The Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame has inducted six new members and elevated Casey Stoner to Legend status, at a ceremony held during the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park today.
This year’s ceremony brings the total number of inductees in the Hall of Fame, which celebrates the achievements of Australian motorsport over 125 years, to 99.
Twice World Motorcycle Champion Casey Stoner has been elevated to Legend status, joining a select group that includes Sir Jack Brabham, Alan Jones, and Mick Doohan. Stoner’s induction recognises his outstanding contribution to the sport, with 38 Grand Prix victories, including six consecutive wins at Phillip Island, and World Championships in 2007 and 2011.
Photos: Rebecca Hind
The 2025 inductees also include:
- Chad Reed, a two-time AMA Supercross champion and one of the most successful international motocross and supercross riders in history.
- The Australian Women’s International Six Day Enduro Team, comprising Jemma Wilson, Jessica Gardiner, and Tayla Jones, recognised for their five consecutive world series victories from 2013.
- Chris Matheson, an eight-time Top Fuel Motorcycle drag racing champion and the first rider to achieve a five-second pass on the quarter mile.
- Leo Geoghegan, a Gold Star champion and Japanese Grand Prix winner, recognised for his contributions to 1960s Australian motorsport.
- David Sera, an eighteen-time national karting champion, whose success in the karting world has made him a prominent figure in Australian motorsport.
- John Sidney, a respected speedway and NASCAR crew chief, recognised for his significant impact on the technical side of motorsport.
Tim Schenken OAM inducted the new awardees while Mick Doohan AM uplifted Stoner to Legend status during the ceremony.
Photos: Rebecca Hind
The Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame was established in 2016 by the Australian Motorsport Council (AMC) and is constituted by Australia’s peak motorsport governing bodies across the five key motorsport disciplines – automobile, motorcycle, karting, drag racing and speedway. It celebrates and preserves the legacy of Australian motorsport, recognising the top tier of achievers and inspiring future generations of competitors, administrators, and volunteers.
“The Hall of Fame honours our top tier of achievers and serves to inspire the next generation of racers,” said John Smailes, Chair of the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
“It is so exclusive that it accounts for less than one person for each of the 125 years motorsport has occurred in Australia.”
The Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame continues to play a vital role in recognising the extraordinary achievements of individuals who have shaped the history of Australian motorsport.
See the full list of inductees below
Casey Stoner
Casey Stoner AM deservedly joins Sir Jack Brabham , Mick Doohan and Alan Jones as the quartet of legends, the highest echelon of the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
Casey did amazing things on two wheels. He won Ducati their first senior class world championship – and took Bridgestone along on the world title ride.
On one of the fastest and most challenging motorcycle circuits in the world – Phillip Island – Casey won six times and then stunned Honda and his fans by announcing his retirement on his twenty seventh birthday. Honda offered him “more money than we have ever offered any rider or driver” – but with determination and maturity Casey declined.
A decade on there are those who say he stepped down way too early, but Casey has remained firm to his commitment.
His love for his family, wife Adriana and daughters Alessandra and Caleya has helped him built a new life. One in which his legend continues to grow as one of the greatest racers of his generation.
Leo Geoghegan
Leo Geoghegan epitomised professionalism. The 1960s heralded the birth of a new era of motorsport and Leo, his brother Pete and father Tom led the charge.
When Sir Jack Brabham controversially branded his Cooper Bristol the Redex Special, Leo and Pete – who were too young to drive – were there for the reveal.
Still in his teens, Leo made his name in the emerging world of touring car racing. His streamlined FJ Holden won the first NSW Road Racing Championship for Sedan Cars.
Leo was always meant for open wheeler racing. The Geoghegan family secured the franchise for Lotus. They’d import them, race them, and then on-sell them.
Leo was so good that world champion Jim Clark implored him to come to Europe. “He’d be in the top six”, Jim said.
But father Tom had died, and Leo’s first duty lay to the family business.
Instead he raced ex-Clark cars. In 1969 he won the inaugural JAF Japanese Grand Prix in the ex-Clark Lotus 39 fitted with an Australian made Repco V8.
In a ten year span, Leo won the Australian Gold Star Driver’s Championship, the Australian Formula Junior title, and the Formula Two championship twice.
With brother Pete, he won the Bathurst Six Hour – precursor to the Bathurst 1000, Australia’s Great Race.
The brothers won that event too, in 1966, only to be protested back to second by their team-mate Harry Firth.
Leo was central to the development of the Chrysler Charger that took on the mite of Holden and Ford.
But it was in a Holden, co-driving for Colin Bond that he took his last Bathurst podium, in 1973.
He retired far too young, aged just 38, in 1974.
Jess Gardiner, Tayla Jones and Jemma Wilson
They’re ‘The Matildas’ of Motorcycling – five times world champions in one of the oldest and toughest disciplines of all.
For five years from 2013, Jess Gardiner, Jemma Wilson and Tayla Jones dominated the Women’s International Six Day Enduro, an endurance test of world renown.
The ISDE for men was first held in 1913. It took almost a century for women to be admitted, and Australia, along with France and the USA, has led the way.
They’ve raced in Italy, France, Slovakia, Belgium and Argentina. Competitors complete a series of trials – more than 250 unique kilometres each day with a motocross on Day Six. Fourteen-hundred kilometres in total.
They’re not allowed to recce on their bikes or use pace notes, so they walk the sections and commit to memory.
They’re allowed just 25 minutes of non-competitive time a day to work on their own machines – no outside hands-on assistance allowed.
Enduro bikes are slightly detuned full works motocrossers with headlights and side stands – but so tight is competition that when the occasion demands they’ll power up.
Even the transport sections are tough. Village by-passes serve up near impossible combinations of tight alleys and tyre eating rocks.
The ISDE awards individual world championship medals. Jess Gardner and Tayla Jones have both claimed the top step.
In Slovakia in 2015 the team totally dominated – Tayla Jones first, Jemma Wilson second, Jess Gardiner third.
Injuries caused Jemma to retire in 2017, but by then the Aussie dream team had set a standard which has seen subsequent Australian attempts flourish.
Locked in a tight annual battle with the USA, Australia can rightly claim its place as one of the world’s best ISDE world championship competitors.
David Sera
A record 18-times national champion, and 56-times state title holder, David Sera is Australia’s most capped kart racer.
He can lay claim to being our first full-time professional in a discipline which has become the feeder category for all forms of top end racing, from Supercars to Formula One.
Most importantly, he’s become our pre-eminent trainer. His kart class tuition offers specific instruction to youngsters as young as eight. And his recently developed online program provides specific instruction to racers around the world – right down to corner-by-corner descriptions of race tracks on other continents.
David Sera first went karting in the arms of his father George, a former drag racer who became four-times Victorian karting champion.
David first sat in a Kart at age three the same age as his own son Jesse who’s now set to become a third generation racer.
David’s progression was rapid. He won his first state championship in Tasmania, aged just eight, his advancement greatly assisted by fellow Hall of Famer Drew Price and Price’s son Bart who provided David with essential equipment and support.
He joined their business straight out of school and has remained an ambassador ever since.
David has won all 18 of his national titles in the Price family’s Arrow Kart, eclipsing by three the previous record held by John Pizzaro, another member of the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
David’s place is unique in karting. While he’s raced and won around the world against F1 champions like Charles Leclerc and Supercar star Mark Winterbottom , he’s stayed true to his roots – tempted, but never moving from the Karting discipline.
Just 36, and now retired from active competition, he recognises karting as motorsport’s pathway but steadfastly maintains a protagonist of club level racing.
Before the sport becomes a profession, he maintains, it should first and foremost be fun, a family affair.
Chris Matheson
At 63 years of age Australia’s most renowned Top Fuel Drag racer Chris Matheson became the first to break the six second barrier for the quarter mile – a feat equivalent to running the four minute mile.
Born outside Tamworth in 1961 Chris was always meant to do great things on two wheels.
Early dirt bike experience confirmed his skill and balance, but a career in property development got in the way of his competition ambition.
His fiftieth birthday changed all that. Chris imported a top fuel drag bikes from the states and set out in pursuit of the elusive five second pass.
Over a decade he became our country’s pre-eminent racer- eight championships , 50 wins, 70 podiums, 60 top qualifying performances. It didn’t come easily.
Matheson’s proud claim is that at 379kmh it was the fastest motorcycle crash in the world in which the rider survived.
Undaunted he set out to build a bike even faster. Top Fuel bikes are powered by 1.5litre four cylinder supercharged engines- incredibly developing two thousand horsepower. Each component made from a single billet of steel.
Ten years to the day after the crash he achieved his sub-second goal at Sydney Dragway.
Chris retired on the spot. His wife and five kids appreciated that. Now he’s working on building the first twin cylinder Harley to go under six seconds anywhere in the world: but someone else will ride it.
Chris Matheson – a determined, and unique ,member of the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
Chad Reed
They called him the Hunter Valley Hurricane but Australia was never going to be big enough for Chad Reed.
At 18 the indigenous youngster from Kurri Kurri took himself and his girlfriend now wife Ellie off to Europe: First place in the 2001 Motocross of Nations in Belgium. And that opened the door to America.
Chad hit the big time. Twice world AMA supercross champion. Stadium Supercross was the coming super sport and Chad took it by the scruff of its neck. A mixture of genius let him take on a beat his all-time hero Ricky Carmichael.
A twenty year stellar career doesn’t come without sacrifice. Although a super athlete Reed has battle injuries,
combining the indoor supercross discipline with traditional motocross where he’s won on three continents ,a total of 19 championships. In 2009 he was named the AMA’s Athlete of the Year.
Reed’s stature in motorsport is universal, a friend of MotoGp and F1 stars ,in their view not only their equal but a performer to be admired.
Reed stood on the big stage. He gave it his all , a mixture of incredible talent, savage aggression and total commitment. In 2020 when he made his first retirement announcement it was an emotional moment.
He’s come back since then; the rush of competition too great to resist . even though he’s now entered his 40s.
But his big push is his family. Eldest son Tate is now racing and Chad and Ellie are supporting his fledgling career. Tate couldn’t have a better mentor.
Welcome Chad Reed to the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
John Sidney
In the decade when the Calder Thunderdome challenged the concept of motor racing in Australia, crew chief John Sidney ruled the sport.
When high speed oval crashes caused chaos John Sidney introduced pit stop strategy.
Undercut and overcut, refuelling under safety car conditions- all were foreign concepts. Sidney used them wisely and won.
With drivers Max Dumesny and Barry Graham his state of the art professional team won six NASCAR titles at the Thunderdome ,more than any other.
His association with sprint car hero Max Dumesny, already a Hall of Fame inductee, netted them the Australian championship and three world sprint car series.
As a 17 year old John Sidney started out on the skids, winning regional meetings and then finally state production car titles.
His Chrysler Valiant stock car may have looked rough , but in typical Sidney style it was super tuned with chassis and handling that was class leading.
His mentor was ace development engineer Jack Godbehear.
Sidney embraced early sprint car racing wheel to wheel on the rough hewn regional tracks of Victoria
His CRC sprint car soon grew wings – leading the aero-revolution. But it was in the workshop as an engineer and on the pit wall as a strategist that John found his true calling.
He advised and worked with some of the best and most ambitious teams in the country
But it was his own team that became his passion and life’s work.,
Aged 80, John closed the doors on John Sidney Racing last year. Said he was out of fuel , yet he still sneaks in occasionally to build motors for friends.
John Sidney , engineer and strategist, a worthy inductee into the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.