Mark Skaife OAM was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2024 as an Athlete Member for his contribution to Motor Sport.

Mark Skaife was one of Australian motor sport’s most successful drivers, winning five touring car titles as well as six Bathurst 1000 victories.
He began his ascent as a bright, young talent excelling in go-karts and ended it playing a massive role in showcasing the sport to wider audiences with his daring style and his tactical nous behind the wheel.
He also played at times a number of other important roles including team owner, circuit designer and TV commentator.
Skaife’s five touring car titles included a stunning hat-trick of V8 Supercars championship crowns from 2000-2002, alongside his earlier wins in 1992 and 1994.
For a time he shared the most touring car title wins with Dick Johnson and Ian Geoghegan, a record which has since been surpassed by Jamie Whincup.
He was also master of the ‘Mountain’, winning six times at Bathurst (1991, 1992, 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2010), with a number of near-misses and hard-luck stories in between.
He retired from full-time driving in 2008, but made a comeback for key endurance classic, which allowed him to win a sixth Bathurst, alongside Craig Lowndes in 2010.
Skaife was awarded the Order of Australia in 2004 for his services to motor sport and the community.
He was inducted into the Supercars Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Motor Sport Hall of Fame in 2017.

Few motor sport champions have been as focused on attention to detail or more committed to using that strength to get the best out of himself than Mark Skaife.
Across more than two decades at or near the top of his game, and with an obsession to keep pushing the boundaries, Skaife was tireless in his quest to be the best.
When Skaife retired from full-drive driving in 2008 – he ended up making a comeback of sorts which delivered one final Bathurst win – one of his contemporaries, Craig Lowndes, had no doubt it was his work ethic and attention to detail which set him apart from his rivals.
“He’s got a great passion for the sport, he’s dedicated, he’s a worker,” Lowndes said in 2008. “I remember when we were teammates at HRT (Holden Racing Team) … I’d be going home to the hotel and he’d still have his head buried in data.
“He’s definitely 110 per cent, very focused about what he wants to achieve.”
Skaife’s list of achievements put him in the top echelon of drivers. He won five touring car championships (1992, 1994, 2000, 2001 and 2002), which was for a time the equal record alongside Dick Johnson and Ian Geoghegan before Jamie Whincup surpassed them.
He won Bathurst on six occasions – and it could have been more with an ounce of luck – with his first two (1991 and 1992 with Jim Richards) coming in a Nissan Skyline GT-R and his next four (2001 with Tony Longhurst, 2002 with Jim Richards, 2005 with Todd Kelly and 2010 with Lowndes) in a Holden Commodore.
His mother, Gay, gave him his exceptional attention to detail; his father Russell was once a touring car driver who took over the family business in the car industry.
While his mother had an initial reluctance to allow her son to race go-karts when he was 14 – the earliest age in which he could compete – there was no way of stopping him.
Five years later he moved to Melbourne to join Gibson Motorsport. His career now had the green light and he never looked back, playing a role in shaping the touring car landscape.
During his career, Skaife also had a crack at the Formula 3000 series in 1992 and drove in the 24 Hours Le Mans in 1997.
But touring cars always seemed to be his destiny.
Skaife won his touring car championships across an 11-year period, with his dominance in the early 2000s securing him a hat-trick of wins from 2000-2002.
His first Bathurst success came in 1991 with Richards as his co-driver, with the success coming in a blistering time.
He would later say on the 30th anniversary of the win: “It was a life-changing moment to win the biggest car race in this part of the world … It was the fastest race in history at the time and it was just a faultless day by not only the team but the way the car won.”
The pair backed it up with more success the next year, a contentious finish that ended with Skaife’s teammate Richards on the podium calling the angry crowd “a pack of a—holes.”
Skaife’s next three wins came in Holdens over a five-year period (2001, 2002 and 2005), with Richards teaming up with him again in 2002 – 10 years after his podium spray.
It was that famous race through the mountain that continued to drive him in terms of his ambitions, telling News Limited: “In a pure motorsport sense, Bathurst has the tradition and the heritage, and is our grand final.”
“It has created legends, superstars of motor racing have made their name there. It weaves into the social fabric of Australia – Labor vs Liberal, Collingwood vs Carlton, Holden v Ford.”
His rivalries with fellow drivers were legendary, sometimes even tense. His most famous was his clash with Russell Ingall after the ‘Sydney Scuffle’ at Eastern Creek when Skaife had been spun into the wall by his rival, with the anger boiling over on and off the track.
Following Skaife’s retirement from full-time touring car racing in 2008, endurance racing – and the Bathurst dream – still flickered for a man who still wanted more.
Skaife joined Lowndes as his co-driver and the pain famously won Bathurst in 2010, his sixth victory in the event.
It was an extraordinary comeback, given he was only competing in time-honoured endurance classics, with Skaife saying: “If you think about a sporting comparison it is a bit like Nathan Buckley or Andrew Johns just coming back for the grand final.”
Skaife was a motorsport giant in every sense of the word, with his glittering career showcasing his undoubted talents, his innovative drive and his fierce attention to detail.

Honours & Achievements

• 2004: Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia
• 2014: Inducted into the Supercars Hall of Fame
• 2017: Inducted into the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame
• 2018: Awarded Life Membership with Motorsport Australia

Photo courtesy Alamy.