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Al Campbell

DRIVING past Happy Valley racecourse, Albert Poon announced: 'I only gamble with my life.' As Hong Kong's most successful car racer, gambling with his life is something that Poon has done many times.

   Poon will drive in the 555 Rally from Hong Kong to Beijing this month in a Nissan Pulsar.

  The man who crashed his Ford Sierra in the 1986 race said he felt the rallies were probably safer than grand prix events.

   'A rally is safer because you are going at much slower speeds. It is a long, strung-out affair. A car race in the old days was 25 or 60 laps of high-speed fun.'      A car racer since the late 1950s, Poon has won nearly everything there is to win in Southeast Asia's motor racing arena - from grand prix to production car races and even karting.

    The 58-year-old former policeman-cum-car dealer and father of three now prefers to play golf.

   'I took it up about four years ago because I thought I was too old for auto racing and I'm still struggling with golf. I find auto racing much easier,' he said.

  Car racing is something that comes relatively easy for Poon. He first became interested in the sport as a schoolboy at the Diocesan Boys' School in Kowloon where his history teacher was Paul Dutoit, founding father of the Macau Grand Prix.

  'We used to sneak around to his garage and look at his cars,' Poon said.

    'When I became a policeman, I went over to Macau to watch the race in 1958 and I said, 'I want to do that' and the next year I was in it.'   As a young policeman, Poon established himself as a force in racing circles, winning hill climbs and saloon car races organised by the motorsport clubs of Hong Kong. He describes his first racing experience at Macau in a Triumph TR3 as 'fabulous'.

  It was not until 1961 that Poon had his first professional racing win, capturing the senior marque race. It would be the his first of many wins at Macau. The win was a consolation for crashing out in the main race.

  After taking third place in 1962 at Macau in a Jaguar E-type owned by barrister Charles Ching, things began to happen for Poon.

  The next year, he acquired his first real racing car - a Lotus 23. The $36,000 purchase price came courtesy of a Government loan.

  Poon said: 'The superintendent was also a racing enthusiast and he knew I had been doing quite well in the club events. I said: 'I've been racing a couple of years in the Triumph and I have put up a pretty good performance. I want to buy this car'. He told me to put in the loan application and he would approve it.

  'It was a tremendous car; I kept winning races in it. I never lost,' said Poon, perhaps a little liberal with the truth.

 The first time he drove the car in a race he won the 1963 Singapore Grand Prix and later the Malaysian Grand Prix in Johor Bahru, the first person to win both races in the same year.

  A win at Macau would have capped a perfect year, but he was forced off the track with transmission failure.

  After six years of trying, Poon finally did win at Macau - in 1964 - and took home a cheque for $10,000.

   Despite 11 top five finishes at Macau, he was often dogged by bad luck. From crashed cars to blown engines, faulty fuel tanks and transmission trouble, many a near-victory at Macau was snatched from his grasp.

  'I had rotten luck in Macau,' he said.

  'I won the Singapore Grand Prix three times, the Malaysian three or four times and the Philippines GP, but Macau seemed to be the elusive one. Every year I came second it was the result of something going wrong.

   'I bought a Formula 2 car for Macau and thought I was going to win for sure. It was a former Piers Courage-winning car in Britain. At the 11th hour, the organisers said they were going to allow Australian Kevin Butler to race with a V8-powered Alfa Romeo.

  'What could I say? I was an Alfa Romeo dealer at the time, so I said, 'Of course', knowing full well that he was going to beat me, which he did.'    Poon said a lot had changed in the Macau Grand Prix since the early days when it was a race for the locals. He feels all the classification and rule changes of recent years have made the race hard for spectators to follow.

 'With changes in the regulations every two years, it is hard to keep up with what's happening. You get used to watching Group A and all, of a sudden, they [the organisers] want a Class 2 car. What is a Class 2 car? I'm still trying to find out.

 'It's all money nowadays. In the old days, you could make money because tyres and everything else were cheap.

  'Everything is now so expensive. Even if you have the money, you cannot buy the tyres. The factory-sponsored guys get their allocation of tyres first. That's the problem. It would be fairer if everyone could buy the same thing.'   Poon said it was virtually impossible for an amateur local racer to get into auto racing today as Hong Kong people did not support the sport.

   Without a practice facility, there was no place for local drivers to develop.

  As a past president of the Hong Kong Karting Association for 15 years, Poon said he had tried to develop young drivers, but the powers-that-be were always against the organisation.

    They kicked them out of one practice facility after another.

   He called karting an excellent training ground for future drivers. Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and a host of other drivers had started out as kart racers.

 'I don't know why people seem to be against karting - it is a very good thing for the younger generation to have.' 



Poon's life in fast lane