Jim McKeown is a retired

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

racing driver who competed in the

Australian Touring Car Championship The Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) is a touring car racing award held in Australia since 1960. The series itself is no longer contested, but the title lives on, with the winner of the Repco Supercars Championship awarded the trophy ...

from 1964 to 1972, with a best finish of 2nd in the 1970 ATCC. McKeown was part of the successful Neptune Racing Team alongside

Norm Beechey Norm Beechey is a retired Australian race car driver, who was given the nickname ''"Stormin Norman"'' by his fans. To some, he was the closest thing Holden had to a star racing driver, before Peter Brock. Beechey competed in the Australian Tou ...

and Peter Manton. The team later became known as the Shell Racing Team and consisted of McKeown in a Porsche 911S, Beechey in a

Holden Monaro GTS350 The Holden Monaro ( ) is a rear-wheel drive coupé manufactured by General Motors Holden in Australia from 1968 to 1975 and later reintroduced from 2001 to 2005. It was also manufactured as a 4-door sedan from 1973 to 1977. Three generations of ...

and Manton in a

Morris Cooper S The Mini is a small, two-door, four-seat car, developed as ADO15, and produced by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors, from 1959 through 2000. Minus a brief hiatus, original Minis were built for four decades and sold during ...

. In addition to the Australian Touring Car Championship, McKeown also competed in the

Bathurst 500 The Bathurst 1000 (formally known as the Repco Bathurst 1000) is a touring car race held annually on the Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. It is currently run as part of the Supercars Championship, the most rec ...

and its forerunner at

Phillip Island Phillip Island (Boonwurrung: ''Corriong'', ''Worne'' or ''Millowl'') is an Australian island about south-southeast of Melbourne, Victoria. The island is named after Governor Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, by explorer ...

on four occasions. He and George Reynolds took the Class D win at the

1962 Armstrong 500 The 1962 Armstrong 500 was an endurance race for Australian built production cars. The race was held at the Phillip Island circuit in Victoria, Australia on 21 October 1962 over 167 laps of the 3.0 mile circuit, a total of 501 miles. Cars compe ...

, five laps off the lead. McKeown drove for the Ford Works Team under

Harry Firth Henry Leslie Firth (18 April 1918 – 27 April 2014) was an Australian racing driver and team manager. Firth was a leading race and rally driver during the 1950s and 1960s and continued as an influential team manager with first the Ford works ...

in the 1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500, finishing 42nd with Spencer Martin in the team's only XT Falcon GT fitted with an

automatic transmission An automatic transmission (sometimes abbreviated to auto or AT) is a multi-speed transmission used in internal combustion engine-based motor vehicles that does not require any input from the driver to change forward gears under normal driving c ...

. In the 1970s McKeown raced

Porsche Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see #Pronunciation, below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ...

s in the

Sports Sedan A sports sedan (also known as sports saloon in British English) is a subjective term for a sedan car that is designed to have sporting performance or handling characteristics. History The term was originally introduced in the 1930s an ...

category, achieving a 2nd-place finish in the 1974

Toby Lee Series The Toby Lee Series was an Australian motor racing series run at Oran Park Raceway in Sydney, between 1970 and 1975. In 1970 Oran Park, with backing from sponsors Toby Lee (a brand of shirts) and department store Grace Brothers, launched a new seri ...

at Oran Park.

Career results

Complete Australian Touring Car Championship results

(

key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...

) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McKeown, Jim Australian racing drivers Australian Touring Car Championship drivers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)