Maroc - SAU.COM.AU - content - 21/Jul 02:15

Farewell Neil.....hope the tracks are awesome where you are going

Well, I got some sad news to share with the community yesterday, Neil de Pau passed away suddenly on Friday night, most likely from a heart attack. There was no prior signs of a problem and unfortunately his wife Mel found him when she returned home later that night. While he hasn’t been too active on here in the last few years, many of the longer term members will know Neil well, he was an admin on the forums, a founding member of the NSW club, active committee member for many years and club president in 2009. While I'm not going to do the whole story (and I don't know the first part anyway), here's a few key things I remember Back before SAU (both the forums and clubs started), Neil worked at Nissan parts in in the 90s when they were selling GTRs, which is when I think he really go into Nissans. At some stage as JDM cars started coming in, he bought a S2 R33 GTST (from John at UAS I think) and he, Mel and Monty started coming along to skyline events I'm pretty sure I first met Neil as part of Team Trackday, a group of us who use used to do 1/2 and full day Eastern Creek open days every month in pretty much standard or lightly modified skylines (this is back when 200kw was a big deal, now you need 1000 to get the likes). They were crazy fun afternoons with so many laps on the track, just wearing out tyres/brakes and not breaking things. Good times. Christian @PranK was there too, from memory he also had a white S2 GTST at the time, and he set up SAU Forums when SDU became unfriendly no non-members, and he also established SAU NSW where Neil was a founding member in 2001/2002. Its a bit of an aside, but as long as I've known Neil and Mel they've had great danes....big ones....here's Monty and Prank from way back in the day...and Prank ain't short. Neil always loved motorsport (watching, helping and later competing). I had the massive privilege of his grumpy guidance teaching me pretty much every good habit I have with racecar prep, nothing I could do could ever repay the time, sweat and blood (and probably tears too) that he put into getting and keeping my car (and Mark's too) on track. He first helped us out at the Wakefield 500 in 2003, and then in so many rallies, races, track days all around the country not to mention a bazillion days just preparing and fixing broken race cars. He bought his first race car around 2005-ish, a rotary powered Capri sports sedan, and while he did get to do some competition in it, the reality was it was a bit of a shitbox, not well built/engineered with lots of failures....and of course being a PP rotary the engine was a nightmare too. After a while he realised the Capri was never going to be the car he wanted it to be, and he moved onto a Radical clubsport. While the radical has been through plenty of specs and ups/downs too, he raced that hard from about 2008 to now in supersprints, hillclimbs, track days etc and had a total blast, winning plenty of class trophies along the way. In particular I remember that lunatic doing Oran Park in his open sports car, on slicks....in the rain at night during one of their "Do it in the Dark" meets.... he was having too much fun to notice I think. As if that wasn't keeping him busy enough, as I mentioned in 2009 he stepped up as President of SAU NSW.....and the year threw everything at him - we had a huge Show n Shine at Fairfield showground, plenty of the regular events like track days and motorkhanas, we supported the first running of Superlap at Oran Park, ran a massive 30th anniversary dinner for the R32 GTR with Jim Richards and Alan Heaphy speaking and sadly had 2 members who died in an accident at an unofficial cruise. It was a year packed with real ups and downs. Anyway, post all of that he focussed more on his own racing again and took the skyline off the road and had it caged and log booked for racing as well, leaving him with a choice of fixing the radical or the skyline in any spare minute. He ran the skyline at a bunch of events in the mid 2010s, but it did get remodelled at the national Hillclimb champs at Mt Cotton and didn't quite make it back to the track yet In 2019 (they must have know COVID was coming), Neil and Mel got the hell out of Sydney and moved to Tamworth for a better lifestyle, a good local car club, and maybe most importantly a proper flat shed with space for a hoist I'm not sure he spent much outside that shed since. Anyway, that's about all I can think to say now, except......Farewell mate, you will be missed. Anyone else please post up any memories or pics you might have.