Blue Genes

Dedicated To His Late Brother’S Memory, Mick Bellette’s ‘Blue-Ray’ XW Falcon Scored Some Top Tinware At Summernats 30 And Forged New Memories Along The Way.

- Dave Carey

WHAT does it take to hit the Top 20 at Summernats? A meticulous build plan? An iron-clad strategy for gaining judging points? Or just the gradual realisation that your build has become something truly special?

Mick Bellette’s journey to Top 20-dom took the latter path, paid tribute to his late brother along the way and scratched an itch for XW greatness that he’d harboured since his teens.

“When I was a kid, I had an XW Falcon; my old man told me not to touch it as it was too good, but I knew better,” Mick laughs. “I put bucket seats and a V8 in it, but then I had to sell it because I couldn’t afford to run it on first-year apprentice wages.”

As Mick started his panel beating apprenticeship, his older brother Ray was close to becoming a fully qualified mechanic, honing the skills that together were going to make them a formidable team. “Ray came up with it – we were going to start ‘Belletty Motorsport’…” Mick trails off.

The Bellette brothers’ business plan was not to be; in a splitsecond decision, Ray took his own life. “It was over a girl, something he would probably regret now,” Mick sighs with a solemn smile. “I never stop thinking about him.”

Fast-forward a decade: Mick is now established as a panel beater and ready to buy another XW Falcon. “I got it from Melbourne with a standard 302 Windsor and cruised it around like that for a bit,” he says. But naturally, the Belletty Motorsport gene took hold.

With the engine out, Mick’s honed eye noticed where he could make improvements. “I mean, have you ever looked at a standard Falcon’s engine bay?” he asks rhetorically. “There’s that many joins and seams and cracks and crannies; I ended up using a full bottle of gas just welding it all up.”