13 September: Sandown Stormer

The 1987 running of the Sandown 500 was like an old drainpipe – long, hard and broken up by moisture.

Because this was the "international" layout, track length was 3.9km and the total distance would be 129 laps. Heading into the race, then, the big question was pit strategy. Like the Wellington 500 back in February, it was a question of balancing raw speed against fuel economy, and judging whether it would be faster to take one, two or three pit stops. With no ultra-thirsty Jags in the race there weren't likely to be any 3-stoppers, which would see the first pit window open after lap 33, but might work for some who were using super-sticky high-deg tyres. A 2-stop strategy, which was far more likely, would see the window open after lap 43 or so, with the co-drivers typically given the middle stint to give the prime driver a break while also giving him maximum distance at the wheel. Only the super-efficient BMWs were likely to take the 1-stop option, approaching the race as two huge 250km stints and giving the prime and co-driver equal seat time, but it had the advantage of needing only one stop for tyres, which was one less chance for things to go wrong. It was thought the 1-stop option was out of the question for the Commodore runners, but there might be a few who ran a sort of hybrid strategy of a treating the race as a 1-stopper with a short splash-and-dash near the end. The advantage of this was partly that the late fill-up would be much briefer, but also that it would probably require only two sets of tyres – at $1,800 a set, always a hefty part of the bill when you were funding your racing out of your own pocket.

From the moment the flag dropped the pace was hot: the Nissans and BMWs all made slow starts, by Gricey got his Commodore off the line like it was spring-loaded and surged into the lead before they could even blink. By the first turn he was through and gone, with the field settling into a leading pack of Grice, the two Nissans, Perkins and Brock, with the rest of the peloton somewhat behind.

Grice's spice was appreciated, but it was also sadly brief: as early as lap 2 he was slowing, something going wrong with his engine, and he toured back to the pits and watched helplessly as Les Small and his crew lifted the bonnet and plugged in one of these newfangled engine diagnostic computers – which he later revealed immediately crashed on them. Eventually the problem was located – a broken rocker stud – and the car was later sent out with Win Percy at the wheel, to give him some seat time ahead of Bathurst, but by then the race was half over. The car was never a factor again.

This merely cleared the field for the real mover and shaker in the early laps, Dick Johnson. Whatever he'd put under the bonnet of that Sierra, it was doing the job: every time the #18 arrived at the start of a straight, Johnson just planted his foot and watched the whole field go backwards. Passing cars, especially on the long uphill at the back of the circuit, was done with startling ease. Peter Brock was no obstacle, a brief dice through the first complex of turns to what used to be called Peters Corner, then a simple waft of horsepower to fly by up the hill. Future RS500 owner Allan Moffat was moved to say:

Talk about horses for courses! That's horsepower working for you. ... And you must bear in mind it is a significant hill up the back straight. It doesn't look it on the camera angle, but that's a decent climb up the back straight and an indication of just how well they will climb the Mountain in three weeks' time.

A few laps later Johnson had hunted down George Fury, then 2nd place in his Skyline behind teammate Glenn Seton. Another lap and Johnson had split them, but Seton soon proved a much tougher opponent to pass. He was holding his line and making the superior handling of the Skyline – or at least his longer experience with its unforgiving quirks – work for him through the twisting infield section. Demonstrating an already formidable racing brain, Seton showed he knew just where to place the car on the road, and at one point cleverly nipped past Daryl Hendrick in the #86 Gemspares Gemini, then left Johnson bottled up behind him through a crucial couple of corners. But long-term it was a storm in a teacup: after four-odd laps of wrestling with the future Ford hero, the established Ford hero got the traction out of the final corner he needed, and powered past on the grandstand straight. 7 laps down, and Dick Johnson was leading the race. 7 laps, 14th to 1st.  If there were any lingering doubts about the RS500, they were well and truly banished now.

Seton still wasn't giving up though. He got a little messy trying to out-brake Johnson into the first turn, getting up on the kerbs and generally out of shape, but he made the braking performance of the Skyline work for him as they entered a new complex of turns, re-passing the Shell Sierra and regaining the race lead. Coming back onto the grandstand straight Seton hugged the inside line, but it was a lost cause as once more the red Sierra was visibly, awesomely faster in a straight line. Johnson surged past and pulled a gap of several car lengths in only a few seconds.

That pass seemed to settle the matter, but it left one question open, namely that there is a difference between skill and craft, and the mark of a great racing driver is the use of his superior racecraft to avoid situations requiring the use of his superior racing skill. Recognising the futility of resisting Johnson, Fury had just let him go, electing to keep his powder dry for the end of the race. Seton had elected to fight him, and it was anyone's guess whether it was a good idea to push his car that hard so early in the race.

It seemed the thought had occurred to Johnson, because after a nice 15-lap stretch in the lead, Seton began inching back up. Whether it was tyre deg or Johnson deciding to turn the boost down, we didn't know, all we knew was that Seton was soon actively being held up and looking for a way past. We didn't get an answer until the end of the lap, when Johnson abruptly peeled off into the pits.

The team were sluggish attaching the hoses that ran the onboard air jacks, so it wasn't the best stop ever seen – almost exactly 30 seconds stationary – but that didn't seem to matter. Lap 22 was way too early even for a 3-stop race, but we got our explanation when Johnson climbed out and Neville Crichton climbed in. That showed Johnson wasn't really interested in winning today, he was more concerned about giving his co-drivers some seat time ahead of Bathurst. "Croaky" Crichton – so named because he'd suffered throat cancer a decade ago, and become one of the first people in the world to be implanted with an artificial voice box – had been campaigning an outdated XR4 Ti earlier in the year, but the RS500 had an awful lot more power which made it critical to get him out on the track and familiar with the on-off boost action of that long skinny pedal on the right.

So that left Glenn Seton leading, with George Fury circulating 2nd, and the rest of the field strung out behind them. As the laps built up toward the first 2-stop windows, Channel Seven's Peter McKay stopped to talk strategy with the Nissan team boss.

Peter McKay: Well Fred Gibson, last year the Nissan Skylines produced the big 1-2 here in the Castrol 500. This year the cars weren’t as favoured, but there they are – around about lap 34, up front, running 1-2?

Fred Gibson: Long way to go yet, Peter. It’s only early days for the race. We’ve done our homework over the last few months and we hoped that we were going to be competitive here. It looks like we are competitive, but whether we can keep it all together for the end of the race I don’t know yet. We aim to come in about lap 40, we’re going to break it into two pit stops, and put fresh tyres on it and let the guys go again. I think it’s a changing sort of fad these days, instead of having hard tyres and try to get through on tyres, it’s better to change to a softer tyre and go as quick as you can for a shorter time, stop and put new ones on again. That’s what we’re trying to do today anyway, Peter.

McKay: So you’re not too surprised that the cars are up there at the front of the field?

Gibson: Not really. I think it’s better being at the front – we seem to like being at the front at some of the longer races. As long as I watch Jimmy and see what Jimmy’s doing, he’s the guy I think we have to try and beat.

McKay: Well then Jim probably has one less pit stop than the Skylines. That means you guys have got to pick up one minute. Can you do that?

Gibson: I think so, now we’re 20-something seconds ahead now ... It’ll be interesting toward the finish of the race.

On lap 40 Seton did indeed come into the pits – but when he did, the mechanics immediately pushed him to the back of the garage! Such an aberration warranted a second visit from Peter McKay.

Peter McKay: Well Glenn Seton was bowling along very nicely at the head of the Castrol 500 today, when suddenly the lights went out. What happened?

Glenn Seton: We think it’s done a turbo. Until we get it back and pull it to bits we don’t really know, but we’re pretty sure it is. We were having a fairly good run up until now, hopefully one day we’ll fix our turbo problems.

McKay: How were the tyres hanging out? You were running a softer compound today, but seemed to be holding onto the pace pretty well?

Seton: Yeah they were fairly good. The car was fairly slidy in the back but the tyres were holding up fairly good. We only have five laps to go until we were having a pit stop.

McKay: So can the Skyline, the lone Peter Jackson Skyline hang on and win this race here today?

Seton: I think so. George is looking fairly comfortable at the moment. We’ve still got another stop yet so anything can happen, but I think we can do it anyway.

So that was Glenn Seton joining Grice on the DNF list – he fought with Dick Johnson, and Johnson won.

On lap 41 Fury came in for his stop; Terry Shiel got in for the lunchtime shift, fresh tyres went on and the tank was brimmed once more. It was a quick and tidy stop, and Shiel rejoined in 5th, just behind Larry Perkins. With the Peter Jackson Skylines among the earliest to pit, that put them out of sequence with everyone else and promoted Jim Richards to the race lead, shadowed by Kent Baigent in the #25 Team Nissan NZ Skyline.

On lap 50 some of the promised Melbourne weather at last started to make itself felt – only a brief ten minute episode of light misty rain ("liquid sunshine," Moffat insisted), but enough to blow a cold wind through the strategists on pit lane. Their race plans had assumed a dry race, but if the rain was going to start making extra stops for tyres necessary, all bets were off. Peter Brock chose this moment to bring his car in and hand it over to Skippy Parsons. "One of the benefits of experience," laughed Peter when questioned by Peter McKay. "When it starts to rain, you put your co-driver in!" Then more seriously, he added: "He'll go well though, because after all he drove the car at Oran Park a couple of weeks ago in the wet, and hung onto Richo very well. So yeah, we're happy."

"Is a tenth victory here at Sandown out of the question?" McKay continued. "Are you starting to think you could pull one off?"

"Yeah, " Brocky said with a smile. "Always optimistic. I'm the eternal optimist! We know Sandown produces a high attrition rate, so keep the car in one piece and you're in with a chance."

His confidence boosted by the relaxed and talkative Brock, McKay felt cocky enough to go after the most punishing interview in the whole of pit lane.

Peter McKay: The Castrol 500 is probably going as planned for the JPS BMW team, you can’t get better than first, Frank Gardner?

Frank Gardner: Well at this stage there’s an awful long way to go, we’re not even halfway so you can slip out of this one real quickly – there’s an awful lot of good cars still running out there very healthy.

McKay: The second car, the car of Ludwig Finauer and Robbie Francevic had some problems, into the pits for a lap or so?

Gardner: Yeah it had a bit of a slip off the road and it’s done some damage on the radiator and the front spoilers. It’s not handling all that clever but it’s soldiering on, you just hope there’s no more ramifications out of it. Should make one stop for fuel and that should be about it for the day.

McKay: So what’s the strategy for Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst? They should be due into the pits fairly soon I gather?

Gardner: In about the next eight laps they’ll be in to take on fuel and I’ll slip Tony into the cockpit and we’ll take it from there. With the weather hanging around we could have another stop on our hands for wet weather tyres or, we just don’t know. It’s just a long day.

An exchange that makes me wonder if Gardner had a bet with someone in the pits that he could slip the word "slip" into the conversation at least three times. My money's on Longhurst.

The race carried on, the laps ticking away, Richards continuing to lead over Shiel, Baigent and Crichton. On lap 71 the rain came back, just to make a nuisance of itself, requiring windscreen wipers but not proper wet-weather tyres – at least not right away. But the change was enough to catch some out – Neville Crichton was seen facing the wrong way, having spun the Shell Sierra when its brutal all-or-nothing power delivery caught him out on a wet piece of road. He rejoined safely, but the car's front bumper was now hanging slightly ajar.

It was now, just as the rain started to set in and the track started to get a little bit soaked, that Richards came in and the black M3 at last made its sole planned pit stop. 72 laps all by himself, more than halfway, to pit from the lead at exactly the moment track conditions were changing – Richo had every right to look smug. Although we missed the stop thanks to an ad break, the replay revealed a team running a perfect drill, the JPS mechanics refuelling, re-tyring and Longhursting the BMW in disciplined haste. And yes, they'd fitted a set of Pirelli wets – full wets, not intermediates.

It was a solid 25-second stop, and Longhurst seemed set for an easy run to the flag... but then came an off note when the engine refused to restart. It took several seconds before the team realised what the problem was, and put their backs into it to give the car a push in gear to get it to turn over. As the car moved away, Longhurst had lost several seconds, so he rejoined in 2nd place, chastened but by no means out of contention. The only man ahead of him was Terry Shiel, and Shiel was effectively out of sequence, still with a stop to make before the end.

So all of a sudden, the whole race hinged on a man who barely even rated a mention during the season proper – could Terry Shiel drive through the rain, on slicks, for the next 10 laps or so, and build the one-minute gap they'd need to make a pitstop and still emerge in front of the #1 Beamer? Once Longhurst joined the race, the gap was only 31 seconds.

Peter McKay thought this was worth a visit to the dismounted Richards in the pits.

McKay: Well it’s Jim Richards weather here at Sandown. After threatening to rain all day it’s now coming down at a reasonable rate, but just when things got interesting, Jim Richards, you got out of the car and put in co-driver Tony Longhurst?

Richards: Yes, well we’d gone over halfway. We’d planned one one stop, so naturally Tony can take it to the end. I’m glad it’s raining, but I’d rather he was out there than me!

McKay: Did you do the right thing by him and put on some wet-weather rubber?

Richards: Oh yeah, yeah. We waited out long enough until we knew that the rain was going to stay, more or less, before we decided to pit. I think the rain’s here to stay until the end, so we’ve got wet-weather tyres and Tony’ll go to the end.

McKay: So everything’s looking pretty good for you guys – the car’s going well?

Richards: The car was running faster at the end than it was at the start. Once we get rid of a little bit of our fuel and warm our tyres up to the right temperature, then we can start to lap fast. Early in the race we can’t do that because we’re carrying too much weight in fuel.

As if to demonstrate Richo's words, a handful of laps later and Shiel's lead had grown slightly, to 38 seconds. Clearly Longhurst's tyres were taking their time warming up, and were only going to take a bit longer with all this rainwater sloshing around the track. Another lap though and the gap was shrinking again, back to under 30 seconds, and soon the Gibson mechanics could be seen readying a set of grooved Dunlop wets in the pits, with George Fury standing by with his helmet on. This was the big moment then: if they got this wrong and the weather turned fine, Fury would have to make another stop for slicks; Longhurst, in his 960kg Eurobox, could potentially trundle along and get home with no worse penalty than a ruined set of Pirellis. The Gibson team went ahead with the gamble. The stop was smooth, Shiel handed the car back undented and Fury rejoined 2nd, behind Longhurst but ahead of Parsons, Hulme and Crichton.

So of course, just a few laps later, the rain ceased and a dry line began to form where the cars were blasting through. Everyone on rain tyres found themselves staring down the barrel of another pit stop in 10 to 15 laps, however long it took the surface to dry; everyone who'd stayed out on slicks were suddenly rubbing their hands gleefully, waiting for their chance to pull the trigger.

Realising he had to make hay before the sun shone, Fury got the bit between his teeth and drove some of the most beautiful laps of his entire career, throwing the car into perfect and elegant drifts, just enough to swing it through the corner and line it up for the next straight, and not a bit more. It seemed conditions like this were tailor-made for Fury – the slippery surface didn't worry him in the slightest, as he'd cut his teeth in rallying and was perfectly at home with a loose back end. But it certainly seemed to be worrying Longhurst.

Before we could check the stopwatch again, however, we were distracted by the sudden retirement of Gregg Hansford, who'd just taken over the #18 Shell Sierra from Neville Crichton. All day the under-door exhaust had been disgorging beautiful yellow tongues of flame – a sign of how rich DJR was running it – but coming down the front straight it gave one last bright flash, just a bit bigger and longer than the others, and then fell quiet as Hansford coasted to an inglorious halt in front of the main grandstands. Car #18 wasn't quite out of the race immediately – Hansford was able to drive it to a grassy knoll and lift the bonnet to see if there was anything he could do – but it was clear the experience-gathering had ended for today. Moffat explained for us:

I think it’s a shame that for years at Bathurst, at least 15 years ago we woke up that turning the engines off was the most dangerous aspect of a pit stop. And now we’re back to turning them off again. And I believe what potentially happened at the last Shell pit stop was the heat soak that comes out of the turbocharger, which is absolutely enormous, in the five- to six-hundred degree area, has boiled the fuel; Gregg’s got in it, gone out and the engine’s hiccoughed. Perhaps by cooling it down slowly, getting in back to the pits, whatever tricks they’ve got, they may be able to get it going again but turning the engines off is not good news, and here’s another example of it.

Peter McKay, meanwhile, spoke to the boss for his view on it.

Dick Johnson: Poor old engine’s done that much work... It’s actually the engine we used on the dyno – it’s done fifty-odd hours on the dyno, and 200 laps at Surfers, and obviously some of the fuel we’ve put in it hasn’t been quite up to scratch.

Peter McKay: When the day started I guess we expected if the Sierras were going to have trouble, it’d be the driveline, but it hasn’t been the driveline?

Dick Johnson: No, that’s been fine.

Peter McKay: The day has ended early for you guys, but has it been a learning process? Have you come away from today with anything to do, anything to change?

Dick Johnson: I think we’ll regroup and have a bit of a look as soon as we get home – me and the guys’ll be leaving straight away. We’ll put a few engines together and do a couple of other slight adjustments to the car ready to go to Bathurst.

Meanwhile, by lap 90 George Fury had whittled Tony Longhurst's 17-second lead down to nothing, was sitting right on his bumper and in a position to think about relieving him of the race lead. Unlike the chase, the kill was easy – Fury simply out-dragged him down the front straight, then took him under brakes into Turn 1. With three-quarters distance gone, Fury was in the lead, and over the next laps got busy extending it as far as he could – 8 seconds by lap 94. But his searing pace hadn't been without penalty, and by lap 98 Fury was actively seeking out the wet parts of the track to keep his Dunlop wets cool and in one piece. It was a losing battle; as his tyres turned to marshmallows under him, Fury faced the agony of deciding whether to pit and leave Longhurst to face the same problem on his own, or carry on and hope Longhurst blinked first.

Soon we got our answer – footage of Jim Richards standing in the pits with his helmet on. Clearly Longhurst wasn't cutting it, so unsentimental as ever, Frank Gardner called him in to put his faster driver back behind the wheel. Astonishingly, at the start of lap 100, both the Skyline and the M3 toured into pit lane at exactly the same moment! It would be a battle of the pit crews, and in case it wasn't close enough, Frank Gardner's team had to make a driver change but had the advantage of centre-lock wheel nuts; the Gibson boys could leave their prime driver in place, but they'd have to undo five studs on each wheel! It was nail-biting stuff.

Both cars spent some 23 seconds stationary – which must've felt like ice ages to the men inside them – but then, with a four-cylinder moan, it was the Skyline that emerged from the pits first. The dodgy starter motor on the BMW had come back to haunt them, and doubtless it was resting at a metal recycling plant by Monday morning. But that was for tomorrow – right now, there was nothing for Richards to do but get his head down and drive as fast as he bloody could.

The track continued to dry, and by lap 108 Richo's tyres were up to temperature and he was right on Fury's bumper, looking hard for a way past. Up the back straight they sandwiched a backmarker – Fury went right, Richo went left – but it wasn't quite enough to take the Skyline under braking. Into Turn 1, Lawrie Nelson in the #28 Capri Components Mustang briefly made things interesting, but it didn't fluster Fury enough to give Richards an edge. Although he was genuinely having to resort to defensive driving, the extra power of his turbo engine was almost perfectly offsetting the benefit of the draft he was providing to Richards – and so they remained as good as tied together.

Another series of backmarkers on the infield section could've proved a headache, but Fury dealt with them swiftly – all except Bill O'Brien in the #19 Everlast Batteries VL, who couldn't make his Commodore evaporate at a crucial moment. Fury fumbled it and nosed into him, pushing him wide, and that sapped his momentum coming onto the grandstand straight. The crowd, who'd been on their feet every time the two of them blazed past, stood once more and held their breath.

It was the best opportunity Richards was going to get, but somehow, it didn't come off. Fury kept a nose ahead down the straight, which translated the right of line into Turn 1, and therefore to shuffling Richo back into his place. On lap 114 he had yet another go, drafting the Skyline up the back straight ready for a death-defying late pedal application into the following left-hander. Yet once more he didn't quite manage it, mostly because Fury had forced him onto the outside line a kilometre earlier, when they'd first come onto the straight – with a little less canny, he'd have lost the place right there.

And then, just as we were preparing for a big finish, abrupt silence. The TV came back from an ad break with 10 laps to go, with Richards nowhere to be seen. He was in the pits, his oil pressure having dropped to nothing on lap 118. It wasn't immediately terminal – they sent the car back out one last time, but it was limping, clearly no threat to the leader – so it seemed the old adage was right: the Skyline's FJ20ET really WOULD eat other engines alive. Even driven by one of the gentlest, most experienced sets of hands in the business, the pace of George Fury had just been too much for the BMW's to handle.

So it was that Fury & Shiel took the chequered flag (and banked the $25,000 winner's prize for their trouble), with 2nd place falling to the #11 Enzed VK of Perkins & Hulme – who'd sat there like a rock in the landscape all afternoon, letting everyone else trip in their haste – and 3rd place to the #25 Skyline of the Team Nissan NZ boys, Graeme Bowkett and Kent Baigent, who despite the odd mishap had run fast and efficiently all day.

Source

Fully 18 out of 40 starters had failed to make the finish, either by DNF or by failing to cover enough distance to be classified, which was much the same thing really. Among them was Peter Brock, who'd had a brake failure entering the first turn on lap 115 and skated off the road, and was lucky not to roll the #05 when the wheels dug into the sand. By contrast, Neil Crompton had partnered brilliantly with Jon Crooke, and the man everyone had dismissed as a PR stunt had brought the #6 Mobil Commodore home a highly creditable 4th. Even the rest of the Channel Seven team had to admit they were impressed; at long last, young Crompo might be able to abandon his nightmare broadcasting job and make his way as a rising racing driver...

But to the victor the spoils; Fury could be forgiven a smug little smile as he aligned from his unbent, unbowed & unbroken Nissan Skyline. After the presentation from the Castrol brass, Garry Wilkinson caught up for a post-race chat.

Wilko: Well George Fury, congratulations, what a race?

Fury: Thankyou. Well, it’s great to be here, the Nissan reliability certainly brought us home, and BP of course – keep on keeping on! [a bit of a dig at DJR's problematic Shell fuel there] ... I feel a bit sorry for Jimmy that we couldn't make a race of it all the way.

Wilko: It was a race for a while!

Fury: Yeah, it was really good and I think we both enjoyed it, but somehow he went out, I don't know what went wrong. But we just kept on going on like we usually do.

Wilko: He was really hounding you there, up until about 15 laps to go. He had you worried?

Fury: Oh he had me worried alright, but I thought I had him under control and it could've been anybody's race. But I'm glad I'm here now.

Wilko: I'm glad you thought you had him under control, nobody else did! But congratulations, a fantastic win.

So that was it; the final victory for the DR30 Skyline, and also the final victory for George Fury, the Hungarian-born ewe farmer from Talmalmo, who'd started out as a rally driver. Although he had many more kilometres to go between now and retirement, he'd never again rise so far above the field and put in such an impressive drive in such a difficult car. Now it was a question of how Fury, and indeed the whole of Australia's prize touring car scene, would cope with the coming invasion from across the seas. Bathurst always loomed after Sandown, but this year it was looming larger than ever.