A veteran Australian racing car champion who retired and then spent years retracing historic expeditions across the outback has made a “highly significant” discovery, excavating the lost artefacts of a British explorer in the remote Simpson Desert.

Larry Perkins, whose 30-year driving career included eleven Formula One races and winning the European Formula Three Championship in 1975, retired from the scene in 2012 and began following the tracks of old Australian explorers in his yellow four-wheel-drive truck.

About 18 months ago, he became fascinated with a mystery that has long baffled historians: the whereabouts of the belongings of Henry Vere Barclay, a former Royal Navy officer from Lancashire who led an expedition across central Australia in 1904.

Barclay, who was born in 1845 and moved to Australia with the navy before working as a surveyor and explorer, had been searching for stock routes as well as the remains of Ludwig Leichhardt, a German explorer who disappeared during an expedition in 1848.

During a difficult passage between water sources in the Simpson Desert, Barclay and his team were forced to abandon about 400 pounds worth of their equipment and personal belongings. They survived - without finding Leichhardt’s remains - but their dumped cache triggered a new quest for future explorers. Two missions to find it – in 1915 and 2013 – failed.