JILL BANKS
By Dave Roberts
A couple of years ago I had a
need to brief a graphic artist for a promotional
publication that we needed designed. I had no information
about the artist except her name and phone number
and so we arranged to meet so I could show this
stranger the venues she’d need to photograph.
| The day ran as you’d
expect, the photos and the promotional material
turned out great, and it began one of those
occasional acquaintances that comes from
working in a similar sphere and having similar
interests.
Jill’s claim to fame, apart from
being a pretty good designer, is that
she likes to go fast and over the past
three years she’s gotten pretty good
at it. Like a lot of people she’s
always really liked motorsport, and like
many other fans she had thought that while
it looked like really good fun, it was
completely out of reach.
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All that changed about the time she
attended a couple of the South West Sporting Car
Club’s events, motorkhanas and hillclimbs,
and was convinced that she should take her little
Honda round the track at Motoring South West, Collie.
The Sporting Car Club president drove her around
the track in her own car and showed her how to take
several seconds off the best lap time she could
manage, all in one easy lesson. "From then
on I get on the track and drive in a completely
different way" Jill reports.
At the time of the briefing she won
a special place in my heart by saying that it wasn’t
just reasonable to want a Ducati, but something
that gives you transport and is also a source of
joy is extremely good value and I really should
get one. That level of understanding and wisdom
is difficult to find. It’s also really good
to meet a normal person who is getting to the top
of their sport and we can see the progress of Jill’s
racing over what is a relatively short time. For
some time, then, it’s been a plan to introduce
the woman to South West Life readers in the people
section.
Jill completed a BA in Graphic design
way back in the mists of time, and tells us she’s
never had a job. Straight from Uni she started her
own business and has maintained that ever since,
always making enough that way to make ends meet.
She’s a long term Bunbury person
and has 3 teenagers who are involved in
all the things that young people are, so you
might catch her at soccer, or school open nights,
and all of that stuff.
So Jill Banks is a graphic designer
and proprietor of Redback Graphics. If you see a
Red Nissan 200sx getting around Bunbury that looks
like it might have a place on a racetrack, and a
redback spider on the door, you’re looking
at the real thing. The woman behind the wheel has
now completed two full seasons of the Enjo sprint
event series and is the Enjo Speed Event Series
Womens champion for 03 and 04. This makes her the
fastest girl on the track. There are plenty of guys
around who will point out that that’s like
Matt Shirvington being the fastest white man in
the world, but only two and a half years into the
sport, there are a few guys who really should be
watching their backs.
Jill says that her claims to fame
include the womens course records at Wanneroo long
circuit racetrack and at Collie’s Motoring
South West circuit, which by the way is being redeveloped
as I write. The Enjo championship is something to
hang her hat on and she intends to go even faster,
with a secret project in the planning stages.
Jill wants women to understand that
you really can get involved in motorsport, and recalls
that her own start came at club level motorkhanas
and running for some time in machines that weren’t
all that competitive. She’s had no formal training
and still does it for the joy of the sport. To have
a go you need a vehicle that is roadworthy but don’t
have to have anything fast. One girl has a whale
of a time in a very common roadcar, and a lot of
the guys out there are running machines that have
had the odd bit of attention but started as everyday
shopping trolleys.
It is worth noting, though, that while
you’re competing, your insurance company goes
on holidays, as Jill recently found at a hillclimb.
This is one person who can tell
me authoritatively that – the airbags work.
The story is a neat one. Someone looked
at something and wanted a go. She has found that
it’s not out of reach and has got a level of
success quite quickly. Now she’s encouraging
others and it’s even starting to deliver at
least some business leads for her. Meanwhile the
cars carries no sponsorship apart from her own business,
could you benefit from sponsoring a champion?
January 2004
