15 July: Bringing It Home

So it all came down to this. Eight races in five states had served to separate the title contenders by just a handful of points, meaning it would be decided in a final fifty minutes run flat-out around a twisting 2.6km circuit just outside Sydney. The ATCC Grand Finale was here, and it was good.

A Stroll in the Park

Do you miss Oran Park? Yeah, trick question, the only possible reason you don't miss it is if you don't remember it. Until I sat down and opened Blogger to write this entry I didn't realise I'd set myself up for heartache. I got in the habit of starting each blog with an embed of the track in question, and didn't realise I couldn't do that this time until I opened Google Maps and, oh yeah, remembered that "Oran Park" refers to a suburb now, not a circuit.

A crying shame, it was such a brilliant little track. It was a figure-eight, for starters – how many of those can you name off the top of your head? But even with that in mind, a flat map gives you no clue how tricky it was, every corner with its little quirks, none of them quite as they appeared. The sharp right-hander after passing beneath the bridge, for example, always seemed to jump up and mug you. The sharp right-hander after the bridge, on the other hand, was much tighter than it looked, and coming in hot and having a bit of a panic was pretty much standard practice in your first untimed session after a year away. But it was all worth it when you got to that down-and-up final corner, where you hooked it hard left leaning on the turn's intense camber, balancing the wheelspin against how close you were to scraping the concrete wall...

It was three-dimensional, in other words, all laid out in the contours of the hills, which also meant the spectator could see the entire race from any of the good viewing spots trackside. Which was any of them, really: there were no bad spots at Oran Park. If you want to follow along, you can find a good map here. Just be sure to have it set to the full "Grand Prix" circuit, and the year to 1985-98, otherwise you won't have the corner names I've used.

Source

The Clutch

The return to the civilised states brought with it a huge jump in grid size, the 18 cars seen at Wanneroo becoming 37 here in Sydney, of which 35 were to start the race. The really unfortunate two were AMSCAR stalwart Gerald Kay in the #24 Jagparts Walky...

...and, believe it or not, Tommy Suharto, youngest son of then-Indonesian "president" Suharto. The 27-year-old Tommy was an amateur racer and general all-round scoundrel, and he would eventually be convicted of murder after commissioning a hit on the judge who tried him for corruption. At Oran Park, both he and Gerald Kay are listed as "DNQ (accident in practice)", so I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that they were both taken out in the same accident, and that one of them was more to blame than the other. One wonders how happy Larry Perkins was to have him as a customer this weekend, but money is money, and you can't always choose who you take it from.

Another on the grid was our friend Maurie Pickering, meaning I finally got a picture of his VK Commodore in action:

Score.

Showdown for The Big Four

In truth, though, none of these back-of-the-grid types were really here to race; they were just continuing their preparations for Bathurst. The real thing was going on at the sharp end of the grid, where the matter of the Australian Touring Car Championship was due to be sorted out between Peter Brock, Colin Bond, Dick Johnson and Jim Richards. Brock and Bond's chances however were strictly mathematical, dependent on complex permutations that hinged on winning the race while Richards failed to finish. Given he'd been the only driver to score in every round this year, didn't seem especially likely, so in reality the 1990 championship was between the pair who'd each won the championship under Group A rules twice before – Johnson in the Sierra, and Richards in the Nissan. With a 5-point differential from 1st to 2nd and only a 3-point gap on the championship table, the situation couldn't have been simpler: whoever won the race would win the title.

Suspicious quotation marks...

To his credit, Nissan team boss Fred Gibson started off by announcing they weren't going to be playing the percentages this weekend: Gibson Motorsport and Nissan were here to win the race, and if they won the title in the process, well, that would just be the icing on the cake. For Dick Johnson, similarly, there had been no distractions ahead of this weekend – no jetting off to the States for a NASCAR jaunt – meaning there'd be no excuses for underperforming this time. He too was here to win.

Qualifying split the field to a greater degree than we'd seen all year, with one second covering only the top four, rather than the top ten or so. Jim Richards left no doubt as to his intentions by taking pole with a time of 1:11.04, closely hounded by Peter Brock with a 1:11.12. Those were the only two on the pace, as 3rd on the grid went to Dick with a 1:11.92 – eight-tenths of a second slower. No-one else was in the 1:11s. It's unlikely Johnson was panicking just yet, having doubtless fitted the hardest Dunlop tyres he could get his hands on, with an eye to maximising speed across the entire race distance rather than a single lap. Between the heat, the GT-R's great weight and the sheer fact that it was still an unproven new car, he probably felt that he was still in with a chance. And on paper, he was right.

Some other speed brackets, take them or leave them: Win Percy, fastest of the Holdens, was 10th with a 1:13.24. Peter Doulman, fastest in Class B, was 21st with a 1:16.15 in his BMW M3. And the fastest of Class C was the consummate professional John Faulkner, whose Toyota Corolla FX-GT had zipped around the tarmac in 1:19.16, to be 28th overall. That didn't just put him at the head of a gaggle of seven Corollas – the Toyotas having pushed out the Nissan Silvias and Isuzu Geminis to make the class their own – but also two places ahead of Pickering in the big, rumbling, 5.0-litre V8 Commodore. No wonder he gave it away soon after!

Sunday Funday

Race day once again dawned unseasonably hot: on the TV commentary team, Allan Moffat mentioned that this was the second-hottest race they'd seen all year, remarkable when this was supposed to be the literal middle of winter. Nobody seemed to mind, though: the broadcast claimed there were between 32 and 35,000 people trackside that afternoon, their biggest attendance since the legendary title showdown of 1972. The grandstands probably wouldn't have been so jam-packed were it a chilly winter's day, and the extra heat also would've meant a steady flow of traffic to the Food Bar for refreshments, which the promoters wouldn't have minded at all.

Green flag! From the front row, Brocky broke traction and turned his Bridgestones into grey smoke getting off the line. Red Sierras, blue Sierras and yellow Sierras all scrambled to get past him, but in front, Jim Richards converted his engine power directly into traction and bolted away like he'd been shot out of a cannon. One moment he was there, the next he wasn't! And that, would you believe, was the race: Richards was never headed again. I said the Wanneroo round had held more tension than action, but Oran Park wouldn't deliver much of either: by the crude "YouTube-video-and-smartphone-stopwatch" method, Richo had a 0.6-second gap by the first corner. The car behind was Tony Longhurst, with no skin in the championship but hungry for a win to placate his sponsors; 3rd was John Bowe, then Alan Jones in the other Benson & Hedges car, and only then championship rival Dick Johnson. The hapless Peter Brock trailed them all, having lost all those places just getting off the starting line. By the end of the lap, Richards was – no, really – 1.2 seconds in the lead!

Jim Richards was back, baby. The hesitancy that had characterised his driving at Wanneroo was utterly gone; this was a man once more at peace with his machinery, driving it like it was meant to be driven: stick the nose into the corner, push the beetle-crusher hard against the firewall, and hang on for dear life; when the back end started to slide, resist the urge to adjust the wheel too much and instead wait for the four-wheel drive system to induce some understeer. My first thought when I watched the race was, "Ooh, looks like someone's been practising", and that hunch was confirmed after the race when Richards mentioned Skaife and the team had been testing that week. They didn't say where, but Oran Park was open for business as a test venue if you had the cash, and Freddie was no fool. The combination of Oran Park and the GT-R could've been pretty nasty if they hadn't given Richards time to get his head around it.

If Nissan had shelled out for a test session at Oran Park, then it was money well spent: by the end of lap 2, Richards' gap was up to 3.5 seconds. After that it was hard to measure, because he wasn't in frame anymore; he was just gone. With Richards literally out of the picture, the cameras had to look elsewhere for interest, and found some in a scrap between Brock and Johnson – old rivals reliving past glories, but over 5th place rather than the lead... and they both had to keep an eye in the mirrors, as Glenn Seton was on the move and catching them both. Spurred on, Brocky dug deep and pulled alongside Dick coming out of Bitupave Corner, getting the move done as they both braked across the Goodyear Bridge. With that, it was Brock 5th, Johnson 6th. Peter Perfect had found his pace again, and set off after the race lead.

Brock had also picked up a new sponsor in Brunswick toolmakers Sidchrome, which at least makes dating the photos easier. Sidchrome would sell out to Stanley the following year, and then move all production to Taiwan in 1996. We've lost so, so much manufacturing in the last few decades...

Catching him was going to be a tall order though. Neil Crompton was able to report that Richo had a 4-second gap only five-and-a-half minutes in (I can expand on that by reporting it was up to 5.7 by the end of that lap!). "An enormous gap," said an admiring Moffat. "That's not what you call any life-threatening situation, there. Jim can virtually command this race to his heart's content at this stage. Dick is definitely not a threat."

Which raised a good point, where the hell was Johnson? The cameras were following the trio of Longhurst, Bowe and Jones (a fun scrap, but meaningless in championship terms), and Brock was only just catching them up, which highlighted the question of how badly he'd been held up behind the #17 – and by extension, how slowly the #17 was actually going. Something had gone vastly wrong with DJR's calculations for the race for Dick to be so far behind so soon.

At around this time the retirements started. The race was one of reasonably high attrition, with almost a third of the starters due to end up on the DNF list, but for some reason most of them came in the first third of the race. Geoffrey Full was the first green bottle to fall, seen parked against the wall on the outside of the final Recaro Corner, with just three of the Corolla's rather slow laps on its scoresheet (credit where it's due though, a couple of hundred more metres and it would've been four). Only minutes later (but on lap 12 because the Playscape Sierra was rather faster), Kevin Waldock headed to the pits with what turned out to be a blown head gasket. He joined Brian Callaghan's son, Brian Callaghan, whose VK Commodore had dropped out with a broken crankshaft, and crowd favourite Steve Reed, whose Lansvale Smash Repairs VL had likewise given up the ghost with a ruined piston.

By lap 14 Richards was 18 seconds up the road from Tony Longhurst, which was about as far as the gap would ever stretch – apparently 18 seconds was enough. "It’s like an Ayrton Senna performance!" gasped a stunned Mike Raymond, who was probably having a minor heart attack wondering how he was going to make the rest of this broadcast exciting. He needn't have worried too much: just as they were pointing that out, Peter Brock put in a masterful out-braking manoeuvre on Tony Longhurst into the treacherous Volvo Corner, the middle turn of the figure-eight triad. It was a risky place to pass given the braking zone always seemed to sneak up on you and you were heading straight towards a disconcertingly close tyre barrier, but Brock had no time to hang about. He made the pass neatly and made it stick, meaning it was now 18 seconds from Richards to Brock.

In stark contrast, Dick Johnson was going backwards. The return from the first commercial break (on lap 12) had come back to onboard imagery of Dick fighting to keep Glenn Seton in his mirrors. At almost the same moment Brock had taken himself to P2, Seton finally got the move done, taking the racing line off Dick on the way into Bitupave Corner. Surely that was it, then. If Johnson was being relegated to 7th place already, then the Yokohamas were good today and the Bridgestones bloody excellent, but the Dunlops on Dick's car just weren't up to the job. Surely that was his title hopes gone.

The TV pictures then showed Garry Willmington's red Toyota Supra post-spin and leaking steam, but the next listed DNF was actually Larry Perkins, thanks to an accident. Larry had been running 10th, putting him ahead of the rival car of Win Percy for once, but that wouldn't be the way they finished today. He ended the race with only 15 laps to his credit, although it took quite a while for the commentators to notice – a sign of how memorable a mere Commodore was this year.

A quick interview with Fred Gibson in the pits revealed what a gift Nissan had been handed.

I can't believe how slow everyone's going. We're now doing 14s and 15s, I thought the race would be running 13s and 12s. So, Jimmy's just pacing himself at present. Hopefully the car'll keep going the distance so we can win our first Australian Touring Car Championship!

"A very confident Freddie Gibson," observed Raymond, only for Moffat to caution: "I don’t think he's too confident until he sees that chequered flag, Michael. This is a business where you can't afford to count your chickens before they've hatched." In other words, there was absolutely no reason to think the GT-R would last 50 minutes unscathed, although the shocking lack of pace from the rest of the field was surely a beacon of hope. Crompo jumped in to confirm those observations about the laptimes.

Neil Crompton: Really interested, Allan, with the times that they're doing. I noticed before on the stopwatch that they were lurking back into relatively slow times, particularly compared to their qualifying performance. And, again, that's probably got something to do with the temperature of the day and people maybe choosing a tyre that's just not hard enough to cope with the conditions?

Allan Moffat: Well I think we've got to realise that they've got the benefit of all the other races behind them, and they know just how hard they've pushed them for the 50 minutes in all the other rounds. And here we are today with the hottest day of the season, practically, apart from perhaps the opener at Amaroo earlier in the year, and I think they are driving according to what they think will get them a finish. No-one wants to come in and have a tyre change in a race like this.

He just had to say it... Another ad break and Dick Johnson was coming under threat from Colin Bond, but that duel never came as Dick’s onboard RaceCam, pointed squarely at the Caltex Sierra, showed it abruptly whip past on the pit straight like a special effect from Close Encounters. Dick had dived into the pits, a tyre change an absolute necessity and all thoughts of defending his title utterly banished from his mind.

Tony Longhurst meanwhile had dramas of his own, having seemingly cocked up Bitupave Corner and now facing the wrong way with his rear bumper hanging loose. He too headed for the pits to have it removed and a fresh rubber fitted, all hopes of glory now lost for him too. Whatever he'd done to upset the racing gods this year must have been pretty severe, because he'd been demonstrating pace every weekend (some of it, admittedly, by the soft-rubber trick), but just couldn't catch a break in the races.

As if to ram that point home, on lap 23 the commentators told us that Glenn Seton was having a problem, but the cameras actually showed us Alan Jones having a problem. The #20 B&H Sierra was revealed to be stopped on the grass inside Winfield Corner, the bonnet up, but nobody leaning inside to get it running again. The culprit was apparently an electrical gremlin, which could've meant absolutely anything. Having run a quality team that year, Moffat took a moment to give Longhurst some on-air respect (though of course he choked at using the actual word...).

Running two cars is a tough job for any team, Michael. I've got, uh... I won't say... I've got sympathies for that, that can happen... To run one well is a tough job, to run two is not twice one, it's three times the effort. Credit to Tony Longhurst and Benson & Hedges, they've fielded a two-car team throughout the series, they've been up there all season long. They haven't had a win, but [they are] genuine, real, gentlemen competitors, and appreciated by the sport.

Only a lap later (on lap 24), Glenn Seton dropped out with temperatures climbing out of control, his trip to the pits a lap prior having fixed nothing. On the same lap we also lost the Foodtown Commodore of local hero Terry Finnigan, to falling oil pressure, but only the diehards in the grandstands would've noticed, as he was surely well down the order by then.

At 33 minutes done, the leader had covered 26 laps, and the gap was a whopping 20.9 seconds by my count (if you're wondering, the darker patches of tarmac before the final corner form a handy improvised speed trap). If that gap was now stable rather than growing by leaps and bounds, that was more because Richards was into cruise-and-collect mode than because his rivals had found another gear. Peter Brock was still a lonely 2nd, with all that empty space between himself and Richards and another substantial 16-second gap back to John Bowe, who had an easy 3rd place now the B&H cars had dropped out. 4th was Colin Bond, 5th was George Fury, and behind him – once again, first of the Holdens now Perkins was out of the event – was Win Percy in the HRT Commodore. With the action having worked itself out and nothing much happening on-track, Mike Raymond turned to the man he could always count on to fill some dead air – Dick Johnson.

Raymond: I said last night I was getting set for a Queensland trifecta, the Broncos, the Brissie Bullets and Dick Johnson. You’ve let me down, pal?

Johnson: Oh mate, the race is not over yet.

Raymond: Good on ya! You think I was safer having the money on you than the Brisbane Bears?

Johnson: Oh you wouldn't believe, mate, the things that can go wrong when you're not wanting to...

Raymond: Tell us about it, Janet Dick?

Johnson: Well, my drink bottle had an enema inside the car here, and it created fumes because I use some gunk in the bottle that nearly blinded me. Then Brock got past me, would you believe – unfortunately! – and that thing of his, I nearly choked to death on Mobil 1. It looks like the last train to Ferny Grove!

Raymond: [laughing] Great to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour!

Johnson: Oh, what's the use, mate? You die if you lose that.

Some quick Googling reveals the Brisbane Broncos did indeed overcome the Wests Magpies in the NRL (or NSW Rugby League, as it was then), the Friday before this race. In contrast the Brisbane Bears, in what was then the VFL, had lost their previous match against the Richmond Tigers on 6 July (though they were due to play the Fitzroy Lions that very afternoon, and take a win). Exactly who the Bullets played that weekend in the Australian NBL I haven’t been able to find out, which isn’t surprising when basketball is a minor sport that doesn’t attract the obsessive record-keeping of the footy codes. Given it was only mid-year, though, it’s likely all were only minor matches still building up to quarter- or elimination-finals or whatever they had, not grand finals like we were having at Oran Park today. And in any case...

By this stage Colin Bond was inching up onto John Bowe's bumper, and the commentators correctly deduced that he "had intentions" on 3rd place. Unfortunately, we had a trademark Channel Seven ad break while the pass actually took place, so we only got to see it as a replay. Even as a replay though, it was proper touring car biffo: driving defensively, Bowe had stayed in the middle of the track as he charged through the fast Pepsi kink. Aiming to make use of the draft he'd caught down the straight, Colin Bond stayed close to him, but as it turned out, it was too close. Braking hard for Winfield Corner, Bowe had seen Bondy coming and moved over to cover his line; already committed to the braking zone, Bondy couldn't stop any harder or get out of the way, and he caught the left-rear corner of the Shell Sierra and pitched it into a spin. Colin had to slow to a crawl and copped a nose-tap on the way through. Both cars continued, but Bowe was now trailing a rear bumper in a mirror-image of what had befallen Tony Longhurst earlier in the race.

Who was at fault is a matter for debate. "Slightly unsporting manoeuvre," was Moffat's assessment, referring to Bond, before adding: "Running close is one thing, tapping people at that speed is another." Mike Raymond countered with a more modern viewpoint, that Bowe's moving over in the braking zone was a no-no and he should've expected a hit for his trouble. But that wasn't actually a rule yet in 1990, so chalk this one up to "boys will be boys". Right or wrong, Bond's passing attempt had moved him from 4th place up to... uh, 5th, thanks to George Fury nipping through while both he and Bowe were stationary (the footage doesn't actually show the pass, but you could see him coming in the background).

By lap 38, in a moment loaded with significance, Richards even came up to lap the man currently running in 8th – his own teammate Mark Skaife. That meant he'd been averaging 2 seconds a lap faster than Skaife, so if there were any lingering doubts that the HR31 was past it, now was the time to banish them. That said, given the stakes this weekend Moffat commented that, "All they would've done to that car all weekend is change the oil," and it was hard to argue he was wrong.

The chequered flag came out shortly after, catching everyone by surprise, including the commentary team apparently, who hadn't done anything to build up the moment. Richards crossed the finish line having completed 41 laps in just under 51 minutes, chalking up the win and so put the matter of the 1990 Shell Australian Touring Car Championship beyond all doubt. There could be no finer way to seal the deal than with a Grand Chelem – he'd started from pole, led every lap and won the race, taking the fastest lap (1:11.715) along the way. 2nd place went to Brock, while the podium was completed by the wily George Fury – only slightly embarrassing the Nissan company, who that very week had released him from his Nissan contract so he could go drive for Glenn Seton!

The podium ceremony that followed was short and sweet:

Richards: It was a matter of just getting a bit of a lead at the start when the tyres and brakes were very good, and then sort of cruising along at the finish with what tyres and brakes I had left.

Raymond: Everyone believed Peter Brock might win the start and make life difficult, but you ran off into the distance. You weren’t supposed to do that I don't think?

Richards: Well Brocky owes me ten bucks already, 'cos he had a bet with me last night – and I haven't forgotten it! – ten dollars to whoever's first to the first corner. So I thought I had a pretty good bet going there.

Raymond: You obviously had no problems at all throughout the race?

Richards: No I didn't, no. I pressed on pretty hard at the start and of course that didn’t leave me with much rubber and that left towards the end. But the object was to win, and it didn’t matter by how much.

As good as his word, Brock held up a $10 note and then handed it to Jimmy, settling the bet in front of the whole country. Even that was a moment of nostalgia for some of us – when was the last time you handled a paper banknote?!

In the final accounting, Richards ended the season with a gross 106 points, of which 102 counted toward his final position. A late surge on his new Bridgestones had seen Peter Brock climb to 2nd with 85, ahead of the hapless Johnson on 83, and Bond on 82. Ever after, Johnson remained stoic when talking about it, but it seems the lost sixth championship really stung.

I was still in contention but we had those tyre problems and that is what won Jim the championship. It should have been No.6 but Jim passed me down the straight which tells you how much wick it [the GT-R] had. It could have been but it didn’t, so that’s it. – Dick Johnson, Dick Johnson Racing: 30-Year Anniversary

Win Percy and the Holden Racing Team, on the other hand, were jubilant. Their results had been pretty ordinary in outright terms, but that was a reflection on the suitability of the car rather than the team or driver. They'd earned just one podium, at Lakeside, and finished 8th in the championship, with 32 points, but that was a solid effort for a team that hadn't even existed in January. "The sprint series was just really as good as we could have done," said Percy. "We ended up top Holden starting from scratch up against people who had been engineering Holdens for years. I was pretty pleased with it." But the ATCC was just a shakedown for the all-important enduro season anyway. "Bathurst was always what it was all about. We had to do the championship just to show we were serious about motor racing in Australia."

As for racing on foreign tracks on the wrong side of the world, Win never put up any excuses. In 1984 he'd been driving for Tom Walkinshaw’s Jaguar ETCC team, and, well...

I went to places I'd never heard of, like Brno. In practice I'd say to Tom, "Can I have a bit more time in the car, get used to the track?" He'd look at me and he'd growl, "Winston, if you don't know the place in three laps, you're no use to me." He expected you to learn any track in three laps, and then sit down and tell him what you thought about each corner. And to be honest, if you put your mind to it you could do it. – Win Percy, Motor Sport, Aug 2013

But the big smiles were all over at Nissan, and no wonder: they'd been chasing this title for a long time. They'd almost won it with George Fury in their first full season in 1983, but boss hog Howard Marsden had withdrawn the team before the finale for reasons known only to himself, leaving the title to Moffat and Mazda. They'd almost been there again with Glenn Seton and the DR30 in 1987, until Richards himself had punted him in the M3 and claimed the title for himself. It was deeply ironic, then, that Nissan would at last claim the title with the very driver who'd denied them last time, at that very circuit, but such is motor racing sometimes. Ever the class act, Richo said:

First I would like just to thank Nissan and Fred Gibson for supplying me such a great little car to drive. We've had a great year, and although I've won the championship twice before, this is the best. I had a hand in them not winning it a couple of years ago, so it was fitting that I win it for them.

Another point that's only really been raised in the last few years is the role of the humble HR31 in all of this. To a certain kind of fan this marks the start of the Dark Days, of 4WD Nissan domination, but two of Jimmy's three wins and 72 of his 102 points had actually been earned in the previous, 2WD car. If that's not enough for you, consider this: the car Jimmy drove in those races – Gibson's final HR31, built as a new car at the start of that year – is now owned by Jimmy personally. Not Gibson Motorsport, not Nissan Australia, not a collector like the Bowdens, the man himself. That says it all, and when asked Fred won't hesitate to give the car the credit it deserves.

The main thing to remember is that HR31 was never a race car like the Sierra RS500 and the BMW M3, so my instructions to my drivers were that you've got to drive the cars like you hate them; do whatever you have to do to go fast. That's why our guys drove the wheels off them and were quite brutal with them. They never had the power of the Sierras, so they had to attack every race lap like a qualifying lap.

Having said that, the HR31 did have consistent handling, good brakes, good tyre life and whatever you started with you finished with, whereas the Sierras would tend to fall away because they had so much grunt their rear tyres would start to melt after a few laps.

The HR31 won Richo the championship, without a doubt. The GT-R wrapped up the title at the final round and got all the glory, but the HR31 did all the hard work getting there. – Fred Gibson, Mark Oastler's Nissan Skyline HR31 GTS-R: The unsung hero of Nissan’s first ATCC victory, Shannons Club

But as Neil Crompton wisely pointed out, this race had been ideal, almost laboratory-controlled conditions for Nissan, a race with absolutely no pressure where Jimmy'd been able to run the car precisely as he wished. As Moffat had pointed out, Brock had been the only one with the pace to take it to Richards this weekend, the Nissan having done a 1:11.0 in the morning warm-up, the Sierra an 11.1. Where all that speed had gone was anyone’s guess, but the afternoon heat and ongoing tyre war doubtless had something to do with it. Whatever the truth, the GT-R had come into the weekend never having been pushed hard for a whole race without something breaking, and after Oran Park, that was still true. The real test was coming up, as the touring car scene took its usual six-week break to rest and prepare for the traditional season of endurance.

Appendix A: The Future of the Group
An intriguing detail from the latter stages of the race was the announcement that Group A would remain the Australian touring car formula at least until the end of 1992. CAMS president John Large got on camera and said:

It gives me a great deal of personal satisfaction to announce that CAMS has made a decision to extend the existing Group A touring car championship rules to the end of 1992. We actually made this decision in principle earlier this year, but it was necessary to wait until I'd been to Paris to the World Motor Sport Council meeting in June, to find out what the FISA situation was. As it turns out there's no clarity of thought at FISA level so CAMS has decided to take the initiative on the basis that we are, after all, the world leaders in touring car championship racing. We've taken the initiative, and we've announced this decision now so as to give our own teams in Australia the security of knowledge that their investment's good for further periods.

A lot to unpack there, very little of it surprising. The approaching end of Group A? Well, the World Touring Car Championship had folded after its single season, the European championship had followed it only a year later, and now the British were transitioning to a new rulebook all their own, while the Germans and Japanese were disappearing up their respective garden paths with their own unique spin on the rules. The cracks in Group A were unmistakeably widening, and Australia could've been facing a similar situation as Formula 5000 at the end of the 1970s – the last holdout of a once-glorious series. So it wasn't really surprising that CAMS were seeking clarity on the future of the rulebook, and equally unsurprising that they weren't finding it – this was the tail end of the Balestre era, after all.

But the self-important waffling and doublethink of "taking the initiative" by putting off a decision another year? Yep, that was our CAMS. To be honest, being trigger-shy about doing away with Group A was really the responsible thing to do, given they'd sprung the formula on the teams midway through 1984 and forced them to do away with $100,000 racecars virtually overnight. To do it again with $500,000 racecars would have been tragedy repeating as farce. The most interesting part is hearing the commentators agree that this was a good thing, given it assured Nissan at least two full seasons for the GT-R (and Holden likewise for their next-gen Commodore). From this side of history, knowing how all this would all turn out, with a virtual revolt by the teams egged on by Mike Raymond and Channel Seven, it all comes across as rather peculiar. But that's the joy of geeking out on history...