Kevin Bartlett (born 25 May 1940 in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales), often known by his nickname "KB", is an Australian former open wheel and touring car racing driver who won the Australian Drivers' Championship in 1968 and 1969, as well as the prestigious Bathurst 1000 in 1974. Bartlett was named in Wheels magazine's annual yearbook in 2004 as one of Australia's 50 greatest race drivers. He placed #15 on the list.
Racing career
Bartlett first arrived on the Australian racing scene in 1958 when he competed in the Touring Car Scratch Race at Bathurst, driving a 950cc Morris Minor.
Over the next few years, Bartlett progressed through the levels of Australian motorsport before his big break came when he was hired to drive for 1960 Australian Grand Prix winner Alec Mildren in the Tasman Series of open wheel racing. Bartlett proved competitive in this series and would become a fixture of Alec Mildren Racing for the next decade racing a long line of open-wheel racing cars and Alfa Romeo touring cars. Bartlett won the 1965 International 6 Hour Touring Car Race for the Mildren team, driving an Alfa Romeo TI Super with Frank Gardner and he also won the 1967 Surfers Paradise Four Hour, driving a similar car with Doug Chivas.
Bartlett got his first works drive via motoring journalist and part time rally driver Evan Green at Bathurst driving a Morris Mini de Luxe for the BMC team in the 1965 Armstrong 500.
At the 1967 Bathurst Easter meeting, Bartlett became the first driver to ever lap the 6.172 km mountain circuit at an average speed of over 100 mph driving a 1964 Repco Brabham BT11A Climax.
In 1969 Kevin Bartlett took his Mildren-Alfa Romeo to the win at the Macau Grand Prix for Formula Libre cars. Bartlett considers the win as one of the highlights of his motor racing career. He returned to the event in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of his win.
In 1970, Bartlett traveled to the United States to compete in the USAC Championship (aka Indy Car) series, attempting and failing to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. Bartlett competed in three other Indy Car races, but failed to finish.
Bartlett was signed on to co-drive with John Goss in the 1973 Bathurst 1000, in a brand-new Ford XA Falcon GT Hardtop. They qualified on pole position for the race and led for over three-and-a-half hours, but crashed out of the race on lap 110. They returned the following year and won the event with Bartlett holding off the Bob Forbes Torana and bringing the Goss Falcon home in the rain. Bartlett's Bathurst-winning drive in 1974 was achieved while he still carried hip and pelvis injuries from a major crash at the Pukekohe round of the Tasman Series nine months earlier.
Bartlett was a fixture of Formula 5000 throughout the 70s with a series of Lolas and briefly the unique Brabham BT43 Formula 5000. As the decade closed and Formula 5000 declined, Bartlett returned to touring cars, developing the American Chevrolet Camaro Z28 for Australian Group C with the partnership of Kerry Packer's television network the Nine Network. The car (which Bartlett had purchased new from Unser Chevrolet in New Mexico) debuted, without Bartlett, at the 1979 Bathurst 1000. Bartlett was to co-drive with Bob Forbes in the James Hardie 1000, but a bad F5000 crash in the Brabham BT43 at the Sandown Gold Star Round on 9 September 1979 saw KB watch the race from a wheelchair nursing a broken arm and leg with F5000 and Sports Sedan racer John McCormack taking his place in the car.