Peter Gerard McLeod (born 6 May 1948 in Newcastle, New South Wales[1]) is a retired Australian racing driver, best known as co-winner of the 1987 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst, and for driving the distinctive yellow and black Slick 50 Mazda RX-7 Group C touring car during the early to mid-1980s.
McLeod finished 7th in the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst co-driving with Graeme Bailey, 3rd at the Surfers Paradise 300, and finally 6th in the Humes Guardrail 300 at the Adelaide International Raceway (AIR) in November.
Still driving the Slick 50 Mazda, McLeod finished third in the 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship behind the Holden Dealer Team Commodore of Peter Brock, and series winner Dick Johnson in his Greens-Tuf Ford Falcon.
[4] In 1985 he joined Allan Moffat, Kevin Bartlett and Gregg Hansford in Mazda Australia's attack on the 24 Hours of Daytona.
Driving Moffat's Bathurst RX-7, but with a different rear wing and without the CAMS imposed 20 kg (44 lb) lead ballast, the car qualified in the 38th (11th in the GTO class) and ran strongly until mechanical failure near the end of the race.
They were eventually classified 24th, 221 laps behind the winning Porsche 962 driven by A. J. Foyt, Bob Wollek, Al Unser and Thierry Boutsen.
The 13B engined Mazda was still in the same CAMS production based Group C trim in which it finished 1984 and was outperformed by purpose-built GT cars such as Bryan Thompson's 4.2L Chevrolet powered, twin turbocharged Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC and his newly acquired 6.0L Chevrolet Monza (in which Allan Grice had easily won the 1984 Australian GT Championship), and Kevin Bartlett's ground effects De Tomaso Pantera.
He failed to finish the Castrol 500 at Sandown and after qualifying 15th at Bathurst, McLeod crashed the Commodore heavily at the 160 km/h right hand McPhillamy Park on lap 48 of the race.
Bathurst 1986 was where McLeod's friend Mike Burgmann lost his life in a 260 km/h crash at the base of the bridge near the end of the 1.9 km long Conrod straight.
McLeod continued to run his VK Commodore during 1987 including the Castrol 500 at Sandown co-driving with Peter Fitzgerald (DNF after only 17 laps with a failed clutch).
Inspired driving by Brock and Parsons in a rain-plagued second half combined with good strategy and a lucky break with safety car procedures placed them into third position behind the two Eggenberger Motorsport Ford Sierra RS500s at the end of the race.
Before the race, a formal protest had been lodged against the Eggenberger Motorsport Sierras for illegal bodywork relating to the size of their front wheel arches.
As no road-legal Sierra existed in Australia at the time, the protest was delayed by a few months and it wasn't until January 1988 that McLeod, Brock and Parsons were declared the winners of the 1987 James Hardie 1000.
[6] Like other privateer Commodore runners, McLeod saw little value in driving in the 1988 Australian Touring Car Championship against the improving Ford Sierras, though he did run in the first five rounds of the nine-race series.
Following the ATCC, McLeod built a new 'Walkinshaw' spec VL Commodore Group A SV with the engine and suspension supplied by the Peter Brock organisation, who by that stage were running the BMW M3's.