[QUOTE Steve Holmes
Robbie Franicevic (note, his name was spelt with two ‘I’s, the first of which he dropped in 1967, when having gone to the US to race, found the American’s struggled to correctly pronounce his name)[/QUOTE]
It was New Zealanders as much as Americans who mispronounced his name. Everyone put the stress on the second syllable (Franicevic) when it should have been on the first (Franicevic) - dropping the first "i" brought the pronunciation closer to what it should have been