The fourth hour of the 1987 James Hardie 1000 carried on much as the first three had – with the Texaco Sierras leading, the Bob Jane T-Marts Commodore of Grice/Percy chasing hard, the Peter Jackson Skylines circulating quietly and the BMWs running into endless problems. The middle two hours of the race are still up on YouTube last I checked, which is worth mentioning because Supercars has managed to get every other race posted in its entirety pulled on copyright grounds. That strikes me as a bit rich when none of these races had anything to do with either Supercars or their broadcast partners, Channel Ten and Foxtel. So I haven't linked to it in case I draw unwanted attention, but it's out there if you're the sort of person who can walk into a movie half an hour in, and leave before it's over.
The Dance Goes On
The middle of the race saw Terry Shiel make a scheduled stop in the #30 Peter Jackson Skyline, and it was a long one (over 70 seconds) thanks to a full 120-litre fuel-up, a driver change, and a change of brake pads. A lap later Bowe likewise came in, put on fresh rubber and pads and handed the #15 over to Seton. Nowadays pad changes are de rigueur at Bathurst, and it wasn't exactly a new idea back then, but it was still far from the done thing. That fit with what team boss Fred Gibson had said at Sandown, that nowadays you were better off running your endurance race as a set of sprints, with soft tyres and a a change of pads as needed, rather than going slow to conserve the machinery.
At least for the works Nissan team everything was going according to script – the same lap saw the #45 JPS BMW of Francevic/Finauer come in and suffer a long stop thanks to some strenuous efforts to get a dented left-rear wheel arch off the tyre. In fact, the James Hardie was rapidly becoming a demolition derby for BMW, every other lap seeming to see one M3 or another visit the pits with something wrong. But on lap 41 they'd seen their first genuine retirement, as the #46 Schnitzer car of Oestreich/Ratzenberger pitted for the last time, absorbed some considerable fuss in the engine bay, then was finally pushed to the back of the garage. Neil Crompton eventually tracked Ratzenberger down for a chat, and the man destined to die at Imola in 1994 got a little bit of screentime on Aussie TV:
Neil Crompton: I think Roland's about the only guy down here who's warm. It's become very very cold at Mount Panorama and he's very neatly dressed in his BMW M-Team outfit. But Roland you've had a pretty ordinary sort of a morning, you made a number of pit stops and you had to retire car 46. What was the problem?Unfortunately Ravaglia wasn't destined for any of those all-important points. Around lap 125, Roberto got out of his car and collapsed, triggering an instant panic and call for an ambulance from the team. The BMW people were seen carrying Roberto to the stretcher, and then the ambulance officers stretchered him away through the thronging crowd. Roberto was apparently conscious, but he was clearly in no condition to drive, and what had struck him down was initially a mystery. It wasn't until BMW boss Greg "Pee Wee" Siddle dived on the press grenade that we got any sort of explanation – most of which was drowned out by the sound of race engines at full tilt. But we did make out that Roberto was dehydrated and bruised down the left side as a result of his shunt in qualifying, and it seemed all of this, combined with having to drive his M3 at one-hundred percent of his ability, one-hundred percent of the time, had taken a greater toll than initially guessed.
Roland Ratzenberger: I think something with the valves or the camshaft broke, and so we tried to carry on, I did a few laps in the car, but the engine didn't rev, just up to eight and not under seven thousand. So we just decided to call it a day, and this was car number 46.
Crompton: Sure. Now you're cross-entered in a number of other cars, will you go back out to the circuit this afternoon?
Ratzenberger: I don't know yet what's gong to be the decision, but obviously it's very important that Roberto gets some points. And for me it would be worth it to get some World Championship points as well, but I think it's a bit too early at this stage to say something.
No-one on the commentary team was heartless enough to point it out, but this was a serious setback for BMW's World Championship hopes. Ravaglia was the man they needed to walk away with a big haul of points, and he was finishing the day in Bathurst Hospital. After that, the fact that the #42 CiBiEmme car of Brancatelli/Cecotto had earned a three-minute penalty for passing the Pace Car, and the fact that the #43 Bigazzi car made a slow stop on lap 91, with the mechanics pouring some oil into the top while the radiator gently steamed, and some attention for a very loose driver's seat as they searched all over for the right socket wrench to bolt it up tight again, were reduced to the trivial. The Bigazzi car rejoined with Altfrid Heger at the wheel, but it had pitted from 25th, and rejoined a lot lower than that.
BMW at least had some comfort in knowing their cross-town rivals at Mercedes were faring no better. Around lap 80, the Reithmuller-Ward Mercedes 190E was seen understeering smokily through Forrest's Elbow, the left-front wheel having broken free of its attachments and now sitting at quite the wrong angle. Whether it had clipped the wall or not was unclear, but it could've been an outright mechanical failure – the same thing had happened in practice, but on the other side. Either way, the day was done for the sole Mercedes in the race.
Many had expected the turbocharged Sierras to expire well before the halfway point, so it raised a few eyebrows that they were still out there, still circulating as regularly as a Swiss train schedule, and still completely dominant. There was a bit of a cheer, therefore, when on lap 83 the #7 with Klaus Ludwig at the wheel came trundling down Conrod at walking pace, clearly suffering a problem. For a moment we dared to hope, but the black Texaco car made it to the pits okay, where the windscreen was cleaned, fresh tyres were whacked on and the tank was brimmed once more, ready for Niedzwiedz to rejoin. When Neil Crompton caught up with him for a chat, Ludwig confirmed the problem had only been a fuel shortage.
Crompton: Back at Mount Panorama and I’ve managed to extract Klaus Ludwig from the throngs of people who’ve been hanging about. This man is the joint leader of the World Touring Car Championship, but plans just came unstuck a little bit for you then Klaus, running out of fuel with only half a lap before your stop.Nevertheless, Ludwig's misfortune with the fuel gauge ultimately cost him the race (on the road, at least), as Steve Soper had quietly nipped by while he toured through the Chase. And with Niedzwiedz now back to 3rd, there was only one Eggenberger Sierra between Win Percy's Commodore and the race lead.
Ludwig: Yeah that’s correct. We have an electronic decal that shows us exactly what we used and that was definitely wrong, I have twelve litres on the decal and it was running out.
Crompton: You must be thrilled with the performance of the car, it’s all looking very smooth, it’s handling well, it’s obviously going quick enough, can you now maintain the pace through until later this afternoon?
Ludwig: Hopefully. The car is doing so fine and no problem. Let’s keep fingers crossed.
Crompton: Your hopes for the World Championship with three rounds to go, do you think you can do the job?
Ludwig: Hopefully. *Nods, then realises Crompo’s waiting for more of a response* You know it’s a super thing, to win this World Championship. It was the first time this year. To be the first champion would be nice.
Crompton: I know you’ve had some problems with these cars for the last few rounds of the World Touring Car Championship, with transmission, differential, axles, those sorts of things. Do you believe you’ve now engineered those problems out of the car?
Ludwig: Yes I hope so. Rudi Eggenberger did a superb job so I hope everything will stand together. You know, we won the 24 Hours at the Nürburgring, which is extremely rough to the cars, so why shouldn’t we win here? The car is running well, so, hopefully.
So of course, guess which was the next car to fall? In a classic demonstration of the Commentator's Curse, Wilkinson, Raymond and British guest Richard Hay spent some time complimenting Win Percy on his excellent driving, talking up how much easier he was making Allan Grice's job today, and how well the orange Bob Jane T-Marts VL was running. But the water light was still flashing, as it had been for over two hours now; the gearbox temps were in the red, at the very top of the gauge; the diff temps were off the scale, the needle ready to break off. Percy passed the Sleepyhead-backed Team Nissan NZ Skyline one last time, on the run up Mountain Straight on lap 95. With incisive timing the TV feed cut away to give us some vision of Peter Brock insouciantly starting his 93rd lap with one arm resting on the windowsill. Then they cut back, and the #2 Commodore was rolling to a halt at Sulman Park, emitting a shuddering whine in place of the usual trumpeting V8. "Yeah, it's the axle," was all a distraught Percy would say. Down in the pits, Grice, with his craggy moustachioed bushranger’s face, looked like he was ready to plunge a dagger into someone's heart.
That seemed like it for Australia. All the extra dials, gauges – hell, the digital computer fixed to the dash – pointed to this being the most highly-developed VL Commodore anywhere in the world. Everything about it told you this thing was built to run harder, faster and longer than any other Commodore out there – and if it couldn’t live with the Texaco cars, what hope did the rest of them have? Maybe Tom Walkinshaw could build a better one, but that was a big maybe when he'd only been at it for a few months. Les Small and his Roadways crew had been working with this car for years, and with this engine for over a decade. No, that really did look like game over for Australia.
So it was back to an Eggenberger 1-2, Soper over Niedzwiedz. Gianfranco Brancatelli was supposed to be 3rd, but that three-minute penalty for passing the Pace Car earlier in the day meant that wasn’t likely to last. So the man in 4th, who would shortly be the best-placed non-Eggenberger entry, was... Peter Brock.
Lap 96 (98 for the leaders) saw Brock pit: tyres and pads were changed in a lightning-fast 45 second stop, and Skippy Parsons took over (poor Jon Crooke never got to drive). The car rejoined 6th, with the Peter Jackson Skylines having leapfrogged it once again. Not that it mattered much – with the Bob Jane VL having bitten the dust, the two Texaco Sierras were the only cars still on the lead lap.
Speaking of the Skylines, by lap 102 Seton was inching up on the BMW of Johnny Cecotto, starting to think about a pass for 3rd. Across the Mountain’s brow Glenn had to work for his lap time, wrestling the undriveable Skyline from kerb to kerb, but he was making Cecotto work too, the Venezuelan locking up his brakes into Forrest’s Elbow. Down Conrod the Skyline wasn’t markedly faster than the BMW, so Seton had to go for track position – but Cecotto had him covered, taking the left-hand line through the right-hand sweeper into the Chase, then braking so late into the chicane it didn’t matter that Seton had the inside line. Down the hill for the final turn into Murray’s Cecotto again held him off, but that was the last time he could. Though the Skyline didn’t handle and it was surprisingly short of top speed, there probably wasn’t a car on the circuit as fast up through the gears. Glenn coolly acknowledged his pit board, then pulled out and took the inside line for Hell Corner, leaving Cecotto high and dry. Through the turn he used every bit of road including the ripple strip, and then it was done and done. Seton swept up Mountain Straight with the #42 M3 close behind, but now falling back.
While that was being sorted out, Don Smith came into the pits on lap 104 with a misfire. The alternator in the #35 Oxo Sierra had been on the blink for quite a while, so although it had led the race early on, it was probably never going to keep it up. Even without the earlier Pace Car disaster, Don Smith would still likely have found himself explaining to Peter McKay:
Smith: It's just the alternator that's gone on it. It's been playing up for an hour and a half now, and she just won't build up any charge at all. We've changed one battery, we'll have to change the alternator now. It's mucked up the engine too much, not enough power in the system. So we'll have to change the alternator, put another battery in it, and hopefully we'll get going again. So we’ll do some more test miles.So that was basically it for the Oxo Supercube team, whose second car was well down the order, which roughly translated was nowhere. Even if Miedecke hadn't completely misread the Pace Car rules, it all still would've ended in tears. About the only levity to come out of it was hearing both McKay and Mike Raymond panic when they realised Smith was going to discuss engine technicalities, in his sleepy stockman's voice, on live TV!
McKay: This is the car that led the race, and there were some suggestions that they'd had transmission problems. No problems in that area?
Smith: No, brakes, transmission, differential, everything's working beautiful, it's just the alternator that's played up. We've had a little bit of trouble with them early in the year, and I think it's just these newer evolution engines, they're running a thousand revs higher than what we normally run and we've compensated them with a pulley you know, but the alternator's not up to the job.
As that little chat was going on Soper swung the car through again to start lap 109, but the word was being passed down that rain was imminent. The Channel Seven chopper (the one that chills me to my feet) was warning of an absolute downpour just on the other side of the Mountain. As Soper came down to complete lap 109, in a moment pregnant with meaning, Brock was just ahead and about to go a third lap down.
But then the broadcast cut to Seton’s onboard RaceCam, and his windscreen was suddenly awash. The drought had broken; the rains were here. And the Skyline, which was borderline-undriveable on a bone-dry track, was now stuck out there in the first greasy patches of rain, on slicks. Cue that immortal footage of Seton wrestling the Skyline up across the Mountain’s brow, carrying the car with armfulls of opposite lock in full-blooded slides (for the full effect, turn the sound off and listen to this instead).
Nuts as it looked, Seton always defended his driving, saying:
It was getting near to the end of the stint and I was having a really good race with the Schnitzer BMWs, marching on in the dry. You're in such a rhythm in the dry, it didn't bother me when there were a few sprinkles of rain as long as I could keep the tyre temperatures up.It was halfway through the fifth hour of the race, and the crews along pit lane were suddenly frantic, pulling out the wet-weather tyres ready for a flurry of pit stops – pit stops which never really came. Both Brock and Soper passed by the pits to start lap 111 with slicks on, and events quickly proved them wise, as a lap later the rain stopped – the top of the Mountain was plenty wet, sure, but the bottom was fairly dry, and within 10 laps there was a definite dry line. Now it was just a very slippery track, which they'd have to cope with on slicks.
People say it was crazy, but it wasn't. I knew I was in control, even when the car was sideways. That's just the way it was. – Glenn Seton, AMC #80
Everyone survived the first lot of rain unscathed, but there was more on the way. On lap 116 Seton had made his next scheduled stop, handing it over to John Bowe, and by lap 129 there were spots of rain appearing on Bowe's windscreen. From there it deteriorated in record time: within two laps Bowe’s windscreen was soaked, visibility disappearing in the mist even if the single wiper could clear it. Between the spray, the water on the windscreen and the grey curtain of the rain itself, cars were swiftly becoming invisible apart from their rear lights – and everyone, remember, was still on slick tyres. It looked dark on the TV feed, so one can only imagine how dark it was if you were actually there – put on some dark shades and you'll have some idea.
This made things tricky, as there were now only 30 or so laps to go, so we were within striking distance of the chequered flag – one more stop would see most cars to the end. The team bosses had to get this one right, because any extra stops for tyres would be punished severely – so, did they put their drivers on full drys, full wets, or the improvised "intermediates" made (in those days) by hand-grooving a set of slicks? Just consult your crystal ball and make the call...
Rudi Eggenberger blinked first, brought Soper in for tyres, and Crompo was there to call the action:
Crompton: 12 seconds gone, and it is torrential down here at the moment! The rain's driving sideways, freezing cold! Steve Soper still in the car, Pierre Dieudonné standing by. And the track is now very very wet, and it's gale-force! Just on 30 seconds was the stop then for Soper, and as you can see they've gone for a full grooved wet tyre. There's pandemonium down here at the moment. They’re now standing by for their next car. So with 132 laps down in the James Hardie 1000 of 1987, we have got one very wet race on our hands!The footage then showed the #34 Oxo Sierra in the wall at The Cutting, having failed to negotiate the turn and slid into the concrete barrier. Not really the driver's fault, as the track was so slippery he started sliding back down the hill even with the brakes locked on!
Crompton: The yellow flags are out at the moment, I think I just saw the Pace Car go out. It's actually hailing here at present, it's freezing cold, and we’re standing by for the other Texaco Sierra. And if you've ever seen some sensational pit activity, you've never seen anything until what you're going to see in the next few minutes. The Mobil team are getting ready, the JPS team are getting ready, the #40 of Emmanuele Pirro's just gone out, Glenn Seton’s just gone out, so it's a very interesting situation.Despite appearances, it hadn't been the Oxo Sierra that triggered the second deployment of the Pace Car. That honour went to a much more severe set of wrecks right at the top of the Mountain. To set the scene, however, there was another interview from before the first lot of rain – Commentator's Curse is one thing, but was anyone silly enough to stick their own head in the noose by talking up their chances? Toyota Team Australia's underrated lead driver, John Smith, was apparently that silly.
Peter McKay: John Smith, a perfect scenario for Toyota Team Australia, running 1-2 in the Under 1,600cc class. You having a ball out there?A lot to unpack there. By "the English car," I'm guessing they were referring to another Corolla entered in the race, the #94 Gullivers car of Kiwis Andrew Bagnall and Mark Jennings, which had Britain's Chris Hodgetts listed as a non-starting driver. To me that suggests he had something to do with supplying the car, and if he was seen as some sort of Toyota guru may even mean he was involved with homologating the Corolla AE86 Sprinter for Group A in the first place. If so, he was SOL at Bathurst, because as noted Toyota Team Australia's cars had been built by TRD in Japan – Mark Oastler has another great story for the interested – and the car ultimately retired following a shunt.
Smith: We're doing it easy too, thank God. We've worked very hard all year for this race, in a 2-litre class. We’re finally in a class of our own, in a 1.6 with a 1.6 car, we can really show how well our cars can go.
McKay: It must be a real buzz to be ahead of the English car, the much-vaunted English car?
Smith: Well that's it. We wanted to see how good we were against it and I honestly think now that our cars are as good as you'd find anywhere in the world. They're factory-built, they're factory-prepared, and I think you can't go past it, they are really going well.
McKay: There's obviously a great speed differential between your car and cars like the Sierras. How careful do you have to be out there? How carefully do you have to watch the mirrors?
Smith: You have to live in the mirrors! Luckily the Sierras are doing the right thing, running with a few lights on so you can see them. But all you see is this blinding flash go past, up the hill and they disappear. If you’re in their way you better watch out because it really is hard work. The wind that goes past us when the Sierras go past is something fantastic.
McKay: And there's a big cross-wind here today?
Smith: Yeah, I didn't really notice it was as bad as it was, our car was jumping around a little bit on the straight, but I didn’t realise it was this bad until I got out of the car.
McKay: Looking forward to getting into a bigger car next year? Perhaps a turbocharged Supra?
Smith: Well let's hope, yeah? Let's hope so. There's no decisions been made yet but I’m looking forward to it. If it comes to fruition, we're all looking forward to it.
For another thing, that's just cruel to tease us with the prospect of a brace of TRD-prepared turbo Supras taking on the ATCC in 1988. Properly built, they might've given Dick Johnson's Sierras something to think about, and could've turned the season into something really memorable. Alas, nothing seems to've come of it, as Toyota stuck to the 1,600cc class, a market they practically owned in Australia. The marketing benefits of a Supra were fairly unclear at that stage, especially given the backlash against the later R32 Skyline. It would have to wait until the 90's for Supra-vs-Skyline became something for the kids to get excited about...
But the real kicker was, "We're doing it easy too, thank God." Somewhere one the racing gods must've heard him, because on lap 132 the TV feed cut to show us both the Toyota Team Australia cars were nothing but steaming wrecks strewn across the track at Sulman Park. The replays showed us what happened – the #91 driven by Mike Quinn, then the #90 of Drew Price, and then the #24 Sleepyhead Skyline of Team Nissan NZ, had all barrelled into Sulman too fast and clouted the concrete wall, shedding panels, wheels and bits of plastic all over the place. They didn't hit each other, it was simply a case of ambition ahead of adhesion. After a shaky walk back to the pits, Peter McKay was able to talk to one of the Toyota drivers:
Peter McKay: Mike, what exactly happened?Mike Raymond had also speculated about oil on the road, which isn't out of the question, but the Commodore that supposedly dropped it there was never seen in the broadcast (unless they meant the Grice/Percy car, in which case... maybe?). Just as likely in my view, the sudden intense rain had created a stream that wasn't there a lap earlier, and all three cars hit it and simply aquaplaned into the wall (incidentally, this is exactly what killed Jules Bianchi).
Mike Quinn: Well Peter, I just unfortunately happened to be the first one there I think when the oil was down and the water and the car just aquaplaned into the fence. I looked around and saw my teammate unfortunately do exactly the same. We'd already radioed that we were coming in for wets and I just feel terribly sorry for the guys on the Toyota team. Our cars are pretty stiffly sprung, and once we hit the water and oil that was the end of it, unfortunately.
McKay: There was oil on the track?
Quinn: I think so, because the car was handling quite well up 'til then. And, uh... it'd have to be oil and water I think. One of the Commodores actually stopped up there, and I think that was it, for sure.
The two Sprinters on the track created an instant bottleneck, both cars showing pretty heavy damage, with the Sleepyhead Skyline having slid to a halt in the kitty litter with the bonnet up, as the driver attempted to get it restarted. The Skyline had been slightly luckier and hit the wall at a squarer angle, so it was able to get going again eventually, albeit with a severe wheel alignment problem that wasn't going to go away the rest of the race. Steve Soper, of course, had managed to thread the needle and slip between the wrecks without so much as a lift, but others weren't so fortunate.
Murphy's Law is a bastard, and in some of his best work, Johnny Cecotto had crested Griffin's Mount far too fast and slammed into the concrete wall at impressive speed, the impact so severe all four of the Mark Petch Seals BMW's wheels were a metre off the deck. Crompo eventually spoke to Cecotto:
Crompton: Johnny, obviously very wet, the car just understeered off the road into the wall?Indeed, it was astonishing that Cecotto was even still alive, let alone conscious and trying to make the pits, but conscious and trying to make the pits was exactly his situation. Yet this car, long the BMW pacesetter this weekend, had been crippled in the crash, the left-front wheel displaying a rather extreme toe-out setting. Johnny would have to limp around at walking speed if he wanted to have any control at all, and wouldn't you know it, the barely-steerable BMW arrived between the Toyotas just as Fangio in the #41 BMW Motorsport M3 and Akihiko Nakaya in the #16 Dulux Autocolor Starion caught up with him. Suddenly finding the road blocked, Fangio had to jump on the brakes, but the grip wasn't there to pull it up in time. The back end let go and swung gracefully around to impact the second Toyota Team Australia car, while Nakaya was only barely able to stop before driving into Fangio's passenger-side door. Nakaya carried on, and Fangio managed to drive his M3 away from the scene, and then the Skyline was pushed back onto the circuit to resume its limp to the finish line – and then Peter Brock, who'd just taken the #10 Mobil Commodore back from Parsons, took note of the marshals frantically gesturing to slow down, gingerly picked his way through the mess, and carried on.
Cecotto: Yeah, it was completely impossible to drive, I mean, very very slow speed. I turn a little bit the wheel and the car just went straight. Unfortunately, I wanted to stop the lap before but I didn’t know whether in the pits they were ready to the change because we have to change driver also. And unfortunately the last straight it was not that wet.
Crompton: Well we’re watching a replay of the incident right now, you’re very lucky to get out as lightly as you did.
Cecotto: Yeah yeah, that’s right, but the car is very much damage.
No doubt about it, this little fracas warranted a Pace Car. Race control duly pulled the trigger, and so dialled both Peter Jackson Skylines, and one of the Texaco Sierras, out of contention permanently. Both Skylines had been making scheduled stops – as had Klaus Ludwig – when through no fault of their own they found the pit exit once again closed to them. They joined a lengthy traffic jam at the end of pit lane – Murray Carter's Netcomm Skyline, the Don Smith Oxo Supercube Sierra, an M3 or two – more than half the field, in fact. If the rules couldn’t be just, at least the injustice wasn’t necessarily in the Europeans' favour. It was lap 133, and between the crashes, the pit stops and Pace Car reshuffle the commentators had no idea who was in what position – except that Steve Soper was still leading, having escaped the carnage by skill and experience and the Pace Car trap by sheer dumb luck.
It was this second Pace Car, more than anything else, which put Peter Brock back into the race. He and Soper had been the only ones to have made their stops before it was deployed, leaving them free to get one with it. Brock essentially got a free lap back – still three down, but that was better than four like the Skylines were about to be.
Since they couldn't get out anyway, BMW got to work trying to repair their latest round of damaged cars. Cecotto's #42 was repaired in pit lane, and Brancatelli climbed back in for (fingers crossed) the run to the flag, while the mechanics dragged in Fangio's #41 (they couldn't drive it) to effect some repairs to the right-hand side suspension. Despite only bringing six of them, BMW now had more damaged cars than they’d ever had at a WTCC round ever. And before the locals got too smug, the Aussie #44 of Richards and Longhurst had made a visit to the pits not too long ago with some brake issues of its own, not something the flyweight BMWs usually had to deal with.
Neil Crompton: At the moment not quite sure what’s going on. What we will do is wander across to the other side of the car and see if we can establish what is going wrong. Frank is obviously pretty disappointed about what’s taking place, I think I’ll leave him alone – wisely! Tony Longhurst, what seems to be the drama?Crompo backed away to let a rather dyspeptic-looking Frank Gardner have a word with his driver. The problem was seemingly with the right-rear, the mechanics peering in through the wheel arch trying to see what was wrong. The car was sent back out but, around the same time the Europeans were busy with Fangio's suspension, Longhurst was back in the pits for the JPS boys to attach a bottle and bleed the left-rear brake. The car definitely had issues.
Longhurst: We’ve got no rear brakes at the moment, so while the Pace Car’s out we’re just trying to bleed them... is that right now? No?... We’re just trying to get some brakes on the car, and we’ll see how we finish up.
Crompton: Any idea why the problem? Uh, I’ll let you go to talk with Frank.
By lap 137 (for the leaders) the #42 BMW was ready to rejoin, but just missed the Pace Car, so it was stuck in pit lane until lap 138 – which brought us neatly to the next dramatic absurdity of the Great Race. Coming around to start lap 138, this time the Pace Car followed procedure and the lights went out, warning the drivers there was only one more lap until the green flag. But although the Pace Car followed procedure, this time the competitors did not! Up Mountain Straight, Olivier Grouillard in the #43 Bigazzi car abruptly went full throttle and passed the Pace Car, resuming racing a lap early. Not to be outdone, Soper in the Texaco Sierra followed suit, and then everyone behind had to get their foot down too – if their competitors were off and away, there was no way they were going to sit back! The commentators were shocked, gasping, with Richard Hay pointing out that both drivers were quite experienced, so the only way they’d pass a Pace Car like that was if he waved them past.
Exactly why they did it is hard to ascertain. Driver Damon Beck had been instructed by Race Control to switch off the lights, which he did, but then on the way out of Hell Corner he abruptly slowed and moved over to the right – and together, those two things were enough for Grouillard to think, "Good enough," and floor it. From there it was just a domino effect. Despite which, the yellow flags were still out (because indeed, the unlit Pace Car was supposed to be the signal to withdraw them), and this was precisely what had earned Cecotto a three-minute penalty earlier in the day. Yet by the time they hit The Dipper, the Clerk of the Course had given in and ordered the flaggies to show them the green! This race had never been especially tidy, but the Pace car interventions had reached the level of a farce.
So of course, then the rain decided to come back. With his turbocharged Sierra Soper of course'd had no trouble disposing of Grouillard, but even with clear air in front of him his wipers were soon on, indicating the rain had started falling again. This time it was only a light drizzle, not the apocalyptic downpour of half an hour earlier, but with the track already wet it wasn't going to take much to turn the tarmac back into a swimming pool. Even so, with everybody already on wet-weather tyres there were no disasters this time – except, of course, for the one brewing in the Eggenberger pit box. The TV broadcast returned from an ad break to give us this lead-in:
Garry Wilkinson: Steve Soper, race leader, on screen after 139 laps out of 161 for the James Hardie 1000. A drama-filled race here today, and all the dramas aren't on the track, Neil Crompton?Later, of course, the fuel was tested with more sophisticated equipment at the CSIRO labs, and it was given the all-clear by CAMS. That leaves the question as to how the scrutineers got this one wrong with the spot test. There is a theory floating around that the scrutineer responsible, whoever it was, had simply made the mistake of testing the fuel while it was still hot, and a chemical reaction caused by that heat had brought up a dodgy reading. That explanation doesn't fly for me personally, because heat would've made the fuel appear lighter than it actually was, when a denser reading would've been catching them with their hands in the cookie jar (denser fuel means less pinging, the real issue with big-boost engines). And as for the "chemical reaction" idea... no, if your fuel's rearranging itself like that under such minor temperature changes, you've got bigger problems. So I had a consult with a friend of mine, a man Whose Spanners I Am Not Fit To Rearrange, and we concluded that the real problem was likely contamination by rainwater, easy to do given the weather that day. The 120-litre gravity tank would've taken in a bit of humidity from the air, explaining the "almost right" reading, while the sample from the vent bottle probably got an unnoticed droplet in it, which would've made the average density reading shoot right up, unlike a temperature change.
Crompton: Certainly not Garry, in fact there's going to be one very big drama at the end of this race. I just chanced on a story a moment ago about possible illegal fuel in both the Texaco Sierras. I've spoken with a Confederation of Australian Motor Sport official, who has taken a sample of the fuel from the vent bottle, and also a sample of fuel from their 120-litre refill compartment. The fuel that came out of the vent bottle blew the hydrometer off the clock – I'll let you read your own rules into that – and the fuel that was taken out of the overhead refill container, he said, quote, "was almost right." So, work it out yourself. At the moment the lap board says 139 laps, cars 6 and 7 lead the race, and Peter Brock is in 3rd position in car #10, but at the end of this racing afternoon there's going to be a lot of discussion about those two lead cars.
Wilkinson: Thanks Neil Crompton, wow. So the race may not be over when the flag falls?
Richard Hay: It would certainly look that way. It's something that the turbocharged cars have been found guilty of before – I won’t name names, but people have been found guilty of putting what they call "loopy juice" in the petrol tank, and there's all sorts of strange ways that teams work things. There were stories of – the cars have two pumps, an electrical pump and a mechanical fuel pump, and there were stories that there was a tank within a tank on some cars and one was pumping ordinary fuel, and one was pumping something else, an additive should we say. Now I'm not suggesting that that's the case, but it's not unheard-of for turbocharged cars to play around with the fuel. And of course Dick Johnson got penalised in Hardie's Heroes for doing exactly that. They found that the fuel was not as supplied to the teams – it's all supplied from one source, all the teams have to put up with the same fuel, and the officials found the fuel was not as supplied which Johnson ran, and therefore his times in Hardie's Heroes were disallowed and that of his teammate and that’s why the two cars started from 9th and 10th on the grid.
But at the time we didn't know all this: from the TV broadcast, all we heard was, "The Texaco Sierras are using illegal fuel," and that narrative has stuck around for many fans to the present day. The Aussies were already primed to believe there was something not kosher about the Texaco cars, because we'd already seen Dick Johnson's cars break down while Eggenberger's kept circulating, and the idea that Eggenberger could build a better car than Dick was anathema to blue-blooded Aussies. So the fuel bombshell really just told us what we wanted to believe all along – the Europeans were cheating. Typically, Mike Raymond had the final word: "It could be a case of who put the sauce on the Eggenberger!"
The official timing for lap 141 – twenty from the finish – revealed Steve Soper was now the sole car on the lead lap, his teammate Klaus Ludwig two laps down thanks to the Pace Car and closed pits. 3rd was Peter Brock, another lap down on Ludwig, while 4th and 5th were Bowe and Shiel in the Peter Jackson Skylines, four full laps adrift of the leader. They added that, officially, the Richards/Longhurst JPS BMW was leading Class B despite all its brake dramas, while Class C was now being led by Bob Holden's Toyota Corolla Sprinter, despite the fact that he had yet to overhaul the two works cars crashed at the top of the Mountain!
It was at this point we finally got some serious vision of Brocky hustling his Mobil Commodore. The cameras had ignored him for most of the race, but now he was absolutely hurling that big, heavy V8-powered Holden around the most demanding strip of tarmac in the country. His driving was simply sumptuous, right on the limit and yet flowing like syrup, the car drifting just enough to get it lined up for the next straight, amazing when the rain was still coming down and the grip was changing almost corner to corner. Out of interest they put a watch on him and came up with a one-lap time of 2:43.32, showing how far the pace had dropped from the 2:24s that characterised the start of the race. Despite how this footage is often introduced, however, he was still on wet tyres at this point.
Lap 151 – ten to go. The rain was still sprinkling but there was the ghost of a drying line now. With two laps in hand Soper was understandably taking a gently-does-it approach, but Brock was doing exactly the opposite. Richard Hay had noted on the Netcomm Skyline’s newfangled telemetry that the wet-weather tyres actually ran hotter than slicks did in the dry. The reason was that, with grooved bits dividing the surface into a series of islands, rain tyres stretch and warp and move around a lot more, which heats them up. This phenomenon had now caught up to Brock: as good as he was, he couldn’t fight physics, and the pace he’d forced upon his Commodore had led to a chunking right-rear tyre. On lap 156 – just five from the finish – Brock dived into pit lane for a last-minute switch to slicks.
Out of his pit box Brock hung the tail out – no pit lane speed limits in those days, remember – and rejoined with the red mist in full effect. Up through Griffin’s the tail had another lurid slide, but Brock kept his foot in it and brought it back into line. Up through The Cutting he barely kept it within the dry section, just missing the wet track on the outside that would’ve send him ploughing into the wall, then over the crest at Griffin’s Mount the car was fishtailing wildly as Brock fought to control it. Down through the Esses he kept it neat and tidy, trying to ignore how horribly narrow that dry line was, then down Conrod he had to fight to keep it stable for the braking zone at the Chase. Coming out of the Chase it got sideways again, but Brock was all over it and swiftly got it back.
Brock had Gary Brabham up his freckle through all of this, and as they started lap 158 Brabham finally got the traction to make a move, getting past Brock on the exit of Hell Corner. Not to be outdone, Brocky rotated the Holden and planted the right foot, powering past the BMW like it was nothing – but in a classic “always a bigger fish” moment, he did so right in front of the race-leading Sierra of Soper. Soper flashed his lights angrily but Brock couldn’t afford to leave the dry train tracks, so he left Soper to find his own way past – which he did, but in the process he left the door open to Brabham to sweep through again on his rain tyres at Griffins. Not to be outdone, Brock once more applied the Holden V8 and on the climb up to The Cutting and – with twice the engine of the BMW – he retook the place.
These laps, in my view, summed up the enigma that was Peter Brock. There was no reason to be going this hard, because Brock was several laps in front of that BMW, and several more behind the Sierra. There was nothing to be gained by dicing with them; if he'd elected to let them both past, there would've been nothing gained, but absolutely nothing lost either. He was racing the two works Skylines of Bowe and Fury, or no-one, and Bowe was now actively seeking out the wet parts of the track to keep his wet-weather tyres cool, lest they start to overheat and break up. There would be last-minute heroics from him. And yet he went for it, not because he needed to, but simply because he loved it. He put on a supreme display of car control and bravado that has rarely been equalled, and got the fans on the hill excited, and so danced into their hearts where he's stayed for all time.
At the same time, however, it summed him up because it was a mess of his own making – he'd chosen to put the wrong tyres on, and that was a documented, scientific fact.
At that stage we didn’t even think we were heading for a win, but gee a podium would've been great. But he was really enjoying himself, and the worst thing to do to Peter is to tell him how to drive, so we just let him at it. But it was pretty nerve-wracking. – Alan Gow, team manager, Shannons Legends of Motorsport, Ep.9So Bathurst '87 was a microcosm of Brock's 1987 season overall – a spectacular performance in the midst of a mess of his own making. He'd got it wrong, and his fans didn't care, didn't care, didn't care...
We put wets on the car, and out I went onto the track and continued to circulate, and Brock was on slicks and stayed on slicks [sic] and he had this idea that he could drive on slicks on a wet track. And while the camera was on him and he was looking very spectacular, I was catching him ten seconds a lap. So, the television myth wasn’t actually the reality, to be honest, in that particular day. – John Bowe, Shannons Legends of Motorsport, Ep.9
As Soper started the final lap, the three big cars of '87 filled the screen – the Sierra, the M3, and in the background, Brock’s Commodore. So near, yet so far. On the run up through the Cutting Brock unlapped himself, and Soper let him go – nothing to be gained by disputing that. Down Conrod for the final time Soper was clearly just touring to the finish, either marginal on fuel or just seeing no reason to push his luck this late in the day. Down through the Chase he came for the final time, braked for Murray’s, turned left onto Pit Straight and greeted the chequered flag.
It was done. Soper and Dieudonné had won Bathurst for Texaco Eggenberger Motorsport, the first for a Ford factory team, and the first Ford 1-2 finish, since the Moffat Ford Dealers Team a decade earlier. As noted, with 154 laps completed Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst won Class B for JPS Team BMW, which must've put the ghost of a smile of Frank Gardner's face, while Bob Holden and Garry Willmington had won Class C with 96 laps, though it was never really in dispute once the works Toyotas crashed – the only other model in the class was the works Alfa Romeo 33, which had blown its engine on lap 55.
No Champagne Today
And then, the podium ceremony, which is where things got ugly and downright shameful for Australia. The dark and bruised sky just seemed right given the mood under the rostrum. Wilko did his best to complete the formalities and present the winners with their trophy, but in truth it was hard to get a word out thanks to the crowd chanting, “WE WANT BROCK! WE WANT BROCK!” When he called out Soper and Dieudonné, the winners of the Great Race for 1987, the result was an immediate and savage boo – and no, they weren’t saying Boo-urns. Soper and Dieudonné seemed embarrassed and rather nervous at the reception, merely got the thanking of their sponsors and team out of the way before backing away from the microphones, and it only seemed appropriate when neither could pop the corks for the champagne shower, leading to the unfortunate visuals of them whacking away at their magnums like, urm, "something else." Pierre even broke the cork in his, leaving his half of the crowd decidedly dry. Eventually Wilko gave in and told the microphone, “Okay! Just a moment and you’ll get Brock! But first of all, I think due congratulations to Steve Soper and Pierre Dieudonné, outright winners in the 1987 James Hardie 1000.” That just triggered the loudest and harshest boo of all.
When Brock was brought out, however, the crowd went wild, especially one girl who sounded like she had a brass voice box. When Brock was finally able to speak, his works were graciousness itself:
I had a bit of a mission! I'd like to show people that Mobil HDT is certainly not a spent force in racing, and that we can put a pretty good car together. We had a bit of bad luck with our first car today, and Dave Parsons and I are very thankful to Peter McLeod for having done such a great job in the first part of the race because when we got in it, I tell you, I gave it absolute heaps, particularly in the wet there in the finish. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself I might add, and thanks for all your support out there too, I love the way you're cheering me on!
But of course, it didn't stand: both Texaco Sierras were eventually disqualified from the race. As noted above, it wasn't for the fuel, which was cleared by a CSIRO lab in Melbourne the Monday or Tuesday after the race. Indeed, CAMS had nothing to do with it. Instead, after much stuffing around and avoiding the issue, FISA was backed into a corner whereby they had to examine the notorious wheel arches on the Texaco cars, which were eventually – and rightly – found to be illegal.
It was the trip to Bathurst which perhaps summed up the whole year. Everybody had looked forward to it so much – Europe meeting Australia. In reality, the combination of foul weather and foul politics hastened a speedy departure from Mount Panorama. Much has been said, berating the Australian teams at Bathurst in their actions towards the visiting teams. If ever the series needed a strong finish to its year, to state an even stronger case with FISA for the following season, then the races in late ‘87 were it. The protests on eligibility carried out in Australia gave FISA all the evidence it ever needed to conclude that a WTCC simply could not succeed.It might've seemed like a trivial thing to lose a championship over, but it was a clear violation of the rules – the bodywork had to be stock, and these weren't. Despite what some publications have told, however, it wasn't "a nine-month process" that stretched "well into 1988." FISA in fact handed down their judgement on Friday, 13 November 1987 – the first day of practice for the InterTEC 500 at Mt Fuji. There might've been some appeals after that, which could've given the impression of legal wrangling that carried on into 1988, but if so none of it was upheld. Rudi Eggenberger was told to return his Sierras to the proper configuration, and a lot of sources record that he did, though personally I have my doubts – reconfiguring wheel housings cannot really be an overnight job, especially when your factory and spares are on the other side of the globe. The sources that say he raced at Calder Park and Wellington with legal wheel arches are even more dubious – Calder was only a week later, after all! No, Rudi's cars raced in their illegal configuration all season, I'm sure of it – but they were only protested at Bathurst.
In truth though, FISA had stage managed the whole operation. Through regular Technical Scrutineer Marcel Servais, FISA had given the nod to the unofficial alliance of teams which, although never acknowledged, was known to exist. It set its own rules and parameters on car eligibility, quietly berating those who overstepped the mark. If any one manufacturer refused to play ball, it felt the might of the cartel’s anger – just ask Volvo.
Unfortunately, FISA’s levy of registration fees had excluded any chance the Aussie teams had of regular competition in the European WTCC races. When the regular runners, in their cartel-accepted trims, went Down Under therefore, they met teams and scrutineers who played a straighter game. Either you played to the Aussie rules or you came out second best.
That’s not to say our Antipodean cousins were perfectly legal – far from it. However, the actions of the aforementioned Monsieur Servais gave the Aussies all the evidence they ever needed to prove a crooked case. When Nissan, JPS, Les Small and Larry Perkins lodged their Bathurst protest on the wheelarches of the Eggenberger Fords, the scrutineers took plaster casts of the offending areas – for posterity you understand. These were later presented to Servais, who somehow managed to misplace both items. Perfectly understandable, just the sort of thing you or I could easily just put down and leave behind.
When both casts had been recovered from the dustbin (!) where they had been “misplaced,” they were used in evidence which eventually saw the two Fords kicked unceremoniously out of the top two slots. The cartel had failed to operate because it wasn’t on its normal ground and, by throwing the two opposing parties together, a mudslinging match had almost been guaranteed. Having supplied the gun, the Parisian politicians sat back and watched the WTCC shoot itself. By the end, though not by luck or judgement alone, Ford took away the Manufacturers’s title with BMW holding the Drivers’s crown. After their respective efforts, it was fitting the honours were shared. – Motoring News, 1987
The exclusion of the Sierras promoted the Peter Jackson Skylines to 2nd and 3rd, but their drivers – Seton, Bowe, Fury and Shiel – never got to stand on the podium, and indeed, never got their trophies. And as for Brock, typically, by the time he heard the news it was already ancient history as far as he was concerned:
I sort of already felt as if we did as good as we could at Bathurst. The win is the financial reward, when and if it comes through of course, it'll be most eagerly accepted, I can assure you of that. But I think, philosophically, I've been happy enough about it anyway.That's not to say his team weren't delighted, however. "I put out a special t-shirt that year that said, 'Cop that, you knockers!'" remembered Lewis Brock. "I printed up about fifty of them. Though we had no idea what was going to happen at Bathurst, we had them with us, and in the end handed them out, and showed them to the cameras. It was very emotional. You could see it in everyone’s faces. It was a very tough year, and to come out like that... It was just awesome."
The #10 Mobil Commodore had been the slowest winning car on record, after starting in 20th place and recording only the sixteenth-fastest lap of the race. It had also been the first Bathurst winner to start outside the top ten. And because it was three laps behind the winning Sierras, it completed only 158 of the 161-lap race distance. HDT’s last Group A Commodore was by some margin the most unlikely of Brock’s nine Bathurst winners – not least because it didn't feature the part that had sidelined Grice and Percy. Where they'd done their best to lubricate and cool a Holden Salisbury diff, which had ultimately failed, the HDT car featured custom axles and, whisper it, a Ford 9-inch diff. Yes, really.
The car itself, chassis HDT 16, was sold to then-Auto Action editor Chris Lambden (yes, the Formula Thunder 5000 guy), who added a TWR bodykit and painted it in Beaurepaires signage and raced it in 1988, then again in 1989 despite ownership passing to Bob Jones. A big crash in 1989 saw the wreck sit neglected in Jones's workshop for many years until it was bought by Victorian HDT Owner Club racers Peter Angus and John Tailor, who removed the TWR bodykit, repaired the damage and painted it up in its 1987 Mobil colours again, running it in club events. It was finally bought by David Bowden, who restored the Ford diff assembly and made it a proud member of the Bowden Collection. The car, like Brock's memory, is in good hands.
Vale, Commodore.
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