Gearing Up

I wish I could do more on Sandown. It always seems like the orphaned race of the season, purely because there aren't many full Sandown 500s on YouTube. It's the limitations of technology less than the limitations of yours truly; I'm not prepared to rifle through some of the dodgier corners of the internet looking for the right kind of footage the way I used to. There's a site offering to burn DVDs of certain races, for a fee ("Just to cover the cost of the disc and postage"), but it's so old I have to do a double-take to be sure it's not on the Wayback Machine. God only knows if the owner of that particular site still checks their email.

There is the above video, which is literally someone's home video of a walk through the pits that weekend, but otherwise there's not a lot of detail on the 1990 Sandown 500. I can tell you this year it was just the Sandown 500, as it hadn't been able to attract a title sponsor – the race orphaned by the money as much as the cameras, it seems. A bit of a shame, as it was also the first round of a revived Australian Endurance Championship, which was to be held over a trifecta of long-distance races encompassing the traditional Robin/Batman pairing of Sandown & Bathurst, with a third race to be held in November at a brand-new venue in western Sydney. I will be covering that one in detail, I promise: I have the DVD right here ready to go.

So, what can I say about Sandown? Relatively thin 26-car entry list, which sounds respectable until you realise most of them were privateers. Glenn Seton and the Holden Racing Team, two of the biggest pro teams in the country, only entered one car each: Seton with a single Peter Jackson Sierra, the #35, for himself and George Fury, while the embattled Win Percy had to make a showing at Holden's home race with practically zero budget, as the team was busy building a second car for Bathurst. That might've explained the #16 Walkinshaw's pairing of Percy himself together with Neil Crompton, who was going to be there for the Formula Holden support race and might even have been driving for free, his salary a chance to keep his name visible. Larry Perkins meanwhile was sharing his usual #11 Walky with Tomas Mezera, while Allan Moffat had his #9 ANZ Sierra entered for Gregg Hansford and star Eggenberger driver Klaus Niedzwiedz, although both these outfits were typically one-car operations anyway.

They still showed more commitment than some, however: Gibson Motorsport and Tony Longhurst's team stayed away entirely.

The exceptions to the trend were Dick Johnson Racing, Peter Brock's Mobil 1 team, and Toyota Team Australia. Johnson had his usual #17 Shell Sierra for himself and John Bowe, with the #18 in the hands of upcoming Bathurst pairing Jeff Allam & Paul Radisich. Brocky was sharing his #05 Mobil Sierra with Andrew Miedecke, with the sister #6 to be handled by David "Skippy" Parsons & Charlie O'Brien. But the works Toyota squad were the real MVPs, bringing along three whole cars: their #15 Supra Turbo in the outright class for consummate professionals John Smith & Drew Price; a #71 Corolla FX-GT hatchback for John Faulkner & Neal Bates in the small-car class; and a newer AE92 Corolla for Paul Stokell & Peter McKay entered with the #70 on its doors, also in the tiddler class. The likelihood of the new and unsorted AE92 actually finishing the race was hinted at by the fact that it wasn't being handled by the team's full-timers.

That was pretty much it. Apart from these eleven entries, the rest of the grid was made up of part-timers, hobbyists and dreamers, most of them in small-class cars or Commodores. The lack of a naming-rights sponsor meant a shortage of starting and prize money, it seems.

And they suffered a horrendous attrition rate. Only 11 cars were classified at the end, with another (the Alexander Rotary Engines eight-six of Phil Alexander & Keith McCulloch) excluded for not completing enough laps; all the rest were DNFs. Johnson led early on but then lost a gearbox bearing on lap 19; the sister car hit similar trouble on lap 61, sidelining the whole DJR effort. Moffat's ageing ANZ Sierra broke an axle on lap 112. Perkins & Mezera crashed out on lap 152. Brock's #05 was crippled early in the day after the front suspension strut fell out. As he often did in those days, Peter then took advantage of the cross-entry rules to commandeer the #6 instead, and drove a marathon double-stint to finish a hard-fought 2nd outright. The #05, meanwhile, lost a huge amount of time being repaired and slogged along to finish ten laps down... despite which, such was the attrition rate, it was still classified 4th overall. 5th went to Smith & Price in the works Supra, in what was likely the car's best-ever result, on a day when outright pace meant less than just keeping going.

All that left the road clear for young Glenn Seton, who took his first win as a team owner, for an outfit that would one day be depriving the best in the business of championships. Even better, his co-driver that day was George Fury, who showed once and for all that age shall not weary the truly great: there probably wasn't a larger age discrepancy on the grid that year unless the Gulsons came back for another round!

Despite all that, the car to watch was the one that landed in the kitty litter on lap 31, the #16 HRT Walky of Percy & Crompton. A solid qualifying effort that had netted them 4th on the grid had been wasted when they had a brake failure entering Turn 1. The problem was traced to a new wheel that was supposedly an inch wider than previously allowed, and since this was part of Group A's sliding scale of engine capacities, this makes me wonder whether CAMS had adjusted the rules to give the Commodores a better chance. Regardless, the extra grip from the car's Dunlop tyres distorted the front wheel bearings to the point that the brake discs were rubbing on the pads, boiling away the brake fluid and leaving Percy with no way to stop the car. "It exaggerated any movement of the hub and it gave pad knock like you wouldn't believe," Win tells us. "It caught us out."

But as was often the case, failure at Sandown taught a valuable lesson heading into Bathurst...