years; polished the paint off it,” Ben says. Paulo also had a passion for rods. “He had a ’39 Ford, a ’38 Ford, a Tank Fairlane, lotsa hot rods. And he had a VW Kombi to move all us kids. We often had to share the back seat with the pigeons.”

Pigeons? Yep, believe it or not, this drag racer could have easily been racing pigeons! Of his many brothers and sisters, five flew down the drag track while others dedicated themselves to racing of the feathered variety.

Paulo made sure that both Ben and older brother Joe carefully disassembled every mechanical thing they attempted to fix.

“‘Take your time,’ he would tell us. ‘Memorise what’s in front of you, go slow,’” Ben recalls. “We pulled everything apart. If it didn’t work when you put it back, you had failed!”