Manager
Gibson retired from driving after 1983 and replaced Marsden as Nissan team boss at the end of 1984, overseeing the successful introduction of the turbocharged Nissan Skyline program during Group A era, bringing young drivers Glenn Seton and Mark Skaife into the series. Success for the team, now becoming known as Gibson Motor Sport came at last with the 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship for Jim Richards. Along the way Gibson and his team developed the Nissan GT-R into the dominant car of the era, winning three successive championship and back to back Bathurst 1000 wins in 1991 and 1992.
Gibson continued to run the team in the V8 Supercar era as a Holden team, becoming a winner again within six months of completely rebuilding the team around the Holden Commodore race cars, and championship success returned with Skaife in 1994.
The end of tobacco sponsorship forced an end to the team's lucrative sponsorship partner, Winfield. Their fortunes declined in the mid-90s as budgets dwindled. Partnership with K-Mart in the late 90's brought another Bathurst win (1999 FAI 1000). Gibson's role in the team declined in the late 90's and he eventually sold his interest in the team.
Gibson returned to a direct involvement with his former team in 2001 during a dramatic switch with series star Craig Lowndes joining the team as they switched to Ford. Despite the spectacular beginning results did not come quickly and the team declined again. After an acrimonious split which included a court case over merchandising rights Gibson stepped away from the sport to retire, but is a regular at race meetings and keeps involved in racing. In 2004 Gibson was inducted into the V8 Supercar Hall of Fame.
Gibson is married to fellow former racing driver, Christine Gibson (née Cole).
Read more about this topic: Fred Gibson (racing Driver)
Famous quotes containing the word manager:
“I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house, but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Nothing could his enemies do but it rebounded to his infinite advantage,—that is, to the advantage of his cause.... No theatrical manager could have arranged things so wisely to give effect to his behavior and words. And who, think you, was the manager? Who placed the slave-woman and her child, whom he stooped to kiss for a symbol, between his prison and the gallows?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)