Record breaking seven-time Supercars Champion Jamie Whincup will be inducted into the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame at this year’s Formula 1 Qatar Airways Australian Grand Prix.
Whincup is one of six motorsport heroes to be honoured in this year’s exclusive intake, along with Sir Jack Brabham’s Formula 1 World Championship winning Repco Brabham BT19.
The Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame is the highest honour in Australian motorsport. It is an exclusive honour-roll made up of less than one inductee for each of the 125 years motorsport has occurred in Australia.
Whincup became eligible last year when he stepped down from active competition, a requirement for recognition. He remains principal of Triple Eight Race Engineering, the most successful team in Supercars competition.
High achievers inducted this year will include leading official and entrepreneur Garry Connelly AM, who was crucial to the formation of Rally Australia.
Connelly has been Australia’s highest ranking international official for 20 years, a member of the FIA’s World Motorsport Council, and chair of F1 stewards. Alongside his wife Monique, he is a director of Racing Together, a program supporting young Indigenous racing drivers.
Top Fuel drag racing team owner Santo Rapisarda, with more than 12 national titles, will be joined by world Motorcycle Enduro Champion Shane Watts.
The late Ken Blake, 11-time Australian motorcycle road race champion, will also be honoured.
Blake famously beat world champion Giacomo Agostini in the Australian 500 TT at Laverton Airbase, Victoria in February 1976, fifty years ago this year.
The car in which Sir Jack Brabham became the only driver-constructor to win the Formula 1 World Championship will be the first racing car to be uplifted. The Repco Brabham BT19 will become the 100th inductee to commemorate the centenary of Sir Jack’s birth.
The Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame ceremony will occur at 1:00pm AEDT on Thursday 5 March on the Fan Stage in the Lakeside Precinct of the Formula 1 Qatar Airways Australian Grand Prix 2026 at Albert Park, Melbourne.
