Here is a trivia question. Name a Tasmanian driver who made his mark in single seater racing cars before seeing the light (and dollar signs) and moving to a successful career in touring cars. He also fiddled with his year of birth to appear younger and appeal to sponsors and then went on to reinvent himself as a star of Touring Car Masters? John Bowe? No? How about his long-time adversary Andrew Miedecke? In many ways their careers ran in parallel, but while Bowe scored a number of national championships Miedecke always came up short. It was not through lack of ability, as he was an aggressive and hard-as-nails racer who never left anything on the table. Inevitably there were plenty of big crashes and blown engines and that took its toll. Despite some sponsorship, he was paying most of the bills. “If you want to keep motor racing you have to become good at making money,” he told AMC recently. Often he would ‘retire’ at the end of a season in financial purgatory only to return the following year. He’s almost had as many comebacks as Dame Nellie Melba!
Miedecke always wanted to make it to Formula 1. The raw speed was there but age and circumstances conspired against him. By his own admission he made some poor decisions in trying to climb the ladder, a case in point being his year in British Formula 3. In Formula Ford, Formula 2 and Formula Pacific he lacked the consistency to win championships. He ventured into touring cars at the peak of Group A when running a Ford Sierra RS500 at the front was prohibitively expensive. Incredibly it wasn’t until 1991 that he even raced a V8, though since then he has barely raced anything but V8s! There were 15 starts in The Great Race for five top 10 finishes and one podium. Throughout his career his enthusiasm may have waned at times but he never lost his love for the sport. Indeed, in later years in tarmac rallies and especially in Touring Car Masters he relished the competition and the comradery with his peers. For the successful Port Macquarie car dealer universally known as ‘Mad Andy, it has been quite the journey.
Early days
Andrew Miedecke, a fifth generation Australian of German descent, was born in Melbourne in 1947 but grew up in Launceston, Tasmania. He did not excel at school but wanted to be good at something. That something initially was horses, an interest he shared with his mother.
“I had met Laurie Morgan, an equestrian rider who won Australia’s first Olympic Gold Medal in the sport riding Salad Days (at Rome in 1960),” Miedecke recalled. “I had a
