Glenn Seton

Glenn Michael Seton (born 5 May 1965) is an Australian racing driver. He won the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1993 and 1997 while driving for his own team. Although he never won the Bathurst 1000 like his father Barry did in 1965, Glenn started from pole position in 1994 and 1996, and finished second three times. He came close to winning the race in 1995, holding a significant lead in the closing stages, but his engine failed nine laps from the finish.

Growing up in south-west Sydney, Seton had a successful karting career before switching to cars after a heavy crash at Oran Park Raceway aged 17. He then raced for his father Barry's team in 1983, driving a Ford Capri and making his Bathurst 1000 debut in 1983 with Barry, better known as Bo. Seton then competed in three rounds of the 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship in the car.

He then moved to Nissan Motorsport from the 1984 Australian Endurance Championship and would remain with the team until the end of 1988. Father Barry also joined the team as engine builder. Glenn would first drive in a Nissan Pulsar EXA in the 1984 Castrol 500 at Sandown in Melbourne, and then at the 1984 James Hardie 1000, both times alongside Christine Gibson, the wife of his future boss Fred Gibson. In 1986, he would win his first major race, the Sandown 500 driving with George Fury.

His best individual year with Nissan came in 1987 driving the Nissan Skyline RS DR30 when he would finish second behind Jim Richards in the ATCC, only losing the championship after falling behind Richards in the final race at Oran Park Raceway. Teamed with John Bowe, Seton would then finish second in the 1987 James Hardie 1000 which that year was part of the inaugural World Touring Car Championship. Seton, who had driven a memorable stint on slick tyres in wet conditions, and Bowe were in a strong position behind the later-disqualified Eggenberger Motorsport Ford Sierra RS500s until a safety car delayed them. Post-season, Seton also competed at Suzuka Circuit in the final round of the 1987 Japanese Touring Car Championship with Anders Olofsson, finishing in fourth place. It was Seton's only major race outside Australasia.

1988 would be a frustrating year for Seton. Nissan introduced the new Skyline HR31 GTS-R, and with the car arriving only mid-season, the team could not get on terms with the much more powerful Ford Sierras. The cars initial unreliability saw Seton's Skyline retire from the first lap at both the Sandown 500 and Tooheys 1000, both times when the cars production-based gearbox failed.

Following this, Seton and his father Bo left the Nissan team at the end of 1988 to set up Glenn Seton Racing, which ran from 1989 to 2002, initially with Ford Sierra RS500s. The team wrote off its only car in the team's third round at Lakeside International Raceway in 1989, forcing the team to miss the next two rounds. In this Group A Sierra period, in which Seton retained the Peter Jackson title sponsorship from the Nissan days, Seton would only win one championship round, at Symmons Plains Raceway in 1992. In addition to this, Seton reunited with George Fury to win the 1990 Sandown 500 which contributed to winning the 1990 Australian Endurance Championship.

Approaching the new Group 3A regulations developed for 1993, GSR was one of the teams to develop a new V8 engine Ford Falcon (EB). The team ran the Falcons at the season-ending endurance races in 1992, where Seton became the first driver to put a Falcon into the top 10 qualifiers at Bathurst since 1984. The move to the new V8 formula would prove fruitful for Seton, winning the 1993 and 1997 Australian Touring Car Championships. In this period from 1993 to 1997, Seton finished in the top three of the championship in each year. This was despite the team's level of funding and resources dropping significantly from 1996 following the end of tobacco sponsorship in Australia.

Despite his consistent success in the championship, success at Bathurst would continue to elude Seton in this period. Seton did claim pole position at Bathurst in 1994 and 1996, however was regularly hampered by reliability issues on race day. Most infamously, Seton was leading the 1995 Bathurst 1000 until the final ten laps when an engine failure caused him to retire from the race. The race held extra importance for Seton as it was thirty years after father Bo's Bathurst victory, Seton himself was 30 years of age and was running in car number 30. A promotional offer would have given Seton the choice between $30,000 or his father's Bathurst winning car should he have won the race.