George Fury

George Fury (born January 31, 1945) is a retired Australian rally and racing car driver. For the majority of his career Fury was associated with Nissan, twice winning the Australian Rally Championship, and twice runner up in the Australian Touring Car Championship.

Rallying

Born in Hungary, Fury rose to prominence during the 1970s as part of the Howard Marsden run Datsun Rally Team, racing Datsun 1600s, winning the 1977 Australian Rally Champion (tied on points with Ross Dunkerton, then later Datsun Stanzas where he finally won the Australian Championship by himself in 1980. Fury also twice won the Southern Cross Rally in the late 70s.

Touring cars

A shift in emphasis in 1981 saw the Datsun Rally Team abandoned in favour of a circuit racing program for a turbo charged Nissan Bluebird. Fury joined Fred Gibson as drivers and proved instantly competitive. By 1983 the Bluebird was a race winner and Fury narrowly lost the 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship by six points to Allan Moffat after the Nissan team decided not to attend the final round of the series. Fury would give the Bluebird program its finest moment at the 1984 James Hardie 1000, qualifying on pole position for the final Group C Bathurst 1000.

The adoption of Group A put Fury on the sidelines for a year while the Nissan team developed the Nissan Skyline into a touring car. Fury did perform some guest drives for the Frank Gardner run BMW team before returning to racing Nissans in 1986 where in its first year of competition Fury lost the 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship by just five points to Robbie Francevic.

The emergence of Glenn Seton as a touring car driver pushed Fury into a supporting role at Nissan in 1987, but Fury still finished third in the championship behind Seton and champion Jim Richards. 1988 was a frustrating year for Nissan with an abbreviated program forced by development of the new R31 model Skyline into a competitive car. Richards joined Nissan in 1989 replacing Seton who had departed to start his own team, but the emergence of another young driver Mark Skaife saw Fury leave the team.

Now without a drive, Fury returned to rallying, dominating the early rounds of the 1990 Australian Rally Championship until a lack of funding ended his run. He drove for Glenn Seton Racing in the 1990 endurance touring car races but by 1991 had retired from racing to his his farm in Talmalmo.

Career results