With Bathurst done for the year, there was only one major event left on the 1989 calendar: the Yokohama Cup, this year's Australian Grand Prix support race. As usual booked in on the streets of Adelaide, for the first time the event was being held with a multi-race format, giving the tourers one race on Saturday afternoon, then another one on Sunday morning before the Formula 1 superstars did their thing. Both were scheduled to be 15-lap, 55km sprints, but the racing and weather gods would have a thing or two to say about how these well-laid plans panned out in reality...
Tony Longhurst, no idea where, or when.
Yokohama Cup – Race 1
Saturday 4 November dawned with a bad case of déjà vu for the teams – it was another burning hot day on the streets of Adelaide, just like the one they'd endured in 1988. As was now expected, the prominent TV coverage had enticed a sizeable grid of 33 starters, a mix of the full-time professionals and the keen weekenders from the AMSCAR series in Sydney. A standout on the grid though was Phil Ward in the Mercedes 190E Cosworth, a car which had been rolled at Bathurst last year but since been repaired and was now sponsored by the not-for-profit Heart Foundation, with a love heart around the #8 on the doors.
Peter Brock was starting from pole, with Tony Longhurst alongside on the front row. Both got good starts and made it into the first turn okay, but in that first-turn chicane Brock used a bit too much of the throttle and pitched himself into a wild tankslapper. Longhurst stuck his nose in to try and get past but Brock held the place, while further back Mark Skaife's #12 Nissan Skyline took a hit to the side from Win Percy's HSV Commodore, who was barging his way through. That flicked Skaife nose-first into the wall at the first corner, and although he emerged from the car okay, that was the end of his race.
Down the long Brabham Straight the order was Brock, Longhurst, Seton, Miedecke, the two Dick Johnson cars, and then Colin Bond – Sierras filling all places from P1 to P7! (8th, and therefore first of the non-Sierra runners, was one of the HSV Commodores, which was some comfort to the parochial crowd in the grandstands.) The early running was enlivened by a scrap between Colin Bond and Glenn Seton in evenly-matched Sierras, although that came to an end heading into the final hairpin, where Bondy got a bit too brave with the brake pedal. He locked up the rears and pitched himself into a spin that ended in the middle of the road, just outside the apex of the hairpin. That was off the racing line, so it seemed like the rest of the field would get through okay... all except Win Percy, who rammed the Sierra with the nose of his own #16 HSV Commodore, shoving Bond off the track and into the sand, and breaking off the left-hand corner of the Walky’s aero face. Percy really was having a rough day, and was spreading it far and wide.
Then poor Andrew Miedecke was seen off the track, his Kenwood car stereo-backed #6 Sierra sporting a dislodged rear bumper, suggesting he'd taken a hit from behind – and, oh yeah, the car was on fire. More déjà vu – he'd already lost a car to a fire after a bad accident at the Lakeside ATCC round earlier in the year, and with his finances precarious he could ill afford to lose another. It took the attending marshals a few moments to realise there were actually flames licking from the underside of the car, but once they did the extinguishers came out and the incident was over before it could really begin. If all that wasn't enough, Bond was being shown a mechanical black flag for having bodywork dangling after the shunt with Percy... but before that could make any real difference the red flags came out and the session was stopped completely.
It emerged a shunt between the #53 Peter Doulman BMW (class winner at Bathurst a couple of weeks ago) and another car had completely blocked the road. Replays revealed that Doulman had tried to go up the inside of Lawrie Nelson's #29 Mustang at the Dequetteville Hairpin, but Lawrie either hadn't seen him, or decided to shut the door, or Doulman just hadn't left himself enough room to finish braking. Whatever the cause, the result was the front-left corner of the BMW making contact with the right side of the Mustang and jumping upwards, clambering over the Mustang in frightening fashion. Doulman's left-rear tyre actually left skid marks on Nelson's A-pillar and bonnet (and no doubt Nelson left some more in the Mustang's seat). Just behind, the #52 BMW was lucky to see the clash coming and avoid it, but Doulman ended up battered and bruised on the outside of the corner, with Nelson hot and bothered on the opposite side. All drivers emerged unharmed, but with this impromptu chicane now in place the stewards wisely stopped the race to clear the cars.
This was no mere yellow-flag safety car, everyone went straight back to the pits to prepare for a proper restart. This was declared a new but shortened race (9 laps instead of the originally scheduled 15), so they gridded up again in the order they'd started the first race, not the order they'd worked out in the four laps they'd managed on track. That meant there were a few empty grid spots as some failed to take the new start: Miedecke's car was fire-damaged; Nelson, Doulman and Skaife had crash damage; Bowe had suffered an engine failure. Colin Bond, however, rejoined after hacking off all the bodywork that had been ruined in the collision with Win Percy; without that fouling on the wheels, he was ready to go again.
The second start was like the first, with Brock, Longhurst and Seton all getting away smartly. Dick Johnson however – starting with an unobstructed view after the two cars ahead of him had both been taken out – got a lousy start and found himself being swamped from behind by Percy's fast-starting HSV Commodore. Into the braking zone the light Sierra had the edge, and Johnson stayed ahead, but it was ugly and messy; Johnson got into a tank-slapper like Brock's, while no-one less than Jim Richards was forced over the ripple strips in his quest to avoid a major pile-up. Forcing nearly 30 cars through that opening chicane seemed a recipe for madness every time.
Around the first lap it was once again Brock leading, Longhurst chasing, with Seton 3rd and Johnson 4th. Behind Johnson, Percy was reaping the benefits of his aggressive start and was running 5th, ahead of the two remaining Skylines of Jim Richards and George Fury. Down the Brabham Straight Brock had to go defensive, keeping to the right to defend the inside line from Tony Longhurst. Both went very deep on the brakes but Brocky made a slight mistake on the exit, dipping a wheel into the dust on the outside of the hairpin. To Longhurst, that was an invitation on an embossed card: he got alongside through Turn 13 but Brock hung it out on the tyres in glorious fashion, keeping his speed up and getting him out of the turn ahead. Then out of Turn 14 Longhurst was a tad too aggressive with the power button and got a hint of a tank-slapper, forcing him to lift and concede the place.
Through the next few laps the top four were still tied together, drafting and defending along the Brabham Straight, but with Brock just barely eking out some distance as the laps counted down. Then, out of nowhere, Johnson made his move. In the commentary box, guest commentator Alan Jones had opined that Johnson had been getting into the turns too aggressively and thereby losing out on the exit; it seems Dick had been listening, because with the race half over he finally got the run out of Brewery Corner just right and set himself up with a speed advantage all the way down Brabham Straight. Both Longhurst and Seton went defensive, but there was nothing they could do about it: Dick simply drove straight past them, stood on the brake pedal at just the right moment and tipped the car into the hairpin, having gone from 4th to 2nd in one move.
As if his day couldn't get any better, then Brocky went into Turn 4 on the East Terrace too hot, lost the back end and spun; that was him done and dusted. Dick had gone from 4th to 1st in the space of half a lap and, feeling cocky, he was now throwing the car into the turns and steering it on the throttle in exactly the style you couldn't with a turbo, mostly just for the fun of it.
A tad more circumspection might have been warranted: although Seton soon headed for the pits with a problem, Tony Longhurst was still in the hunt and trying to reel Johnson in, the dethroned Bathurst champion chasing down the reigning one, even though it seemed a hopeless cause. But in motor racing the rule is to always apply pressure, you never know... and sure enough, with just one lap to go, Dick finally overdid it and lost the rear heading into the quick left-right complex at Turn 7. He kept the Sierra's whaletail off the wall – barely – but embarrassingly ended up facing the wrong way as Longhurst and Brock blasted by. Game over. With only a lap and a half to the flag, there wasn't time to get back in the race, so that's how they finished: Longhurst took the win, with Brock 2nd. Win Percy was a solid 3rd for Holden – legacy of that demon start – with Richards 4th, Bond 5th, Fury 6th and Johnson a chastened 7th.
There'd been no smoke puffs to indicate a brake lock-up, so it seemed Johnson had simply been caught out by creeping temps at the rear. Interviewed by Barry Sheene as he walked back to his pit bay, a jubilant Tony Longhurst confirmed that this had been the case:
The front brakes were fading on everyone else's car. I was tempted to wind it to the front, but you could see Brock and Dick locking up at the rear so I just left my balance how it was. And eventually that's why everyone was spinning off the track, their back brakes were locking up because of the heat.
Tell me Frank Gardner wouldn't have been proud of that!
Yokohama Cup – Race 2
The second race on Sunday morning revealed why the previous afternoon had been so hot – there'd been rain on the way. Apparently it was dry in the early morning, but sometime around 11:00am a good soaking rain started to pelt down, and by the time the Group A cars headed to the grid the puddles were deep and plentiful.
Despite that, Sunday's race turned out to be the more straightforward of the two. This time both Longhurst and Brock bogged down at the start, but once again Win Percy got away smartly in the Commodore, only to be completely eclipsed by Richards making a blinding start, zipping between the two Sierras on the pit straight and into the chicane in P1. Around the first lap Richo led with Longhurst chasing, a small gap to Colin Bond 3rd in the Caltex Sierra, then Brock in the Mobil version, then Johnson and Grice in the FAI Commodore. George Fury didn't have it so good, trailing a bumper bar halfway around lap 1 suggesting someone had rammed him from behind – for which he was given a mechanical black flag. Not the farewell he'd have wanted from touring car racing, but no-one leaves through the front door in this business – well, almost no-one, but more on that in a moment...
Down into the final corner Bondy got a run on Longhurst and dive-bombed into the hairpin alongside him, driving on tippy-toes. Both got through without contact, and having taken a wider, faster line out of the turn Longhurst got a better drive back onto the straight and stayed in 2nd – but both were having trouble dealing with Jim Richards right now. Perfectly happy in the conditions, the New Zealander had that Skyline absolutely hooked up and was perfectly happy to kick the tail out under boost. Today he was driving more like George Fury than George Fury, in fact.
Through Turn 9 onto Jones Straight, Richards climbed over the kerbs and Colin Bond had a mad moment with yet another tankslapper, but Longhurst kept his composure, hinting at what was to come next. Having patiently got his tyres and brakes up to temperature, by lap 2 Longhurst was able to follow Richards through Brewery Corner for the first time, and from there it was just a matter of planting his foot and waiting. On a long straight like the Brabham, there was absolutely nothing Richards in a 345 kW Nissan could do to hold back a 410 kW Ford. Imperiously, Longhurst moved across and took the line off Richards, swept through the hairpin and resumed the march, now firmly in the lead.
The difference in body language between Bond and Longhurst was instructive; Frank Gardner of course preferred softer setups that let the tyres live, which could've explained why the yellow #25 looked so controllable and the red and white #6 looked like a fish dropped on the floor. All the same, sheer talent and experience meant Bond was able to pull the same move at the hairpin on Richards as he had on Longhurst a lap earlier, and this time he made it stick – albeit with a minor love-tap mid-corner. A lap later and Dick Johnson was able to pull off the same trick, with even more aggressive contact made: Richards' grandstanding hadn't amounted to much in the end.
The windscreen wipers remained on because the spray hung in the air with
the concrete walls hemming it in, but the rain had stopped. The track
wasn't really drying, but it wasn't getting any wetter either, not that
it would've mattered in a race this short. Further back, Grice was at his fabulous best trying to catch Brock, sliding the big FAI Commodore out of the turns, forcing that primitive rear suspension to live with the grunt of a 5.0-litre race-tuned V8. After very nearly getting past at the hairpin, he kept the pressure on and got it done at Turn 4. Despite frustrating levels of wheelspin, however, Brock kept the fight alive and repassed him two laps later.
By the finish Longhurst had hit his rhythm and was driving with beautifully controlled oversteer, an astoundingly difficult thing to do on a wet track in a car where the difference between 100 and 400 kW was only 1,000rpm. Clearly at the end of an entire year in this car, his right foot was perfectly calibrated to driving it and he was reaping the benefits. On the final lap, using the crude stopwatch/YouTube timing method, it seems Bond was roughly 2.5 seconds behind, too far back to think of winning the race. Longhurst had done this one pretty easily, just cruising and collecting. Bond battled on but 2nd was all he could expect today; Johnson had risen to 3rd and continued to close, but just ran out of laps.
So Tony Longhurst had won both races, in very different conditions, demonstrating mastery of the streets of Adelaide and taking home the Yokohama Cup (despite his team actually running on Dunlops). Why had he been so good over this sort of distance? Another theory, take it or leave it – because that year Tony had also won the James Hardie Building Products AMSCAR series, whose lucrative prize money made it the series any Sydney-based team built their schedule around. This year there had been four rounds, all of them (except the first, which was also Amaroo Park's ATCC round) extremely short, sharp sprints of 5-15 laps only. In this pressure-cooker environment, getting off the line and nailing in every lap perfectly was crucial, and the driver simply had to be on it from the first lap to the last. Despite fierce resistance from Brian Callaghan's yellow Walkinshaw Commodore and Colin Bond's Caltex Sierra, Longhurst had managed to win eight consecutive races spread across three rounds – basically every AMSCAR race except the shared ATCC opener. Short, multiple-race formats were very familiar territory for Tony, as they were to Colin Bond, who'd been at the pointy end of both races despite the setbacks. Tony had won the AMSCAR title for the third time, of what would ultimately be a record five, so taking the Adelaide GP support races as well was just the icing on the cake.
How we first saw it.
With hindsight, however, the really significant moment of the broadcast had come during the red flag period on Saturday, when the commentators pointed out that this was (intended to be, at least) the last outing for Nissan's HR31 Skyline. The replacement R32 had been homologated and was being used as the Clerk of the Course car this weekend, looking sumptuous in a deep ruby red paint. "It's quite a business," said an impressed Alan Jones. "Four-wheel drive, four-wheel steer, thirty-two valve, twin-turbo... a little bit heavy, but they seem to think they can get the horsepower into it that'll make it really competitive. Certainly a beautiful-looking car..."
Godzilla was coming.
InterTEC 500
I retired from driving after Klaus Niedzwiedz and I won the Fuji 500 in Japan, held a few days after I turned 50. – Allan Moffat, AMC #77
One of the few who hadn't been in Adelaide, however, was Bathurst runner-up Allan Moffat. He'd instead taken his #9 car – the older one, which had contested Bathurst in 1988 and been the team tortoise this year – to race in the InterTEC 500 at Fuji Speedway, season finale for the All-Japan Touring Car Championship. It was Japan's most important touring car race, and to help out he'd brought along the winner of the last two events, star Eggenberger driver Klaus Niedzwiedz. In his final appearance as a professional racing driver, the man who'd been the first to win Bathurst driving solo would in fact be nothing more than a co-driver. If ever there was a sign of how much times change, this was it.
As an end-of-year treat, a celebration of our expected great Bathurst victory, I'd accepted an invitation for Klaus and myself to enter the Fuji InterTEC 500, the final round of Japan's touring-car title. Klaus had won the race the previous two years. It was to be held on the weekend of 10-12 November 1989, my 50th birthday. I requested racing number 39, the year of my birth. It was a nuance lost on just about everyone and I wasn't making it known.
Mount Fuji Raceway is one of the fastest and, for some, most fearsome circuits in the world. Certainly it is among the top ten. It sits beneath Japan’s tallest mountain, Fuji san, at 3,776 metres a perfectly symmetrical cone-shaped active volcano whose peak is under snow most of the year.
The race track was built in 1963, initially to attract NASCAR-style racing to Japan. They built a banked corner, the Daiichi Banking, and it had a habit of killing people.
After the final double fatality of several, they abandoned it, although even today you can walk over the back of the track behind turn one and stand on its near-vertical ellipse, just as you do at Monza.
Fuji is renowned for two things: the never-ending right-hand corner onto the main straight, 300R, where 300 stands for the radius of the corner in metres – an extraordinary length; and the straight itself, which is an engine-bursting 1.5 kilometres long.
Just as Mount Fuji is one of Japan’s sacred mountains – in Shinto mythology the permanent residence of the primordial God of the Universe – so Fuji Raceway is a place to be approached with reverence.
The six-heat Japanese championship had been decided by the final round. Masahiro Hasemi, who’d come 10th in the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix in the short-lived Kojima F1 car owned by a local banana-importing baron, had already claimed the first of ultimately three touring-car titles in a Nissan Skyline GT-R [sic – in 1989 it was still the GTS-R, just like in Australia].
So there was nothing to play for, except glory. The Japanese pushed their Skylines and Supras well past the limit. By three-quarter distance Hasemi had blown up and so had pole-man Kazuyoshi Hoshino.
Klaus and I pummelled our way to the lead, establishing an almost one-minute gap on the Toyota Supra of Masanori Sekiya, who a few years later would become the first Japanese to win Le Mans. (He loves the place so much he flew his fiancée over there so they could be married at the track.)
You cannot discount these fellows. They are fast, talented and fearless. The guy running 3rd, Keiichi Tsuchiya, has now, in his sixties, re-established himself as the Drift King, the undisputed global superstar of tyre-shredding sideways racing.
Sekiya and Tsuchiya got caught up in their own battle for 2nd, which gave us some relief.
Late that afternoon, we took the chequered flag in 1st place at an average speed of 156.9km/h.
When you stand on the podium, peeking just around the corner of the grandstand, opposite your left is Mount Fuji. It's a surreal sight.
I told no-one, made no announcements and blew no trumpets. But that day, the anniversary of my 50th year on this earth, I retired from professional race driving. – Allan Moffat, Climbing The Mountain
Allan's determination never to be a 50-year-old racing driver went deep. Johnson and Brock would cheerfully brush past this barrier, but for Moffat the aversion was strong thanks to experiences in his youth – experiences the purely Australia-focused youngsters could never have had.
In my youth, as a young driver in America when I was based in Detroit, Goodyear took me under their wing. And on two occasions I was invited by the head of racing to go down to Indianapolis for the month of May. Not to do anything, just to soak it all up.
There was a misconception that it's a race, but Indy was really a war between Goodyear and Firestone. And for the whole month of May, not just one weekend like Bathurst.
So 33 cars started the race, and all the top teams had two cars. They would get them "into the show," as they called it, on the first weekend. They would still have two spare cars, and brought them out as money earners on the second weekend of qualifying.
So I saw a bunch of old guys, some past Indy champions and some not-quite-top brass, and they needed the pitcrew to help lift them into the cars. Then I saw about four guys helping this old guy get into the car, and the scariest thing I ever saw in my life was they were holding his hands and placing them on the wheel. They needed to do that because he had been in a big fire and his hands were all burned, and when they healed he had them set so he could hold a steering wheel.
It burned me. I said I would never be a 50-year-old race driver. I would have only been 26 or 27 at the time, so it was a long-term plan. – Allan Moffat, AMC #79
The Great Race of 1989 wasn't just redemption for Dick Johnson. It was also redemption for the mountain classic itself.
The tag line was "back in Aussie hands", and didn't that please the locals? No more interference from the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, or FISA; no more pretending the race was part of a World or South Pacific Touring Car Championship: this year the race was once more being run by the Australian Racing Drivers Club, or ARDC, with support from broadcast partner Channel Seven. With no pretense of being part of a wider championship, the 1989 Tooheys 1000 stood alone as the pinnacle of Australian motorsport. And although there was still a strong contingent of European drivers in the paddock, they were mostly hired guns here to co-drive for local teams... and on that basis, Australia had decided, they were welcome.
Green Flag
After a brief warm-up session, a display from the marching band (embarrassingly, called the Marching Koalas), a burnout from a top alcohol dragster, and air displays from RAAF Roulettes, the Marching Koalas (sigh...) returned to play "Advance Australia Fair". NSW Premier Nick Greiner then gave the command everyone had been waiting for: "Gentlemen, start your engines!" The rumble was less impressive than it might have been with all those turbos strangling the noise, but the tension was undiminished: one last warm-up lap and the foreplay would be done. It was go time.
...And yet, that final hold took an awful lot longer than anyone expected. After the final trek around the circuit the frontrunners pulled up in their respective pit boxes and waited... and waited... and waited, wondering what the hell was going on. For more than two minutes they sat on the start line, engines idling, oil and water temps creeping upward, waiting for the organisers to pull their finger out and finally start the race. Word is that they were waiting for the strike of 10:00am on the dot, and if so it would come at a hell of a price. Several cars were due to retire with overheating issues this, and more than a few could be traced back to the long halt on the start line.
Johnson had warned he was going for a full-bore start this year, 7,000rpm and lots of wheelspin. When they finally flagged the field away he was as good as his word, lighting up his rears and letting off a big plume of tyre smoke – which turned out to be too much, as Peter Brock got the neater start and nipped into Hell Corner ahead of him.
Brock led the charge up Mountain Straight, with Dick large in his mirrors and Niedzwiedz in the ANZ car a little further back. Brad Jones in the second Mobil Sierra trailed a little further again, then Bondy in his Caltex Sierra before the pack proper started. Across the top of the Mountain Brock was of course peerless, but Johnson managed to keep in touch, with Niedzwiedz not letting either of them get away. Down through the Esses they were nose to tail, but as they exited Forrest's Elbow Dick planted his foot and initiated launch procedures. Down Conrod he pulled out of Brock's draft, ran alongside, then simply breezed past in a shocking display of raw turbo power. By the time they reached the flat-out kink at the Chase, Johnson was fully ahead and back on the racing line, braking hard to bring his speed down from the 285km/h of the approach to 80 or so for the tight left-hander. Behind the white Sierras of Brock and Niedzwiedz were tucked in like they were still in the race, but the fact was that was the first and last pass for the lead we'd see all day: the #17 would never be headed again.
The second lap continued the theme established on the first, with Dick pulling away anywhere the road straightened out, building a gap even by Griffin's Bend. But as he came up the Mountain for the second time the yellow flags were out, flying for the Miedecke Sierra stranded at the entry to Reid Park. The subsequent replay from onboard another car revealed he'd pulled off a similar full-bore start to Johnson, but had paid the price. With the tall gearing required for the Mountain, the Sierra's fragile standard gearbox just wasn't up to that kind of start, and he'd broken a selector shaft and failed to complete even the first lap, pulling over after Griffon's Bend to let the field by. He later told pitlane commentator Richard Hay:
Andrew Miedecke: I thought we were doing fairly well there! I picked up a couple of places going up Mountain Straight, but unfortunately the gearbox appears to've had a small malfunction – a brand-new gearbox, and it's stuck in fifth gear.
Richard Hay: Is the car repairable or not? Are you going to take it back down and give it one more shot?
Miedecke: Yeah, sure. As soon as we can we'll get it back down there and I’m sure it's capable of running as quickly or quicker than anybody on race tyres.
So maybe Johnson's roaring start, all sound and fury, had signified something after all: preserving his suspect gearbox and diff by venting all that torque straight to the tarmac. If that was the case it had worked like a treat, because he was leading the race anyway, and it was only lap 3. In fact, timing boards would shortly reveal one of Seton's early laps was a 2:24.1, compared to the low 20s Dick was reeling off at the front. By the end of the third lap Dick was 1st on the road by four seconds, with Peter Brock in a Rouse Sierra 2nd, and Klaus Niedzwiedz in an Eggenberger Sierra 3rd – exactly where you'd expect these cars to be over such a short distance.
But this was an endurance race, and the glory all lay at the other end. At Bathurst they used to talk about the "Brock Crush", the tactic of running hard in the opening laps to build a gap, making the bastards chase you, then slowing down and running the bulk of the race a a more sedate pace to preserve the car. A turbo car was the perfect instrument for this kind of thing, especially as Group A (unlike the previous Group C machinery) allowed adjustable boost. At high boost, as the opening laps were being run, it was almost expected that the Dick Johnson car would run away with it, but it remained to be seen whether the #17 could stand up to this kind of punishment all day.
What was clear from the get-go, however, was that forcing this sort of pace on the pack was going to inflict casualties. The #78 Team Madison Corolla of Michael Adcock was being lapped as early as lap 5, and on the same lap Matt Wacker's Commodore was seen stopped against the wall at Quarry, having suffered a clutch failure. By lap 11 Terry Finnigan's privateer Commodore was in the pits having cold water sloshed over its radiator (it would eventually DNF with an overheated and warped block), while the Tim Slako/Geoff Leeds Walky would be in to see the doctor with a similar ailment a lap later, the first of several returns to the pits to cure an overheating problem (the car would be withdrawn on lap 28). Overheating was definitely a theme for the Commodores this year, the price of shrouding it in that TWR bodywork.
The Slako/Leeds Walky while it was still running; pretty in pink!
Others however seemed to find the intensity energising: Gianfranco Brancatelli, in the #27 Peanut Slab Sierra owned by Mark Petch, had risen from 15th on the grid to be 5th on the road in only four laps, although some loose bodywork on the right-front guard suggested he hadn't done it neatly. Tony Longhurst in the #25 meanwhile was seen putting a pass on Glenn Seton on Conrod, then outbraking Jim Richards on the way through Murray's, driving with the kind of quiet fury that comes from being annoyed with yourself. He'd started 3rd, made it through Hell Corner unscathed but then mysteriously slowed and and let the field by up Mountain Straight, dropping back to 12th. The big question had been why. The commentators speculated that he'd just missed a gear, but Richard Hay later revealed he'd simply got onto the dirt and lost momentum. Whatever the problem was, it had apparently been sorted, because after that he was flying, back up to 4th as early as lap 11. By lap 12 was Johnson 1st, daylight 2nd, with Niedzwiedz in P2 still four seconds behind; Brancatelli's #27 Peanut Slab Sierra was 3rd, with Longhurst on a charge
in 4th.
Sadly Brancatelli didn't stay there for long. He had a drama at the top of the Mountain when a wheel came loose through McPhillamy Park, the sudden loss of grip on that corner sending him through the gravel. Smoke from a rubbing tyre indicated some sort of damage, but we didn't realise how severe it was until the wheel parted company completely under braking for Skyline, ripping out the guard as it departed. That left the car limping back to the pits on the brake disc, sparks flying where bare steel met the asphalt. Brancatelli trickled it back to the pits but in the process he ground the bottom off the radiator, fatally wounding the car; it was listed as retired on lap 14.
Still a brittle car...
In the meantime he'd also released a lot of oil, and arriving at Skyline flat-chat Glenn Seton got caught out on it, lost the back end and clouted the wall, dislodging a tyre bundle which now sat right at the entry to the Esses. Seton returned to the pits to have the damage seen to (more than panel damage if he could feel it badly enough to pit); Brad Jones was also in pit lane at this moment with the mechanics having a look at the differential.
Richard Hay: Brad, problems for the car at the moment, I understand it's brakes?
Brad Jones: Yeah, we've torn a rear [brake] hose off the car. I went through someone's accident and unfortunately it's torn the hose off the car, so I arrived at the Caltex Chase with no brakes. So, um, that's quite hairy...
"Quite hairy" for a racing driver would be heart attack material for you or me; I can't think of many worse places to discover the brake pedal was out of commission. No wonder he had a hint of that thousand-yard stare during the in-car interview. Haye left him alone to pump the brakes for the pit crew, busy bleeding the line so they could fix it.
So where was Peter Brock through all of this, you ask? He'd dropped out of the leader pack on lap 8, when he'd unexpectedly brought it back to the pits with a wheel vibration. Although we didn't know it yet, this was the first big moment of the race, as the seed planted here would germinate to take the #05 Mobil Sierra out of contention in a big way. At the time, though, we just watched as the pit crew fitted new tyres – Brock stayed in the seat, no fuel went in and the bonnet wasn't lifted, so all we knew was there'd been a tyre problem of some sort. Again the commentary team speculated about a flat-spotted rear, but it turned out the wheel simply hadn't been bolted on properly. Brock rejoined 19th, but within 15 laps would be back up to 6th place.
Also notable was that none of these incidents triggered a Safety Car, even though they arguably should have. Oil and water from Brancatelli's wounded Sierra should've brought one out to protect the marshals while they sprinkled some cement dust; there was also Seton's brush with the wall that left a tyre on the racing line; and Matt Wacker's Commodore at Reid Park probably should've brought one on as well. So if you're playing the Bathurst '89 Drinking Game, start with three shots for those missed Safety Car periods right there. But after the confusion surrounding the Pace Car rules in '87, and the dominant car effectively being taken out by an overlong Safety Car period in '88, one can probably understand why the ARDC officials were a bit trigger-shy this year. This was supposed to be Back In Aussie Hands, after all, and they'd never used Safety Cars in the old days.
The Murray Carter/John Mann Sierra cresting Reid Park.
One thing that hadn't gone away however was organiser officiousness. By lap 25 Murray Carter had come afoul of the stewards for changing a wheel somewhere other than the pits. It had allegedly taken place at the entrance to the caravan park on Mountain Straight – not quite on the track, but definitely not in the pits where such things were allowed. Murray had been advised to withdraw the car, as if he chose to continue he'd be up for a fine, with no word on how big the fine would be – "It could be for $500," he told Richard Hay, "or a Nigel Mansell of $64,000."
[Note: At that year's Portuguese Grand Prix, held just a week earlier, Mansell had been in contention for the win in his Ferrari, until at his pit stop he'd overshot and had to reverse back in to his pit box. Reversing in pit lane was against the rules, so he'd been shown the black flag... which he'd failed to see, being neck-deep in a battle for position with Ayrton Senna at the time. The two had ultimately touched and ended up in the gravel, ending Senna's hopes of winning that year's World Championship. FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre had slapped Mansell with a $50,000 fine for ignoring the black flag.]
Unlike Mansell, Murray opted for discretion and withdrew the car, credited with just 10 laps completed. He didn't need his money-hungry Sierra to get even more expensive, after all...
On the same lap, the #9 ANZ Sierra of Hansford/Dieudonné was in the pits with the bonnet up, plenty of steam leaking from its water reservoir – rather worrying, given this was the older of the team's two cars and therefore likely the team tortoise. It had been promoted to 5th outright by Peter Brock's tyre stop, so it lost a very promising position.
Richard Hay: What was the problem, Allan? You've just got the #9 car started and going, it's been here a while. A heating problem?
Allan Moffat: Yes. It's at 97 degrees, the water, and Pierre saw it fluctuate. The telemetry also picked it up and uh, well, I hope this isn't the beginning of one down, one to go.
Hay: Fingers crossed on that one. Is this one that's fixed or one that's going to keep worrying you?
Moffat: It's not a business that you like to have your fingers doing your work for you, and this is not a very good sign I'm afraid. They can keep going – the fact that it started is a help – but when they overheat it's generally the beginning of the end.
Hay: A couple of the Sierras in trouble, I believe Tony Longhurst has also got a bit of a problem. Is it the big worry?
Moffat: The pace is very fast, and we've had four beautiful days and now we've got a fairly diverse wind here which I think could be fooling around a bit with the temperatures. It could be with the wind blowing the cars up the Mountain Straight, they may be getting quite hot going up the hill, plus the load is at the worst spot. If we had our choice we'd like the wind blowing the other way, so it stayed cooler going up, because they’re always quite cool coming down.
Yep, Longhurst was in trouble too. On lap 27 the pretty yellow #25 came in for what looked like a scheduled stop – tyres were swapped, fuel was added, and Tony stayed in at first. But as the stop dragged on longer and longer, the lack of urgency from the mechanics started to speak volumes. Plenty of smoke (or steam) was coming from under the car, indicating it was running hot; Longhurst finally jumped out and put Neville Crichton in the driver's seat, but it was a formality only. Instead of dropping it on the wheels and sending Croaky off on his first stint, the mechanics started pushing it towards the back of the pits. The reigning Bathurst champs were out with a blown head gasket. The first of the Big Four had fallen.
Nothing daunted, seven laps later Alan Jones pitted in the #20 and rather than let Denny Hulme climb aboard, Longhurst did a Brock and took it over himself. The #20 would remain a Jones/Longhurst proposition for the rest of the day. A similar thing was taking place further along pit lane, where John Goss had pitted the #35 Peter Jackson Sierra and handed it over to team owner Glenn Seton, who after damaging the #30 on Brancatelli's oil didn't fancy driving it any further. Things could get complicated if either team boss ended up driving too many laps themselves, but that was of little concern this early in the day: the priority was to get to the front before the front got away.
At the same time, the #4 Caltex Sierra of Colin Bond was in from 10th place for what started as a routine stop, but quickly became major surgery.
Colin Bond: Well yeah, I've been having a bit of a banging under the car, and I couldn't work out whether it was coming from the rear end or not. But on the slowdown coming into the pits I could feel the tailshaft bumping against the floor and asked the boys to check it. The centre bearing evidently has come adrift. It's a bit of a problem because it's a brand-new one we only stuck in prior to the race. We had one that's been running all year, we should've left that one in I guess.
John Brady: How long will it hold you up for?
Bond: Would not have a clue, actually. Obviously everything's fairly hot under there. The boys'll work fairly quickly, but imagine we’ll lose a couple of laps. We don’t want to do that at this stage of the game.
Brady: The attrition rate on the Sierras so far hasn't been so great – Longhurst had troubles, Moffat's had a bit of trouble, you've had some, how's the feeling out there?
Bond: No I think basically everybody's running around fairly conservative. I know we were. We're running conservative boost thinking we've gotta be here at the end of the day. Uh, the motor's running fine. We've just got one of these stupid problems, I'm afraid.
Indeed, it seemed every Sierra team was having stupid problems, except one: on lap 32 Dick Johnson had reached his pit window and made his first scheduled stop. He'd briefly had to stack behind the #18, which'd
had its stop held up by Grice and had only just put Robb Gravett in for his first stint, but the delay was a couple of heartbeats only. The #17 pulled neatly into its pit bay, then stopped and rose on its jacks. Red and yellow mechanics swarmed over the car and fuel churns were upturned, old boots were pulled off and new ones fitted. Johnson himself dived out and a ready-and-waiting John Bowe hopped in. The car was dropped and Bowe stormed away, the #17 rejoining still in the lead, having spent barely 29 seconds stationary.
Brock pitted to hand over to Andy Rouse, dropped only two spots to 5th – but of course, at least a lap behind the leader. George Fury pitted as well, but he stayed in to double-stint. Not that it made a huge difference, Bowe was soon coming around to put both Nissans (running 6th and 7th) another lap down, now some 30 seconds ahead of Klaus Niedzwiedz in 2nd, who was himself nearly 59 seconds ahead of Longhurst. The pit stops had put the top five back on the lead lap, with Bowe, Niedzwiedz, Longhurst and Rouse all on lap 37, with Grice in the #15 FAI Commodore sneaking into the top five thanks to not pitting yet. He was currently the best-placed Commodore, with the next being the #16 HSV car of Tomas Mezera in 9th, and the other works car of Neil Crompton in 10th. That left 8th place still in the hands of the #18 DJR machine.
Around lap 42 Niedzwiedz pitted – amazing fuel economy if that was his first stop, ten laps further than Johnson had gone on his 120-litre tank – and Frank Biela climbed in. If the extraordinary stint length was coming at the price of outright pace, it was still faster than almost anything else out there. If the car could save a whole pit stop – say 40 seconds – then they might be in with a winning strategy. But of course, having lost a whole pit stop to Johnson just in the first stint, the numbers weren't looking good just now. They'd need the #17 to hit problems to be in with a chance, it seemed.
At the start of lap 46 Bowe was back in the pits, but only for a quick top-up – it seemed the team simply hadn't put enough fuel in at its scheduled stop. He stayed in and was sent away with a lurid slide, gunning it out of his pit box. Again he rejoined without losing the lead. Robb Gravett was in shortly after in the #18, and this was more troublesome, with the bonnet and boot both lifted in a long, delayed stop. The car just wouldn’t start, taking a full minute to get going again. It emerged the team had to change the plugs, as the car had developed a misfire.
Tony Longhurst also pitted and stayed in, having a quiet and moody drink as the mechanics hammered to clear his right-front guard from the tyre – a huge black smudge on the guard spoke of a coming-together with a tyre barrier somewhere. The team fitted fresh rubber and sent him back out again, but this day really wasn't going the way he’d hoped: from 3rd, that stop had dropped him back to 7th. Andy Rouse in the #05 Peter Brock Sierra inherited 3rd, shortly putting Neil Crompton in the #7 HSV Commodore another lap down.
The end of lap 63 saw Seton bring the #35 Peter Jackson Sierra into the pits for a scheduled stop: Alain Ferté climbed in, then sat and waited as the mechanics changed the brake pads as well. A long stop, but everything was done calmly and properly. Interestingly, the fuel man had a crash helmet and full nomex fireproof suit on, but the guy on the right-rear wheel – who had the refuelling process going on right over his head – had nothing but a team shirt, some gloves and a pair of sunnies! Clearly he didn't trusted the refueller to do his job without spilling a drop...
By lap 66 Biela in the #10 and Rouse in the #05 pitted at the same time; both had a driver change, Brock returning to his car, Niedzwiedz suited up and ready for the ANZ car rather than its owner Allan Moffat. Apparently Moffat wasn't planning on driving today after all. Moffat's crew lifted the bonnet and seemed to top up some fluids during the stop, which was fairly brisk, but nothing much was wrong with the car – save that it was now 56 seconds behind the leader. But at least the car rejoined without losing any positions; Brock, who’d seen Rouse come in just as Niedzwiedz was leaving, rejoined a place down in 4th – still 55 seconds ahead of George Fury in the first of the Nissan Skylines. The gap between a top-tier Sierra and everyone else was simply staggering.
Bill O'Brien's Everlast Commodore, shared with 1975 winner Brian Sampson.
On lap 70 the #43 Everlast Battery Service Commodore was seen sitting stricken at The Cutting, the victim of a crash. Who'd caused it and why doesn't seem to be recorded, but the car was listed as a DNF with 65 laps to its credit, so they must have been four or five laps down at the time. Since they weren't on the racing line, this didn't trigger a Safety Car either – pour yourself another shot. Poking fun at the Everlast car, Mike Raymond said pithily, "It didn't", although to be fair the battery had probably been working just fine...
Onboard shots from Mark Skaife's Nissan showed the #55 Playscape Sierra of Kevin Waldock sitting across the track at Skyline on lap 76; Waldock had simply over-braked on the approach to the drop-off at Skyline and locked up the rears, tipping him into a hair-raising spin down the hill that very nearly collected Longhurst. Skaife sensibly slowed down to pick his way past, and got through clean – but in the process losing yet more time to the Sierras in front. Again, no Safety Car, because Waldock got going again without damage (you didn't have work tomorrow, did you?).
Then came the next big moment of the race. With the leaders nearing the halfway mark, Brock was abruptly back in the pits, arm out the window in casual despair as the mechanics struggled to fit a new right-rear tyre to his Mobil Sierra. The air gun rattle and ground, but the wheel failed to detach – some wrong-sized dowels on the hub had caused the nut to lock on. The team tried three different guns and a liberal application of WD-40 to try and budge it, but they might as well have been trying to remove Excalibur.
Ultimately the mechanics were between a rock and a hard place, as removing the wheel was looking impossible without damaging the hub it was attached to. Eventually they bit the bullet and hacked the thing off, and paid the price – the broadcast showed them dusting out metal and shavings from the bare hub, now mangled beyond serious use. A mechanic got to work with a die grinder ("Like a Dremel but bigger, way better," so I'm told) filing back the threads, but by now the car was back to 10th place – behind even the #18 DJR car, which had pitted for service during his visit to the pits! Eventually they got the hub into some sort of shape, and were able to fit a wheel and a lock-nut and send it back out, but it was a band-aid solution only. The car was soon back in pit lane having a replacement hub fitted, but by then the car had lost so many laps there was no way it was realistically still in the race. The Mobil team eventually decided to quit while they were behind, downed tools and pushed the car out the back, its day over.
Richard Hay had tried to interview Brock through the window but the noise of the rattle gun drowned out everything that was said; speaking in the commentary box a couple of hours later, Peter was able to lay out for us exactly what had gone wrong.
Peter Brock: That's motor racing, isn't it? You just can't predict just what's going to happen at any one time. We had the most amazing thing happen: the back wheel came loose about lap, oh I don't know, about lap 10 or something like that, and I came in. In fact I was very concerned, driving around the mountain, that the back wheel might just actually fall off, and of course you lose control of the car, the wheel bounces down the track somewhere, and you're in all sorts of trouble. But I got back in, I thought, "Okay, [I've] recovered okay, I can get back out there and still perhaps do okay." We got the car up to a reasonable position again, and lo and behold the back wheel came loose again.
Now what happens when it comes loose, is it wobbles around a bit and "frets", as they call it, and it more or less welds itself in that position – so we couldn't actually get the wheel off when we got back to the pits. I was saying to the guys – I don't know if you had it on the commentary – they did a wheel change the other day in about 9.3 seconds, and this was about 9.3 minutes! So, that sort of blew our chances. But the car was running magnificently... just a bit disappointing that we couldn't be out there right now running around...
So car #05 – one of the Big Four that had been competing for the win – was out, with just 81 of 161 laps completed. Of the Four, it was now two down, two to go – the only ones left were Johnson/Bowe, still comfortably in the lead, and Niedzwiedz/Biela well behind in 2nd, but with some comfort in being the only other car still on the lead lap (the 3rd-placed Nissan of Fury/Olofsson was now a whole lap down). Bowe completed his stint and pitted on lap 80: clean windscreen, fuel, new pads, tyres, and a driver change: Bowe climbed out, Johnson climbed back in. The stop was tense but not panicky, refuelling leaving the car sitting still for some 65 seconds. Despite which, it rejoined yet again without losing the lead, a whopping 80 seconds ahead of the ANZ car. Bowe was cornered for an interview by Richard Hay, where he had this to say:
Richard Hay: John, any problems with the car at all at the moment?
John Bowe: No Richard, it had a little bit of paper over the grille, which was making the temperature run just five degrees too hot, and if I dropped the revs down to 7,000 it came back down again so they car is fine, perfect. Except that it started to splutter on that last lap, because it's getting low on gas. So, good thing it made it eh?
Hay: The paper thing and the overheating, it sounds like it's affected one or two cars, could that be responsible for the head gaskets problems as well, do you think, that some of the other Sierras have suffered?
Bowe: Yeah could be. Um, Neil told me on the radio that the paper was there so I watched the gauge very carefully. When I revved it to, you know, what we normally use, it'd creep up, but if I kept the revs down, it's within a safe bound. So, now we've cleared it off it should be fine.
Hay: At the moment though things still looking good for the car?
Bowe: Who knows? Long way to go yet, mate.
Bowe's comment about being low on fuel raises an interesting point. Johnson had completed only 32 laps on his opening stint, compared to 34-35 for the other Sierra runners; Bowe'd had that extra fuel stop on lap 46, and from there was "lucky to make it" to lap 80 – a 34-lap stint, and that only because he had to drop the revs because of overheating. It seemed the DJR car's outright pace came with a slight penalty to fuel economy. So here’s a theory, take it or leave it: DJR was running a unique "jungle juice" fuel cooked up by Shell Australia. Johnson has since confirmed that his team inherited what was left of McLaren's Shell fuel after the 1988 Australian Grand Prix, the final race of F1's turbo era.
After the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide they left some fuel here for us. What was left over they didn't transport back. That was worth another 30 horsepower – it was amazing the stuff they put in there! We had to be very careful as they would monitor our fuel and it was in the era that the regulations started changing as to what fuel could be used. That put us on the back foot to make power from them and keep them together. – Dick Johnson, AMC #77
All well and good, but that probably would've been used up within the first few ATCC rounds. Even if it hadn't, pump petrol in sealed containers only lasts about a year, which would've been right at the limit of use by Bathurst '89 (and the toluene-based brews used in F1 were a long way from being pump petrol).
But, the team had been pinged for fuel irregularities before, and their prime sponsor wasn't likely to hold back in the biggest race of the year, and with the ARDC running the race again the fuel checks weren't likely to be as stringent as the ones done by FISA themselves. So I'm thinking the local branch of Shell took a sample of that original McLaren fuel and had their best go at copying it, adjusting it to suit the Sierra's Cosworth engine and local conditions. At the tiny volumes required by a two-car race team it wouldn't have been a hugely taxing job, especially when it could put their logo on the TV for six and a half hours. So if you want my guess, I'd say DJR were running their own unique fuel blend for Bathurst '89, which is why their car could run so much boost for so long without distintegrating, and why their stints were about 10% shorter than everyone else's.
And with that the race entered its longest and dreariest phase – crushing domination for Johnson & Bowe, with Niedzwiedz driving out of his skin to even lap at the same of pace. For most of the next two hours the red car was basically just ticking off the laps and pit stops, leaving all the entertainment to come from further down the pack. Like the #56 BMW M3 of John Sax & Graham Lorimer, which was abruptly seen to be on fire just after Griffon's Bend on lap 82. Marshals waited for a gap in the traffic then made a mercy dash across the road with fire extinguishers. The commentators saw the state of the boot lid and thought it had taken a thump to the rear section, which had then ruptured the fuel tank and started a major fire: in fact, a subsequent replay showed the (completely intact) rear of the car gushing fuel even before it came to a stop, as it climbed through Griffon’s. Sax apparently saw it in his mirror and elected to stop, whereupon the thing caught fire for real as all the hot bits were no longer fleeing the fuel trail. Sax bravely got the hell out of there before he could be barbecued to a crisp, and the boot lid – which was made of plastic on an M3 – then melted in the fire. It was a dramatic way to retire, but once again, this incident failed to bring out a Safety Car either. Bottoms up!
Only a few laps later, the #35 Peter Jackson Sierra with Alain Ferté at the wheel was seen parked against the wall at Reid Park, combining with the Miedecke car that had been there since the opening laps to turn the corner into a makeshift chicane. The 35 was out with a blown engine, with 92 laps to its credit. Yellow flags were deployed to warn the drivers, but again there was no Safety Car; the flaggies hopped over the wall and, incredibly, pushed it across the track to the other side, where it would be off the racing line – in the process putting themselves in a position to get sandwiched by cars approaching at 150km/h! The commentators held their breath as the pack whizzed by, but thankfully we didn't see a marshal turned into meat moss by an impact. The interview with the car's owner was about what you'd expect:
Richard Hay: Glenn, it's been a fairly awful day for you so far hasn't it mate?
Glenn Seton: Yeah. We had a little bit of bad luck earlier today with some oil on the circuit through the Esses, but we sorta got that car going again. Now it looks like the 35 car's stopped, we don't know what's happened to it at the moment. So, uh, just gotta wait and see and wait until Alain gets back and find out what went wrong. It just looks like it's probably done something like run out of fuel, but we're a long way from our stop.
Hay: Seems a very strange place to stop the car as well, I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose?
Seton: No, I don't think so. He was running around, doing good times, and was scheduled to do a stop in five laps' time so it's sorta not like we've taken any gamble on fuel. We still had five laps to go.
Hay: There's no way you can get back in the other car now, is there, so your race is pretty much run?
Seton: Oh, no? [visibly thinking for several seconds] I can still get into the #30 car, 'cos I've only done 60 laps. Your limit is 107, and I started in #30 and there's only been two other drivers in the car. So maybe we'll look at that at the last stop.
Unfortunately the #30 Sierra was running 34th on the road at the moment he said that; yeah, a fairly awful day all-round for Glenn Seton's team. When they finally got to talk to Ferté, he said with a sleepy French accent:
Alain Ferté: I think it's, ahhh, electric problem. Because the car stopped just after The Cutting.
Hay: It just stopped and that was it? Went dead?
Ferté: Yeah. Stopped. Just stopped. But engine off.
Hay: The car's been running well then throughout the day?
Ferté: Yeah, uhhh... The car was very very good, and I think normally I stop for two or three laps maximum, uhh... that's right.
The top five remained Dick Johnson continued to run in 1st, Niedzwiedz in 2nd, Skaife (on a very long stint) was 3rd in the first Nissan, Olofsson was 4th in the other, and Perkins/Mezera had worked their way up to 5th in the #16 HSV Commodore. That was pretty much how they were going to finish too. 6th was the other HSV Commodore of Win Percy (now that Crompton was back in the commentary box); 7th was Alan Jones in the #20 B&H Sierra; 8th was Jeff Allam in the other DJR car; 9th was an excellent effort from the #37 Mobile Concrete Pumping Services Commodore of speedway racers Brian Callaghan & Barry Graham (who'd both done well at Bob Jane's new Thunderdome in the last 18 months); and an even more commendable effort had put the #50 Bryce Racing BMW M3 of Brett Riley & Ludwig Finauer into 10th place outright, leading their class.
On lap 100, just by coincidence, Seton's #30 Peter Jackson Sierra pitted at the same moment as Moffat's ANZ car and Skaife's #2 Nissan. Frank Biela apparently stayed in the #10 as brake pads were changed, but the PJ car took a driver change, swapping John Goss for Tony Noske, and Jim Richards got into the Nissan for a final double-stint to the flag. We were getting towards the business end of the day now: Richards rejoined just behind Dick Johnson, and the scrap between them made for some mild interest for the next few laps, but obviously without another 200hp under the bonnet he wasn't going to get past today. The sad reality was that a Nissan with a driver under orders to flog it without mercy was barely as fast as a DJR Sierra just being stroked along, as Johnson shortly confirmed what the stopwatches were already telling us, his car was now six seconds a lap off the pace of the opening stint. Richo was never getting that lap back, meaning the #17 had now officially lapped the entire field, with the #10 Moffat Sierra a lap down, and Richards in 3rd a full two laps down.
On lap 110, Johnson pitted from the lead, having got just 30 laps out of the tank this time around. He handed the car over to Bowe, who like Richards would be double-stinting to the finish. Bowe calmly strapped himself in, slotted it into gear, waited for it to drop, and then tore out of his pit bay like a man on a mission... but as he went past the camera at the end of the lane, there was a thin, shrill whine that hadn't been there before. The third and final big moment of Bathurst '89 had come, and this time the misfortune was all on the #17.
Within five laps, it was clear that Frank Biela – smooth, but clearly pushing hard, or as hard as you could in a 1,000km enduro – was now gaining on Bowe at a rate of 1 to 1.5 seconds per lap. With a 44-second gap to make up and some 45 laps remaining, it was going to be a
tall order to catch up. The #17 was still doing exactly what it needed to be doing just now, but where had all that monstrous speed gone? Somewhere between lap 114 and 121 the B&H team had made another pit stop, taking Alan Jones out of the #20 car and putting Tony Longhurst back in. And the onboard shots from owe's point of view revealed just how much the tables had turned, as Longhurst actually managed to pull away slightly on Conrod. He was soon out of the way anyway as a non-functional dry-break fuel filler saw him gushing fuel in right-hand turns, forcing another return to the pits, but still: something had gone drastically wrong on the Shell car. Bowe's heart was now in his mouth, as he revealed when the commentators got on the horn to speak to him.
Mike Raymond: Can you hear us, Johnny?
John Bowe: Yeah mate, I can hear you. I'm trying to sort of press on a bit because the car's dropped its boost. It's only got about 1.5 bar or something, and there’s not much I can do about it.
Garry Wilkinson: Well the ANZ car's only about thirty-two, thirty-three seconds behind you, JB.
Bowe: Wilko, I am very aware of that. There's just not much I can do about it, I'm going as fast as this thing'll go. The car itself's perfect, it just hasn't got any grunt.
Raymond: Well there's a lot of people in Tasmania watching this and watching you on RaceCam, wishing you the best.
Bowe: Yes, it's very nice isn't it? [translation: not my biggest priority right now!] I hope the thing stays together and we can get it home. I've been 2nd last year with Dick, and 2nd the year before with Glenn Seton, and quite honestly I'm sick of coming 2nd.
Raymond: You don’t make a good bridesmaid, Bowey.
Bowe: You're not wrong, mate, honestly. Jeez I wish it had some power though, that's flat out gettin' out of there [the Cutting].
Wilkinson: No indication of what the problem is?
Bowe: Uh... [thinking quickly] ...you’ll have to ask Neal, I’m just the driver!
Cue live footage of a poker-faced Allan Moffat standing in his pit garage, listening to that exchange on live TV. Despite everything, all the heartache and humiliation thus far, he was still in with a shot. By this stage the gap really was down to 32 seconds, and that could easily multiply because power was one of the best ways for a Sierra to deal with lapped traffic. Without it, Bowe could see himself getting stuck behind backmarkers when Biela wouldn't. And given this was lap 125 of 161, so there was still a pit stop in the near future for both cars. 36 laps in hand, 32 seconds to make up; this wasn't over yet. Five hours into a six-hour race, we finally had a motor race on our hands.
Allan Moffat: I'd rather be in my shoes than Dick Johnson's shoes. Ours is running fine, the telemetry tells us it's fine, and even though we did get it hot when that wrapper hit the radiator core – unfortunately we had to stop to get rid of it, and that's hurting us at the moment – but thirty seconds at this stage of the game... Dick has to come in and if they try to fiddle with it when they come in, you never know how long that will take. But I'm happy to say ours is running real well. But, we've been here before, remember...
Richard Hay: Now that's going to make it a very close finish indeed. Will that mean that you will get into that car to do the final stint in it – because I don't think you've driven it yet – or will Klaus Niedzwiedz get in it as the quickest driver in the team?
Moffat: No, definitely Klaus will go into it, and I doubt very much whether I would drive it, unless we saw the chequered flag in front of us.
Hay: How does that make you feel?
Moffat: I don't mind at all, because Klaus has worked very hard to get the car up to where it is, along with Frank Biela, and I haven't contributed today and I don’t really feel that it's necessary to get in and just do it now. However, if we have a very nice cushion and a lead and something does happen to Dick, I wouldn't say no to taking the last couple of laps.
Dick and his team manager Neal Lowe were seen pacing in their garage, coming out into pit lane for intense discussions about what to do, then stepping back inside again to discuss it some more. Bowe was on the radio telling them what he could as well, no doubt. The question of whether to lift the bonnet in the final stop and try and fix the problem, or just roll with it and hope for the best, would be enough to drive you mad: the maths had both cars arriving at the line side-by-side. Lap 132 saw the #10 make its final visit to the pits, Biela jumping out and Niedzwiedz hopping in for the run to the flag. The downside was that their 30-second gap was now back out to 40 seconds, but that wasn't too bad when the #17 had yet to make its final stop as well – and there was every chance the team would try to fix it, which could easily eat up more than those 40 seconds. There was still everything to race for.
And then, on lap 134, it all went away again. Out of nowhere we started to see a bit of smoke from Niedzwiedz under hard cornering, which turned out to be a tyre rubbing on the guard. The heavily-loaded right-rear had come loose in the exact same way as Peter Brock's earlier in the day; unlike Brock’s it only did it once, though, and didn’t damage the facing on its way off. Whether you could be grateful for small mercies was an open question, because it robbed Niedzwiedz of a huge amount of time just when he needed it most. Down Conrod the quietly intense German had to hang left to stay out of everyone's way, and had to sit and watch as a HSV Commodore roared past him in a straight line – impossible under normal conditions. He brought it back into the pits for repairs, where
the team swarmed over the car, one mechanic checking the right-rear tyre, another unclipping the bonnet to check if it was the engine. "Down here in the Moffat garage, they don’t actually know what the problem is," was Richard Hay's report as it was happening. Tyres were changed, and although the car was only standing still for some 22 seconds, it was enough to ruin their race.
Because while Niedzwiedz had been trickling down Conrod, Bowe had made a stop for tyres only. With all the breathing room they needed, the mechanics were able to turn the car around in their own time – without lifting the bonnet to fix the boost. Many a malfunction has come of fiddling, after all; the car was running well enough to get to the finish, they decided, and with the wheel trouble the Moffat car was no longer a serious threat. Bowe rejoined with Niedzwiedz only a few car lengths ahead, meaning from a minimum of 20 seconds or only a couple of laps ago, the gap was back out to nearly two-and-a-half minutes. Even Dick Johnson would have to be relieved about that.
John Brady: Well Dick, that certainly put a bit of a smile on your face. Things looking a bit better?
Dick Johnson: Mate I tell you, I'm not smiling until 161 laps come up, I can tell you. It's never over, really, 'til the fat lady sings, and I haven't even heard her crank up yet.
Brady: Fair enough, mate. Obviously a bit worrying is the boost problem in the #17 car?
Johnson: Yeah, I don't think it's going to be a problem, but certainly will be hoping it's not going to be, I can assure you.
Brady: Sitting here cooling your heels, I s'pose, is it hard to keep excitement down at this stage of the afternoon? Because it is getting down to that time of the year...
Johnson: I haven't been this close... I've been fairly close before, but not quite this close. I'm not sort of banking on anything until such time as it's all over.
Brady: Certainly have a much more philosophical attitude to it. I know you've worked hard at it this time, to try and settle down a bit?
Johnson: Yeah, we’ve tried to change a few things and it's worked for us so far. We've still got about another thirty-odd laps to go...
Oh well, it had been nice to have some tension for half an hour or so. On lap 146 Bowe pitted once more, for fuel only, and with a comfortable 2-minute cushion over Niedzwiedz the stop was calm and unflustered, Bowe standing still for only 20 seconds before being sent off. By now he'd backed off to doing 2:24.5's, compared to the 2:20s that had opened the race: just cruising, really.
The final lap was like the others, smooth and unhurried: it had to be, given how little power the #17 car had left. It had been a bruising race, a lot harder than it looked, but the final result was still the same: a comprehensive dismantling of the best in the world. The only debate by the end was whether Dick would permit himself a smile so close to the end, even though the chequered flag had yet to be unfurled; the answer was yes, the big man unable to keep a grin off his face once Bowe reached Reid Park for the final time.
Through McPhillamy Bowe had an arm out the window acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, and remarked: "The guys that were barracking for Brocky this morning and were booing us, they're even clapping." Fickleness of the crowd or good sportsmanship? You be the judge.
Down Conrod for the final time Bowe was virtually coasting, no need to push hard this late in the day. Through the Chase, the final chute at the bottom of the hill and then Murray's, Bowe strung the car along and held a hand up in triumph as he acknowledged the chequered flag. Dick Johnson and John Bowe had just won Bathurst together – for one their first, for the other their first at the full 1,000-kilometre distance. Although not a classic race, it had been a historic one: the #17 had not only led every lap, it had set a new race record of 6 hours, 30 minutes and 53.44 seconds – an average speed (including pit stops) of 153.54km/h.
John Brady: Well Dick Johnson, it took ages to put that smile on your face. Now I wonder if it's ever going to come off?
Dick Johnson: Actually it probably hasn’t sunk in yet. I'm sure it will very very shortly, over a couple of nice beers.
John Brady: The monkey's off your back, you always had to put up with not going the full distance. What's it feel like to get there?
Dick Johnson: Well, for those who reckoned we couldn't do it, we've done it.
John Brady: What about watching John go over the line? I know you’re close, was that hard though?
Dick Johnson: He's a fabulous partner, fantastic crew, we've got a really good crew, they've been tremendous all week, all year. And we've got a great bunch of sponsors, like, everything just went our way today. And I'm glad – it had to happen sooner or later!
John Brady: Mate, the Shell Sierras, you've stuck with them for so long when people said they wouldn't stay together. What's it mean now to do it?
Dick Johnson: Oh well you know, it certainly wasn't without a problem, but obviously we'll fix that problem and hopefully the cars'll be very very reliable in the future. And I want to say, a tremendous job done by Allam and Gravett, Robb Gravett and Jeff Allam, they did a tremendous job with the second car after a couple of little problems at the start. And I'm just glad that it's all over now.
John Brady: Lastly, there's one man who can hear you at the end of this, and it's John Bowe. Is there anything you'd like to say to him?
Dick Johnson: Good onya pal, you've done a great job and it's great to drive with you. You're certainly welcome on our team as long as you like.
John Bowe [from in-car]: Dicky, congratulations mate. This'll shut up the people who said you could never win a race that went the full distance, hey?
Mike Raymond [laughing]: Give him a break, JB!
John Bowe [from in-car]: The Johnson Jinx? There’s been nothing jinxed about this, has there? It's just gone like clockwork all day.
While Bowe was enjoying the win, Niedzwiedz was still coming down Conrod. He crossed the line to make it official, chalking up 2nd place, the only other car on the lead lap. That must’ve been a bitter pill for Rudi Eggenberger: even after the warning shot of Silverstone in '88, and the shock results in qualifying on Saturday, Rudi must've believed the 1,000 on Sunday would be his. He could not have anticipated that these uncouth colonials from a sun-parched hellscape would engineer a car capable of sprinting away from him for six hours, else he wouldn't have even got on the plane. Nothing's as bitter as humble pie: although Klaus Niedzwiedz would be back to drive for Allan Moffat again next year, Rudi himself would never return.
Behind the ANZ car, the two factory Nissans rolled across the finish line for a formation 3-4, one lap down. Tony Longhurst’s lone #20 B&H car was 5th, three laps down, while the #16 HSV Commodore of Perkins & Mezera was the first Holden home, also three laps down in 6th.
Hilariously, when they got to the podium the crowd swamping the track below was chanting “We want Dick! We want Dick!” – either too pissed-up to spot the double entendre, or too pissed-up to care. Dick stepped onto the podium with face glowing, the laurel wreath already enrounding him. There were no fine speeches today: Dick went straight to the champagne shower, although being a beer man he fumbled a bit getting the bottle open.
Garry Wilkinson: I don't know if we're gonna be able to make ourselves heard here, Dick. You've set a new race record, you've led every lap, you’ve won a full-distance Bathurst race.
Dick Johnson: I tell you what, John, Wilko, John [Bowe] did a fantastic job, all the guys did a fantastic job, Neal [Lowe]'s a tremendous manager, we've just had a great team together for a long time now. We've got great sponsors – thankyou Shell, and also thanks to Palmer's and Motorcraft and Dunlop who supplied us with tyres today, which were brilliant. Everything just went really well, and I'm very very pleased. Especially for old fur-face over here!
Wilkinson: John Bowe, what a day for you. Two-time Gold Star champion, a former Australian sports car champion, and now the winner of the James Hardie 1000? [sic – old habits die hard it seems!]
John Bowe: Fantastic, Wilko. It's the culmination of 18 months I've been driving and working with Dick, and it's just a tremendous feeling. He's a fantastic guy with a fantastic team, and we have fantastic sponsors, so what more could you ask for? I think it's only fitting for the boys that we got up and won.
Wilkinson: Dick, you must have been so tempted to get into the car for the last stint?
Johnson: Oh, well John's been the bridesmaid here as many times as I have, and I think he deserves the accolades every bit as much. It's just the way it panned out with the pit stops, but it doesn't really matter, it’s a joint venture and we came home. That's what matters.
As expected, when the 2nd-placed drivers and team owner mounted the podium the reception was rather less warm. Moffat of course was long used to boos and played his role as the bad guy of Bathurst, the black hat to Brock's white hat in the old Group C days. Today, though, it was probably because he'd brought along the hated foreigners to steal our race (again!). If he and Hansford had driven that car the reception might've been different, but with Niedzwiedz and Biela on the podium it could only have been boos. Having to deliver it in an acquired language, Klaus kept the concession speech short.
Niedzwiedz: We have another chance next year. I'm very happy to say here, thankyou very much for our sponsors, thankyou for Dunlop, thankyou for Esso, thankyou for my teammate and thankyou for Allan Moffat. He did a good job! I think he has one of the best teams, and we come back next year. And then I promise you, we will win!
Ignoring the booing, a careful Pan-Am smile plastered on his face, Moffat stepped forward and followed Johnson & Bowe's lead in flinging his hat into the crowd. He gave the expected congratulations to the winners, then sodded off back to the motorhome to begin planning his 1990 campaign.
The #52 John Cotter/Peter Doulman BMW M3 won Class 2, 16th outright with 142 laps on the board, a fantastic result for a plain white car with almost no sponsorship. Doulman was a Sydney-based engineer but a Bathurst local by birth, while Cotter was a Parramatta solicitor; both were Great Race rookies. They emerged onto the podium looking every bit the louche Australian hobbyists, very smart in matching Bridgestone-liveried race suits, but each with one hand in a pocket and the other wrapped around a can of Tooheys!
Garry Wilkinson: John briefly, if you can hear yourself think, you guys came here pretty much unheralded, pretty much unsponsored. But you had a great run, the others fell by the wayside and you survived to the finish to win the class. A great effort.
John Cotter: That's right. All the work was done by our volunteer crew, and was done at Doulman Automotive workshop at Lidcombe, at Peter's workshop. We really need to thank our Bridgestone tyres, and Bradley Smash Repairs who prepared the paintwork on the car.
Wilkinson: Peter Doulman, Bathurst boy made good?
Peter Doulman: Yeah, looks like it. Maybe we'll win next year!
The Class 3 winner had finished right behind them in 17th – the #33 Corolla FX-GT of Mike Dowson & Neal Bates. Both had been unearthed by the "Toyota Star Search" programme, Dowson having formerly been a motorcycle racer, while Bates had been brought in straight from karts. Braving the boos and cries of "We want Dick!", Dowson stepped up to the mike and appealed, "I'm not Dick Johnson but I'm a Queenslander!"
But there was no holding the crowd back. It's difficult to overstate how important this one was over in the DJR garage, and among the man's legion of fans. Many of them, remember, had mailed in their own money to reboot his career after the rock in 1980. The ties between Johnson and his fans went very deep, and he'd just repaid their faith the most comprehensive way possible, in the only race that mattered. Never again would anyone doubt Dick Johnson's Bathurst credentials. As the sun set on Sunday, 1 October, only three cars had ever led every lap of Bathurst, pit stops included: Allan Moffat's Phase II Falcon in 1970; the A9X Torana of Peter Brock and Jim Richards in 1979; and now Johnson & Bowe's Ford Sierra RS500 in 1989. Even in one of the best-funded, best-crewed race teams in the country, days like this didn't come along very often. As Dick himself said for his foreword to The Great Race:
To win so dominantly was very satisfying. It had been years since anyone led every single lap of Bathurst, and on the occasions it'd been done before there was not anywhere near the level of opposition we had to overcome.
