My shortest post commemorating F1's shortest race: your ultimate avoiding-the-family mix for the Christmas/New Year break.
Hush Puppies Olympic Group A Challenge, Race 1 Pt.1
Race 1 Pt.2
Adelaide GP, Race Day Broadcast Pt.1:
Pt.3 (incl. Group A Touring Cars Race 2):
Pt.4:
If anyone has Part 2, please get in touch.
(Yes, the actual race was on YouTube at the time of posting, but I didn't link to it because I don't want to get it copyrighted. FOM lawyers = scary, yo?)
The first half of the 1991 Tooheys 1000 had seen the top runners all playing a long game. For five hundred kilometres, Dick Johnson had been carefully Scrooging his fuel and tyres, positioning himself for a run in the final stint of the day. For five hundred kilometres, Win Percy had been doing the opposite, bringing the noise in a desperate attempt to go fast enough to be within reach for that final stint of the day. And for five hundred kilometres, the Moffat and Seton teams had simply been running their cars as they were – Moffat because in the Cenovis Sierra he had an Eggenberger car capable of winning the Spa 24 Hours outright, never mind Bathurst; and Seton because he'd realised the Sierra was as good as it was ever going to be, and any further fiddling now would only ruin it.
In short they'd all been competing, as it were, to stack the deck, ready for the final stages. But the second half of the race would see the house of cards they'd all built together come crashing down – in some cases, literally at the last minute.
The Dominoes Continue to Fall
On lap 81 – for the leaders, at least – the #12 Valvoline Sierra driven by John English & Tony Scott (brother of Gary) was seen sitting beside the road at the exit of The Cutting, which arguably would've brought out a Pace Car had the Principalities & Powers been less gun-shy. Then the Lansvale VN could be seen smoking its way across the top of the Mountain, the right-rear tyre rubbing on the guard. That, and the the odd twitch as the car rounded the corners, suggested something fundamental had broken, a suspicion that was confirmed when we caught a view of a wheel that was sticking out too far and at a weird angle. It was heart-in-mouth stuff as it trickled through Forrest's Elbow and headed down Conrod, a mobile roadblock waiting for someone to come in at full bore without paying attention...
Exacerbating the Lintott team's woes, the Valvoline Sierra was then revealed to be buried in the kitty litter at the entry to pit lane. The replay showed they'd been too aggressive entering the pits, losing the rear end and flinging it over the ripple strips and into the bunker. Whoever was currently at the controls tried to reverse it back out, but they only dug the rear wheels in deeper – you could actually see the back of the car drop as the sand flew. They were only a couple of metres from tarmac and freedom, but no dice: it took a solid effort from the trackside marshals before the car was extricated. They'd been running 12th at the time, which was a very good run for a privateer car, but that mistake would've cost them some time. Worse, the impact with the sand seemed to've damaged the radiator – there was a trickle of green coolant coming from under the car as it sat in its pit box. This would be a long stop, but ultimately they would get the car going again and actually go on to finish, albeit 40 laps down.
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| Source |
At the front however the #1 Nissan continued to circulate like Swiss public transport, its 90th lap taking 2 minutes and 17.28 seconds – which, roughly translated, meant its pace had not slackened one iota. The sheer relentless monotony of it was starting to get to the Brock and Holden fans at the top of the Mountain, as they were were now booing every time it came past. The latest from the speed trap on Conrod revealed Richards was now the fastest at 287km/h, with Seton only barely behind on 286, and Bowe third-fastest with 283 – not a bad effort in a car that was supposed to be saving fuel. Meanwhile Terry Shiel, in the second of the DJR team's cars, pitted on lap 84 to hand over to Paul Radisich: thanks to swapping out the brake pads the stop dragged on for 44 lifetime-spanning seconds, but that was nevertheless quick work for a brake change. Having come in 5th, Radisich rejoined the race in 7th, but sadly was would be back just six laps later, having a quick chat with manager Neal Lowe through the driver's side window. The bonnet was then lifted as the mechanics started got to work fixing the problem, a broken turbo actuator. Fixing that would take four interminable minutes.
In the meantime, a weary Andrew Miedecke finally brought the Mobil 05 Commodore into pit lane, alighting and handing it back to Brocky. This car had already lost so much time it hardly mattered anymore, but it was nice to see the King of the Mountain wasn't done with his day yet. Then on lap 91 the #2 Nissan pitted, Garry Walden stepping out after a fuss-free stint – an achievement in itself given the car's history today. With a pad change front and rear the GT-R was stationary for 48 seconds, but still rejoined without really losing any places – it came in 16th and departed in 16th, seven laps behind its race-leading sister
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| Brock & Miedecke on their way to a 10th-place finish, nothing to sneeze at given what they'd been through. |
A lap later, Jim Richards pitted in the #1 Nissan. There was a slight difficulty in getting the right-front wheel off, but that was the only hiccough in this pit stop. Mark Skaife got behind the wheel while the brake pads were changed, although with such a huge lead the team could afford to take their time to do it right, so they did. The stop not exactly chilled out, but it was deliberately slow and relaxed by race standards, taking a full 55 seconds to complete. But so what? They came in 1st and rejoined still 1st, and so Mark Skaife began his final stint at the wheel of the winning car.
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| Unstoppable. |
Case in point, two laps later Win Percy pitted from 3rd place, handing the works Commodore over to Grice in another lightning 27-second stop – partly explainable by the team not changing the brake pads this time. Gricey rejoined 4th, but the stop officially made the leading Nissan the only car on the lead lap. That meant the only car left that could seriously consider putting pressure on them was the red one with the Shell logo and the number 17 on the side, and a very hot and bothered Queenslander behind the wheel. He shortly got a phone call from the Channel Seven commentary team.
Mike Raymond: I said in the intro, you're killing them?
Dick Johnson: Oh, I dunno about that. The ol' brake pedal's a bit on the mushy side. I've lost the goddamn drink tube so I'm as dry as the handle on a wooden spoon. That's why I sound funny, mate, all me mouth's sticking together. The engine though's going fine, Mike... Other than that the car's good. The tyres are hanging in there.
Raymond: That must give you some heart after a pretty wretched season in the touring car championship. You found all that consistency on one day.
Johnson: Well, we had so much drama in the lead up to this race, you wouldn't believe. Thank heavens we found what the problem was prior to the race, prior to qualifying, because it was a fairly serious sort of a problem. As you know, electrical, we had interference in our computer that was blowing engines for us, which is not a nice thought. … So, other than that we've had a pretty good run. The car feels really good other than that, the tyres are hanging in quite well, and all in all it's just a matter of being able to stroke these brakes a little bit. And when we stop we'll put some pads in.
Elsewhere, the race was still throwing up endless micro-dramas. On lap 105, Graeme Crosby pitted Colin Bond's #8 Caltex Sierra for a routine stop, except for all the tape needed to hold together the right-hand front bumper. A replay showed Croz had lost the rear end coming over the rise after The Cutting and clouted the wall, first with the rear, then with the nose, hence the emergency rhinoplasty. And meanwhile Neil Crompton's #7 HRT Commodore had stopped just the far side of The Cutting, this time permanently as the car was being rolled out of the way by the marshals. The car had made it as high as 12th place, which was pretty good given the problems it'd encountered early in the race, but now it was officially retired with 100 laps done. No doubt in a foul mood, Crompo was a tad sarcastic with the commentators, but given four out of five of his work days lately had been spent alongside them rather than in a car, he could afford to be a bit familiar with them.
Mike Raymond: Not much noise coming out of the #7, Neil?
Neil Crompton: No, this is the new environmentally-friendly Holden Commodore that doesn't make any noise. Or pollution.
Raymond: What happened, son?
Crompton: We're out of gas. Very high-tech problem. Switched the reserve [tank] on as we came up pit straight, that was the first indication of the car coughing, and she only made it to The Cutting. … Obviously it was unfortunate to get tangled up with the Gricey thing, but that's showbiz. The car settled down quite nicely once again and I drove quite hard, as hard as I dared, given that it's had an additional wheel alignment thanks to me and Brad. We were able to hang in there with Dick and split up Dick and Winny. Anyway, next year. We'll do a better job.
At this stage there was still hope for HRT, as the the #16 car of Grice was still running 4th, with Hansford 3rd and Johnson 2nd, albeit with Skaife still leading convincingly. In fact, Gricey soon moved up to 3rd, as Hansford's Sierra sounded flat coming over the hill on lap 106. The #30 Peter Jackson entry had some sort of engine problem – not enough to be properly visible, but more than enough to cripple their run.
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| HRT's lead car before its mid-race panelbeating. |
By lap 114 John Bowe was standing by with his gear on, indicating another stop was imminent for the #17. At the end of that lap Dick Johnson pulled up in his pit box, which was two laps ahead of schedule – the team had now worked out that they'd need a final 10-litre splash 'n' dash near the end to get to the finish – the tank they were currently refilling just wouldn't quite get them home. The brakes were getting ever spongier as well, but since the problem was hydraulic rather than with the pads, they had little choice but to soldier on. Bowe was aware of all of this as they put him back in the car, and it couldn't have helped his confidence to see a brief puff of smoke from the air vents in the cabin as the car took off on its penultimate stint. An old hand by now, Bowe just cruised over the top of the Mountain on his outlap, with no urgency whatsoever, a deliberate choice to manage the car rather than evidence of a problem. In the meantime, there was the big Dick himself, who was confronted by John Brady in the pits:
John Brady: Dick, spongy brake pedal causing you some trouble?
Dick Johnson: Spongy's not the word. I dunno what's going on, the brakes are a little bit mushy, you can still press on though. I think the biggest problem is the engine's getting a little bit tired, seems to be getting a bit fume-y inside the cab. So, we'll just have to stroke the thing along and see how we go.
Brady: Word is it's going a little slow around the Mountain at the moment, is that part of nursing it along?
Johnson: That's just part 'n' parcel of trying to get the thing home.
A lap later Bowe's pace was back, so Johnson wasn't just putting on a brave face, but all the same it was inadequate. Bowe was now lapping in the 2:24 range, which was well off the pace for this stage of the race – the leading GT-R continued to punch out 2:18s. Then it emerged the race hadn't quite finished with poor Neil Crompton. Come lap 120 Crompo was back in the cockpit of Elvis, but he wasn't going anywhere just yet.
Mike Raymond: I believe you've been busy in the last couple of minutes?
Neil Crompton: I've had a bit of a sprint down to the bottom. Caught a utility, caught a chopper, got some fuel, caught a chopper again, caught another utility and had a sprint back up the hill. But now someone's unfolded a rulebook and they say I'll be charged if drive out onto the circuit. All I really wanted to do, Mike, was put the car back down at the bottom in the pit lane, but they've dusted off rule number four thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven that says you can't do that. What I wouldn't mind doing is have our blokes double check and see what the story is for that.
Raymond: Okay, we'll follow that up through the Clerk of the Course, Allan Horsley, who is running our race centre here. We'll be onto that to see why you can't.
Crompton: All I want to do is put the car back down the bottom, that's all, 'cos there'll be nothing left of it after 4 o'clock up here if you leave it here...
Later the commentators spoke to HRT manager Wally Storey, who confirmed:
The problem was, everybody was in a flap, everybody's getting pretty keen to get the car back down here, not realising... nobody gave it a thought that you're not allowed to replenish [fuel] out of the pits. The thing we're concerned about is after the race, somebody's going to jump the fence and start pilfering this thing, which is worth just a little bit more than two shillings! … The mistake we made really was I didn't go up and talk to Tim [Schenken] and explain my situation, so we've made a pretty bad error there. Anyway, we can't go back on that now.
Yeah, much as we love those Smokey Yunick-type cons, they do breed suspicion in the higher-ups and sometimes that comes back to bite you. Apart from the fear of opening a loophole that would allow refuelling outside pit lane (which in turn could allow the cars to be refuelled with anything), Schenken and Horsley were probably also weighing up whether HRT would send the car back out, "just to give the sponsors exposure", which risked them colliding with an innocent party and ending their race as well. Either way, HRT stood to lose a lot of money, and this being 1991 that was of primary concern. It remained to be seen whether race control would allow Elvis to leave the building before the bogans on the hill could souvenir him.
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| Especially when he'd looked so good at the start of the day. |
Paper Trail
It was at this point – lap 121, some five hours into the race – that Mike Raymond dropped a bombshell. "Only a short while ago", he said, GM-H and Ford Australia had issued a joint statement concerning the touring car regulations for the upcoming years. This was long overdue. CAMS had been expected to announce the touring car rules months ago, but for various reasons were dragging their feet, which had serious implications for the people with money at stake.
Ford and GMHA are concerned that no clear regulations for touring car racing for 1992 and 1993 have yet been announced by CAMS.
The two companies have sighted draft regulations for 1993 only in the past 48 hours and will now seek further clarification of the proposed rules as well as those applying to 1992.
Both companies have been working closely with CAMS for many months to assist the drafting of the regulations involving locally manufactured, volume-selling V8-engined cars. The draft regulations relating to 2.0-litre and 2.5-litre cars however are too poorly defined for GMHA and Ford to establish a position on participation.
The regulations were due to be announced by the end of July and now more than two months later no clear rules are available to provide teams, sponsors and other interested parties with the guidelines necessary to make decisions for the 1992 and 1993 touring car racing seasons. ...
Failing the release of regulations by [Monday, 21 October 1991] recognising the importance of maintaining the competitiveness of interested local manufacturers, Ford and GMHA will look to other forms of motorsport to present interesting and close racing between popular, market-relevant cars.
Basically, Ford and Holden were united in calling on CAMS to man up and just pull the trigger already. What was the hold up? Basically, CAMS still felt an international approach was right for Australia, so they were waiting for the higher-ups at FISA – the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, the sporting branch of the FIA, of which CAMS was a member – to firm up their global touring car agenda. The U.K.'s 2.0-litre "Super Touring" formula was looking pretty successful thus far, as was Germany's 2.5-litre DTM ruleset, so they just needed confirmation from FISA that one or the other would be the new global touring car regs for the '90s. Sure, Ford and Holden might want a series exclusively for their V8 family sedans, but CAMS were sure they could ease everyone toward a compromise – namely, extra weight penalties for the V8s to bring them back in line with the Super Tourers.
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| BTCC '91: John Cleland's Vauxhall Cavalier could easily have taken a Holden badge: here it is battling Steve Soper's BMW M3 instead. |
Since this would leave them explaining why their fire-breathing Falcodores were no faster than a miserable 2.0-litre Eurobox, neither Broadmeadows nor the Bend could accept this, and this was the current sticking point between the manufacturers and CAMS: an equivalence formula versus class racing. Some guidance from FISA could've made the difference on this point, but during these crucial months FISA had been distracted by a presidential election. It wasn't until October that the French buffoon Jean-Marie Balestre – FISA's president since its inception in 1978 – had been ousted in favour of the British lawyer (and future Nazi-themed gangbanger), Max Mosley. Mosley's main concern was Formula 1, however, so touring cars were not high on his to-do list. It would be quite some time before the new guy finished taking a broom to the nooks and crannies of FISA and started making his presence felt.
All these things had added up to a lot of foot-dragging, and so Ford and Holden united to publish a joint statement to light a fire under CAMS' backside and get the process going already. CAMS fired back an hour or so later by sending one of their own – possibly a John Keefe, it's hard to hear – up to the commentary box to whisper in Mike Raymond's ear. If it was meant as a piece of damage control it was less than successful, however, as the mental image created was of an outraged, befuddled old man. He claimed the rules hadn't been finalised because the most recent discussion
paper sent out hadn't yet seen a full response from the
teams, and then he added that there was no chance of resurrecting the World Touring Car Championship, "under the current president of FIM" [sic: he meant the FIA], although there was to be an election for that post next Friday, so that might change. "Mike Mosley" was going to challenge Balestre for the presidency of the FIA as well, not just FISA, so all was still in flux. Of course he meant Max Mosley, not Mike, but the interesting thing was the admission, unasked-for, that bringing back the WTCC was still on CAMS' mind.
The joint statement wouldn't strictly matter – the 21 October deadline would come and go unmarked by either side – but it does make for some fascinating alternative scenarios. Just imagine if Ford and Holden really had "looked to other forms of motorsport" to promote their products instead of the traditional touring cars? Group E Production Cars were perhaps the most obvious alternative – returning Bathurst to its roots would've displeased few – but the other big candidate was surely Bob Jane's Thunderdome...
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| Reminder that Falcon and Commodore body styles for NASCAR already existed. |
There was some consolation that, in the meantime, the embattled #19 Shell Sierra had finally come to a stop permanently. After running all day with a misfire of its own, the 19 finally put itself out of its misery by throwing a tailshaft. That by itself would've ended the car's day, but the act was so violent that the rear floor was dented and the driver was lucky to dodge fragments – one of which cut the battery cable, stopping the car dead. "The best weirdo we've heard all day," said Mike Raymond, as the car finally registered a DNF with 90 laps completed.
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| Even the Lusty/Sala Tyrepower Sierra was doing better than that. |
John Brady: John, what's happened? It doesn't look good.
John Bowe: Well, I was on three-and-a-half cylinders when I went out of the pits. Then it came good so I turned the boost down as low as it would go, and then it started to smoke, so it's obviously sprung an oil leak somewhere. It's run out of oil.
Brady: You obviously lost power at the start, but it looked like it was starting to come good. How nervous were you when you were testing it out then?
Bowe: Yeah, I really don't know. I was just trying to nurse it along, but I really didn't know what was wrong with it. Then the smoke got worse. So I don't really know, but it's obviously dumped its oil and then the oil pressure light came on at the top of the Mountain. When it does that, it starves the turbo so it's obviously the death rattle.
Things weren't much better for Glenn Seton, who'd not even made it out of the pits in his own Peter Jackson Sierra. Bowe had very nearly clipped the blue Ford on his way in, which was then being energetically pushed backwards to its pit box at the GSR team. After yet more attention from the mechanics, including his father Bo, Glenn fired it up and rejoined with a roar, the #30 suddenly sounding just fine... but only briefly, as the misfire was back within half a lap. By lap 127 Seton had fallen behind Charlie O'Brien in the #10 Cenovis Sierra, and although he was still able to drive hard, the misfire was making horrible crackling noises and robbing the car of crucial power, and therefore speed.
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| To everyone else, this car was having a surprisingly good day. To Allan Moffat, it was just another disappointment. |
Cameron Williams: Glenn you're looking very whimsically at your car there. It's been a very disappointing day for you?
Glenn Seton: Yeah, it's fairly disappointing, but it just keeps missing as soon as you put the throttle down. It's just losing so much time, and you just can't drive it, really, so... I really thought we were going to do well today. I s'pose I've got to wait 'til next year.
With the race now approaching its sixth hour, were came upon the endgame, the Crucial Lap: around lap 130 (depending on the car), we were close enough to get to the finish on just one more fuel load. With that starting to weigh on the team managers' minds, we had the closest to a Pace Car intervention of the entire race: Race Control suddenly asked Channel Seven for an aerial shot of the #77 Bob Holden Motors Corolla, which had lost a wheel on the run down to Forrest's Elbow (what was it with losing wheels today?!). The live TV footage showed the little red and white Toyota propped against the wall on the left-hand side, and apparently that was good enough for the people in charge: the Great Race would run uninterrupted, even if it meant drivers Geoff Forshaw and Richard Vorst ended their day with a DNF after 96 laps. But with all the strategies beginning to come into play, it was an extra stress the teams just didn't need.
The casualty list continued to grow. On lap 131 the Strathfield Car Radios Walkinshaw of Graham Moore and Michel Delcourt was back in the garage with a blown gearbox, although they expected to be back on track soon – nothing seemed able to kill this car permanently. Garry Willmington, however, had called it a day with his third ruined gearbox of the weekend: they'd changed boxes in just one hour in the early stages of the race, but with their third and final box now ruined, they had no choice but to park it. They'd completed just 56 laps. Then the Moffat team's backup car, the #9 of Steve Millen, succumbed to the Commentator's Curse when, just when the commentary team were talking about how both Moffat cars had been in the top ten all day, the second Cenovis Sierra was seen climbing to The Cutting with a full-on L.A. smog trailing from its pipes. The turbo had competed 128 laps and then let go, game over.
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| Willmington's Supra had averaged fewer than 19 laps per gearbox. Still, it was a shame there weren't more Toyotas in the main class. |
It was quite strange, really, because technically it shouldn't really have happened and I don't really know why. We've got a very straightforward system in terms of our fuel pumps and reserve pumps, and I double-checked with our senior engine man before I went out, the way that the configuration of the pumps should've been, and switched them exactly as they should've been as I pulled out of the pit lane. And, I was trying to work out in my mind how many laps I'd done, because I thought at the time the stint was going a fairly long way, and the car gave a cough just underneath the Bridgestone bridge [sic: did he mean Dunlop?] over the back here. [I] flicked on the reserve, and I knew straight away there was a problem because it didn't recover, it really started to hesitate. And I was trying to figure out ways of bounding across the sand to try and get back into the pit entrance and of course that's impossible, so I just had to grin and bear it. And it staggered all the way up to The Cutting, and there it died.
On lap 134, Tony Longhurst made his final pit stop and handed the yellow BMW over to Alan Jones: they remained in 5th place throughout. In 4th ahead of them was Brancatelli in the #10 Cenovis Sierra, only 16 seconds behind Mark Gibbs in the GIO GT-R. With Johnson out, 2nd place was now held by Allan Grice in the lead HRT Commodore, but he also soon pitted and handed the car back to Win Percy in another astonishing 23-second stop from the HRT boys. Percy was back in the seat for the final run to the flag, but they were still a whole lap behind Jim Richards in the leading GT-R, who was still cruising relentlessly to victory.
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| They mightn't have won the cheque from Prima Holidays, but HRT were the pit stop kings when it mattered. |
Nothing would go faster than that until well into the V8 era, and for good reason: all the speed came at a price, and this time it wasn't Drew. On lap 143, Skaife pitted the #2 Nissan and got out of the driver’s seat, and nobody got in. A nasty oil slick under the rear pointed to something major having gone wrong with the rear diff. The mechanics shuffled a pan under there as they got to work, all in a hurry as if they might be able to fix it, but eventually they pushed the car back into the garage for yet another DNF. In hindsight, this car's story today had been of one problem leading to another: that mysterious vibration after the first pit stop was probably what had shaken the air pipe loose later in the day, losing the car so much time that they had to drive it faster than was really wise. If nothing else, the #2 ending its day with just 135 laps on the board threw Skaife & Richards' efforts in the #1 into sharp relief: they'd been driving well within the car's capabilities not because they necessarily wanted to, but because they had to.
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| Longhurst at his first stop, when the guard was all that needed fixing. |
Alan Jones: Well it wasn't missing a beat. All the temperatures and pressures were absolutely perfect. I think it must be electrics, because it just stopped dead. Just lost everything. I've coasted back in to the pits, and I think that's [it] for the day. But it's disappointing, because it was just running like clockwork, as usual.
John Brady: So obviously there's no chance of changing some electrics, computers, or anything like that?
Jones: Well there may be, but I think there's only 25 laps to go, so it might be a bit optimistic.
Brady: Okay, Alan, well go and have a shower. Bad luck.
Jones: I'll go and have a Foster's.
Which if nothing else was a brave thing to say at the Tooheys 1000! Fortunately, although their lead car was now out of the race, the Longhurst team continued to lead the Goldilocks Class thanks to the sister car of Fitzgerald & Hulme (and for what it was worth, Geoff Full & Paul Morris continued to lead the Corolla class). On lap 153 there was a heart-in-mouth moment as Fitzgerald had something explode under the car coming out of the Elbow, with a rather dramatic flare of orange flames and white smoke, but it didn't seem to slow the car down at all, and it kept turning laps...
On lap 146, Dave Barrow failed to make the turn at the Elbow and clouted the wall hard, hard enough to lift all four of the #44 Queensland Plastics Sierra's wheels clear off the ground: that ended the car's day with just 93 laps completed. Rubbing in salt for the Brian Bolwell team, about the same time, their #43 car failed to make the turn at McPhillamy Park, understeering off into the sandpit... and it's entirely possible Bolwell himself was at the wheel at the time. The other Queensland Plastics Sierra was also out, with a slightly more respectable 113 laps to its credit.
At the end of the lap, Jim Richards pitted for his final stop in the lead GT-R, this time for fuel only: a quick splash 'n' dash just to get it to the line. With their other car now sidelined the jitters were surely setting in over at Gibson Motorsport, which the crashes at the top of the Mountain couldn't have helped: a Pace Car intervention now was a complication they just didn't need. Richards had been stroking the car along all day, of course, but by now he was surely hearing every squeak and rattle...
As was Terry Finnigan in the the #27 Foodtown Commodore, which on lap 153 started blowing a lot of smoke; Finnigan pitted and the bonnet was raised to check and maybe rectify, but this close to the end it was of course sent back out to limp around until the flag came out. Clearly the car had issues, but they were less than terminal this late in the day.
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| Another absolutely beautiful livery, and from a privateer too. |
Heartbreakingly, on lap 159 of 161, the final Dick Johnson Sierra came into pit lane almost completely silently, needing a push to make it all the way into the lane. A crew of marshals gave it the urge it needed to get in, soon aided by an onrush of DJR crew who took over and pushed it the rest of the way. The Shiel/Radisich car had been a strong 5th, but now it was out of the race with a broken piston, the chequered flag virtually within sight. And at the same time, here at the last, one of the GT-Rs finally started showing the strain... not the leading car, but the GIO customer machine, which was now following Seton's lead in coughing and spluttering with a misfire.
We had a throttle sensor fault. It might have been 30 laps from the end; the car just didn't run smoothly for the rest of the race. – Bob Forbes, AMC #96
Like Finnigan, however, the team elected to limp it to the finish: with a whole lap over the Brancatelli Sierra in 4th, a podium finish was virtually guaranteed no matter how slow they were.
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| Now looking a lot better than it sounded. |
There were no misfires in the #1, of course – it still sounded crisp and clear. Fred Gibson was even seen breaking into a smile. When the Last Lap board came out, Peter Doulman's BMW was found resting at the side of the road just after Hell Corner, half jutting out onto the track. No finish for the '89 class winners this year, with only 133 laps, but crucially no Pace Car intervention either. Over the top of the Mountain the crowd at last showed some sporting decorum, finally giving Richards a cheer as he coasted around his final lap. Down the hill and through the final corners Richards wound the GT-R, completing the 1,000th and last kilometre as he accepted the chequered flag – in a car that looked like it had just rolled off the trailer.
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| The main difference between lap 1 and 161? Dead bugs. |
Fred Gibson: Thanks Cameron, thanks very much. Been a long time here. Best we could come here and do was win the race, hopefully today we were gonna do it and we have done that. So I feel pretty happy for the team, they've done a super job the last week, we haven't had many troubles. I feel a bit disappointed with the second car not finishing, but one home is good [enough to] win it.
Cameron Williams: That's dead true. Tell me, how did you feel over those last half-a-dozen laps? Anything could go wrong, look at the GIO car.
Gibson: Yeah, the thing is, I've been here for a long time now Cameron, watching these things, and you don't win the race [until] the chequered flag comes out. And this poor old Bobby Forbes there has the car splutters on the last lap so hopefully it comes around for one more lap for him. But that's motor racing, so thankfully they'd've won it anyway.
Williams: Next year it's going to be tight with changes to regulations?
Gibson: We've just got to try and work a bit harder, haven't we pal? That's what we've gotta try and do. We worked hard this year Everyone said the car wouldn't do a thousand kays, but it's done it easy.
Indeed, as they were talking the GIO car sputtered its way across the line to chalk up 3rd place outright. So the provisional results showed Richards & Skaife had won in the #1 Nissan GT-R, with Percy & Grice 2nd in the HRT Commodore, with Gibbs & Onslow completing the podium in the GIO GT-R. Brancatelli & O'Brien were home 4th in the Moffat team's Cenovis Sierra, with Fitzgerald & Hulme 5th (and 1st in class) in the surviving Benson & Hedges BMW. It was nice to see Denny Hulme bow out a winner at Bathurst, because as we now know, he'd never finish another... Class C meanwhile had been won by Geoff Full & Paul Morris in the Speedtech Corolla, the start of a beautiful relationship between Morris and the Mountain.
To The Victor, No Spoils
This race was the signature achievement of the Nissan Motor Company in Australia. They'd been chasing this trophy for a long, long time: think back to the early days of the Bluebird Turbo programme, when they'd had a car that could barely string two laps together; George Fury's pole lap for the ages in 1984, which had not been converted into victory; Gary Scott's equally sensational 1986 pole lap in the DR30, which had likewise seen victory slip slip away; the character-building years of the HR31 as the Sierras raked in silverware by the job lot, including a hard-won 3-4 finish in 1989; and of course last year's shock loss as the GT-R wilted under the strain of racing the Lion in the hands of Percy & Grice. It could not be said that Nissan hadn't paid their dues, nor that they didn't deserve this one, given the immense work it had taken to make the GT-R a winner. As Peter Brock himself had pointed out in a post-race interview, "It's a very technical car, so there's a lot to go wrong." And indeed, two of the three GT-Rs in the race had been beset with mechanical difficulties; that the third one hadn't was testament to a team that had spared no effort in the preparation, and two drivers with a deep understanding for how much it could take.
But the Bathurst formula for success would fail Nissan. "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" might've been a cliche even then, but the fact remained that the Great Race had been the dominant sales event of the year for decades. Even in the 90's, with cars that seemed to drift further from their production counterparts by the month, a win at Bathurst provided an image boost and general goodwill for the company that translated directly into an uplift in showroom traffic. A Nissan win at Bathurst was supposed to mean more Pulsars, Patrols and Pintaras would leave the dealerships than ever before.
Not this time. Nissan had sold nearly 58,000 vehicles in 1990, but in 1991, with the recession biting, that number had dropped to only 36,000 – and this victory would not be enough to arrest the slump. As far as the crowd beneath the podium was concerned, winning Bathurst with a GT-R was pretty much the same thing as cheating – it was, "a sports car, not a touring car", remember – and what's worse, the company behind it was Japanese. Firsthand memories of the Pacific War lingered on in 1991, and Australia still had not forgiven Imperial Japan: all these things came together to mutate the buzz of Nissan's achievement into toxic bile.
Together with their gold medal at Sandown, bronze here at Bathurst made Mark Gibbs & Rohan Onslow Australian Endurance Champions for 1991, a worthy achievement in its own right. But when they mounted the podium to accept the 3rd-place laurels, shockingly, they got nothing but boos. This was unprecedented in a country that was supposed to be renowned for its sportsmanship, but when sportsmanship and parochialism met, it seems, one of them had to lose out. Thankfully the crowd wasn't dangerous or out of control, but the mood was clearly darkening, and ugly. One banner in the crowd proclaimed, "Ban Turbo's" (sic), while plenty of others were chanting: "WE WANT GRICEY! WE WANT GRICEY!" Sure enough, when Grice & Percy went up to accept the runner-up honours, they got nothing but cheers. Said Grice: "The motor car was as good as it was last year, [but] the other thing was a bit quick. The Datsun was too good today."
In my mind we virtually won Bathurst the second year. Against the well-driven "Godzilla", you were never going to win Bathurst. The Nissan was a rocket. They had time to develop it. We beat everybody else in cars like the Sierras that had been developed for many years. We were the best-placed "normal" car, which made us pretty happy. – Win Percy, Holden Racing Team: 20th Anniversary
Percy later revealed he might even have been able to overturn the results and claim a second straight victory, had he only been willing to engage the more litigious tactics favoured by his boss...
The Nissans had a brake cooling problem and they'd opened up the grille to duct extra air to the brakes, which was totally illegal, but I decided not to protest. I'd made so many good friends in Australia, and I didn't want to have that hanging over me. We would have won it, no question. It took me a long time to confess that to Tom, and he really bawled me out for it, of course. – Win Percy, Motor Sport, Aug 2013
So when they mounted the rostrum to accept the most coveted trophy in Australia, Richards & Skaife likewise got booed, and Gentleman Jim was left delivering the victory speech over more booing and the return of the chant for. "GRICE-Y! GRICE-Y!"
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Which was ironic, when one of the first to come down pit lane to shake Skaife's hand had been Grice himself, in full costume – Akubra on, overalls pulled down to show off his Foster's shirt, the whole bit – a symbolic changing of the guard if ever there was one. Godzilla had come, and had laid all to waste, but in the process left the landscape poisoned and bitter. Had events taken a different course, the response to this worthy victory might've been remembered as the low point for Nissan Australia... but of course the events of 1991 would be cast into the shade by those of 1992...
When we won Bathurst together for the first time it was special to me for a number of reasons. I had three wins with Brocky, but it was really his team and I was just a driver that come in a couple of times a year. I didn't feel much like part of a team; in the four years I was with them I didn’t spend much time there at all – just go up to Bathurst and win, but it felt like most of the drivers in pit lane could have done that.
In 1989 Mark and I finished on the podium, and with that car it was a great feeling. But in 1991 when we won the race, it felt more like I was part of something than I did with Brock. Winning it with Mark was even better, this was our third year together and we had built such a strong relationship even though I was the same age as his father. There was no big-headedness or ego involved, we just wanted to get our car as fast as we could and we both drove it as hard as we could.
Mark always wanted to change things. I just had to be honest with how I thought it felt. I had no idea what they changed or what they did, but Mark was great with that which meant we were perfect for each other. We drove as a team; if I couldn't win I would do all I could to help him win. If I was good enough, I'd beat him and if he was good enough he'd beat me and we felt that was the only way to move forward as a team. When we were together in the same car, it was different obviously, and I would have driven with him forever at Bathurst. – Jim Richards, Mark Skaife: The Autobiography
They say history never repeats itself, but it does sometimes rhyme. 1991 marked the twentieth anniversary of Allan Moffat's era-defining 1971 Bathurst victory aboard the mighty XY Falcon GT-HO Phase III. On that day, as recently outlined by Australian Muscle Car, Moffat's fastest lap had come on his second time around: such was his car advantage that there was no need to push it ever again. He spent the rest of the day lapping up to six seconds off the Phase III's true pace, and even then he still left all the Chargers and Toranas of his rivals far, far behind. It was a day that cemented Allan's place as the Ford Hero, and his Phase III Falcon as the Godfather, the greatest, the most prized and sought-after muscle car in Australia.
History was about to rhyme, but it would not repeat. For where the Godfather had emerged the most beloved car in the country, Godzilla would only emerge the most loathed...
The First Sunday in October
Race day dawned bright and clear, nothing but blue sky from horizon to horizon. The forecast was for a warm day, around 25 degrees, which wasn't bakingly hot unless you were facing the prospect of six hours in the airless kiln of a racecar. The turbo on the RS500, for example, was running at 500 degrees less than a foot away from the driver's left ankle, just the other side of the front firewall...
Procedings got underway with the usual pre-race razzamatazz. The marching band this year were the Golden Kangaroos, and although they'd apparently performed all over the world, their caper involved scantily-clad girls with some painfully '80s hairdos and wall-to-wall spandex (the '90s caught on only slowly, it seems). They pitched in with our old friends, the 2nd Military District band, when it came time for the national anthem, which this year was sung by country artist James Blundell. He would soon be known for the minor hit Way Out West, and for being your mum's favourite crumpet at the time (equal first with Gary Sweet off Police Rescue).
Bob Forbes' staggering $650,000 investment in the GT-R had been somewhat offset by prize money from the AMSCAR series and Sandown. He got another handy cash injection when the GIO Nissan won Dulux Autocolour's Best-Presented Car award this year, stealing it away after a couple of years sitting on Dick Johnson's shelf in Brisbane. There might've been a bit of grumbling at yet more laurels being heaped upon the GT-R, but there could be no doubt this one was well-deserved – the GIO car looked positively sumptuous.
And the beauty was more than skin-deep, too. Forbes had opted for six-pot brake callipers in place of the works team's four, aiming at maximum stopping power to bring the 1.6-tonne beast to a halt at the bottom of Conrod. The trade off was that the Forbes team couldn't compete with the quick teams when it came to the pit stop competition. There was another $10,000 on offer this year thanks to new sponsor Prima Holidays, so this year the contest was done as a knockout rather than against the clock, all done on the pit straight where the Prima Holidays signage was most conspicuous. Despite concerns about burning out clutches before the race, the money tempted quite a few major teams: Dick Johnson and Colin Bond went first, pulling up in the zone, quickly changing tyres and then launching again to cross the finish line, a brisk affair that went Johnson's way (partly because Dick was using the #19 car and could afford to risk a full-bore start). Percy vs Longhurst went to Longhurst (also using a teammate's car rather than his own), setting up a finale between the Queensland rivals. The Johnson-versus-Longhurst grudge match went Longhurst's way in a pit blitz that saw the Johnson mechanics fumble.
Green Flag to a Bull
As if to drive home that Bathurst is a race of attrition, the Mountain killed off two cars before they could even join the starting grid. The Bob Holden team's #76 Corolla blew a head gasket in the Sunday morning warm-up, and the #32 GIO Commodore went out in sympathy for it on the warm-up lap before the race – meaning it technically started the race, but completed zero laps. Bob Forbes had brought it along to give a start to Sports Sedan racer Bob Tindal, whose Alcair air conditioning business probably hadn't seen the revenue to mount a campaign of his own this year. The next-fastest car in the stable was the VN that'd had such a short career earlier in the year, so it only made sense to bring it along and, just maybe, have it ready as a backup in case the GT-R couldn't go the distance. That the supposedly-reliable Aussie V8 had failed so early in proceedings highlighted that everything was being done on a shoestring this year, and cutting corners came with consequences. This was not going to be a bloodless race.
All 35 starters took their assigned places on the grid, selected first gear, revved their engines in accordance with their level of nervous tension, waiting for the command to go. Yet when the lights went green there was substantially less urgency than in years past, as everyone knew there was no point racing the GT-Rs in the opening stint. If there was to be any chance for the other marques to steal a win, it would come from running a race of endurance, and that meant being a bit sensible through the opening laps.
All except Mark Gibbs, that is, who alone made the trademark GT-R rocket start: he shot off the line like a cannonball and departed into a substantial early lead. From pole, however, Jim Richards was a bit more circumspect: although he hadn't qualified the car, he'd been given the first stint and trickled it off the line so slowly that he lost a place to a lightning-starting John Bowe, who streaked ahead of both Richards and Glenn Seton to be 2nd into the first turn. As they slunk up Mountain Straight for the first time the leader was Gibbs, pulling out a major gap over Bowe, who by contrast was only barely ahead of Richards. Richards had Dick Johnson right behind him, then Peter Brock in the first of the Holdens, followed by Drew Price in the second works Nissan, then Win Percy in the works Commodore. Thus began the fastest Bathurst anyone had ever seen.
There was very little jockeying for position on the first run up the Mountain, as everyone seemingly had their mind on the long game. In a weird blend of the old and new, Channel Seven had placed that wide-angle fisheye lens at The Cutting to show the drivers hooking it through all the way from entry to exit... even though the oldschool 4:3 aspect ratio of TV at the time didn't allow them to show it! Through the first lap everyone was well-behaved, and so under braking for Murray's Corner, Richards defied the weight of his GT-R and smoothly pulled up on the inside of Bowe to assume 2nd place as they finished the opening lap.
Richo spent his second lap catching back up to Gibbs, who'd pulled out quite a gap. When Gentleman Jim pulled alongside on his third lap, on the long climb up Mountain Straight, Gibbs of course made no effort to defend and surrendered the place graciously. Richards now led the Great Race, and excluding some early pit stops the #1 GT-R would never be out of P1 again. Neither would it ever come under any real kind of pressure: with a full tank, Richards completed his third lap in 2 minutes, 18 seconds, and he and Skaife would spend the rest of the day methodically cranking low-18s or at best high-17s, more than four seconds slower than the car's ultimate pace. Even then, by lap 5 they were pulling away from Mark Gibbs. As long as the car kept working, it was looking like Gibson Motorsport had this one all sewn up.
That was Gibson Motorsport's game plan today, but it wasn't the only one. Having been stung with a hot day would would pressure-cook their intercoolers and fry their rear tyres if they had even one moment of excess throttle, all three of the Shell Sierras were being rather circumspect in their approach this year. Although he was scheduled to drive the lead #17 car today, John Bowe had been given the job of starting the #18 on behalf of Radisich & Shiel, doing the hard work early on when the field was still compressed and a delicate balance of aggression and clear thinking could really pay off. The plan thus called for Bowe to pit early, have a quick drink to freshen up and then take over the #17 from Johnson himself at the first pit stop, and it was here that his real workday would begin. Having a car that was fast but delicate, DJR were sensibly approaching this one like an enduro, almost as a Le Mans campaign: they were deliberately holding the car in fifth gear across the top of the Mountain, both to avoid wheelspin and preserve their precious rear tyres, and to save some fuel so they could, hopefully, save themselves the traditional last-minute splash 'n' dash at the end. If they could do that while their rivals were blowing up, making extra pit stops and crashing, there was a chance they could pull out a result this way. Time would tell.
By contrast, the Holden runners had the opposite problem – a slow car that needed to be poked with a stick. Last year's winners Grice & Percy had shown them what they needed to do, and Peter Brock was now busy doing it, applying some of that old Brock Crush to the '91 Great Race. He was working the #05 Mobil VN hard – remember that its 4.9-litre V8 was a screamer by the standards of the day, as no V8 Supercar would ever rev beyond 7,500rpm – and the resulting sound was glorious. Even so, this early in the race he was holding something in reserve, and so Glenn Seton passed Brock in a straight line heading up Mountain Straight. There's no substitute for forced induction, live with it.
Having made a poor start, Glenn was driving with purpose and making up places hand over fist. Win Percy unfortunately lost a place when Seton had forced his way through, leaving him trapped behind Peter Brock, but that was of no concern to Seton. On lap 4, he went up the inside of Dick Johnson into Griffon's Bend, and even motored past Drew Price in the second works GT-R on lap 5 – down Conrod no less, a feat of brute horsepower if ever there was one! But by lap 6 the leaders were already starting to catch up to the lapped class cars, starting with the red David Sala Corolla.
Percy used the traffic to muscle past Brock, and nearly collected the green Verheyan Corolla trying to find a way past Johnson, but the real cork in the bottle proved to be Drew Price. The scrapping behind the #2 GT-R was relentless: Percy trying to get past Johnson, Brock trying to come back at Percy, and Johnson keeping a wary eye on his old rival Brock. If Price was under orders to hold them back and let Richo build an early gap, the team game was working perfectly.
But the pressure and desperation had to find an outlet somewhere, and the first victim was Brad Jones, who'd been given the opening stint in the second of the HRT Commodores. Jones abruptly pitted the #7 Commodore for emergency rhinoplasty, having put the nose into the wall on lap 4 on the climb up to Reid Park – just the latest hit for Elvis! The car was taped up and generally declared healthy, albeit with ruined aero and a slight wheel alignment problem, and young Bradley rejoined way down in 25th, now facing a hard day at the office.
Finally, Win Percy got past Drew Price with a brave move through McPhillamy Park – immediately followed by Brock and Perkins, who both made their move over the lip into the Esses! Exiting the Chase, however, Percy abruptly lost the rear and flung himself into a surprise spin, coming to rest on the grass just before the Dunlop Bridge. Thankfully, he kept the car off the wall, but the mistake cost him several valuable places (he actually rejoined behind the BMWs, in 13th). That was a serious blow to HRT's race plan, especially when the footage now showed the right-front guard was rubbing on the tyre, generating smoke. Percy elected to do another lap rather than pit immediately, either because the HRT pit crew couldn't be ready for him in time, or because he just didn't realise he had such a problem. It was a nail-biter, because if the bodywork cut that tyre on the next lap the car could find itself pitched into the wall and written off.
On lap 8, Bowe passed Mark Gibbs to take 2nd place, followed a lap later by Seton as well, dropping the #4 car back to 4th. Gibbs put up no fight at all, suggesting he was running a pre-set pace and wasn't under instruction to make the car any wider than it already was. There was now no-one ahead of Bowe except Jim Richards, but the gap was a daunting 10.9 seconds. Traffic would see it fluctuate from as much as 12 to as little as 6 seconds in the following laps, but nobody was under any illusions. As Jim came around to lap the Sala Corolla for the second time – yes, twice in ten laps – his time was a scorching 2:17.56; everyone else at the sharp end was only doing 2:19s.
Even that pace might've been too much for some. On lap 13, Garry Willmington's #41 Blue Haven Pools Supra came into the pits to sort something out. What it was we never found out, but the car was destined to DNF with gearbox issues after just 56 laps, so perhaps that problem was already rearing its ugly head. The #75 Corolla (of 1966 Great Race winners Bob Holden & Rauno Aaltonen, having a 25th Anniversary reunion tour) was also black-flagged for a fuel leak, although that car would be able to carry on (with the leak plugged, of course). On lap 22 the Gulson family's BMW 635 CSi was also in the pits with a major problem, but once again the broadcast didn't bother telling us what it was. I don't know what they were fixing, as this time there wasn't even a later DNF to provide hints, but no doubt it was related to the car being quite long in the tooth, and probably under-prepared thanks to inclement financial realities. And by lap 26 the Everlast Walky was trailing smoke, the start of a horror day of diff difficulties for the combined O'Brien/Callaghan squad.
But these cars were just out for a Sunday drive: the real race was at the front, where Dick Johson Racing were busy enacting their master plan. On lap 22, John Bowe brought the #18 Shell Sierra in for a very early, but resolutely scheduled pit stop, handing it over to Paul Radisich to carry on. Having done a blitz stint at the start of the race, the #18 now wouldn't need the late-race splash 'n' dash either, potentially putting it in the box seat for a result later in the day. Having having come in 3rd, Radisich rejoined in 12th, but there was an awful long way to run before it all shook out. One of Channel Seven's blokes in pit lane, John Brady, took the opportunity to have a chat with Bowe before he escaped back into the team garage.
John Brady: You're lapping pretty well out there. A few people were thinking the Nissans might've got further away than that?
John Bowe: Well, I think they were basically pacing themselves, but so are we. I thought that they'd have a much bigger lead than that. Our car's perfect at the moment, which is wonderful.
Brady: Are you close enough to put a lot of pressure on them, do you think?
Bowe: I don't think it's the time to put pressure on them. I think later on's probably the time – if, you know, if we're all healthy, later on in the race. At the moment it's just all feeling our way.
Brady: You've just hopped out of one car, you're about to hop in another. Tell us about that.
Bowe: Well, it's the way that Neal Lowe decided to it, which is fine by me. It meant we got two cars in the top ten, which gave Shell and Palmer's and Dunlop and Ford, everybody a lot of exposure. So that's what it's all about.
Brady: You take over Dick's car next?
Bowe: I will, yeah. So, you think I look hot now, I'm gonna look a lot hotter later!
First Stops
Around lap 30 the first scheduled pit stops were due, and it was inevitable that the first in would be a Nissan: 440 kW and 1,600kg meant a hefty penalty to your mpg. In the event Drew Price pitted the #2 Nissan on lap 29, the backup car of course getting the less optimised pit window. Fuel went in, a new set of Yokohamas were fitted, and Price stayed at the wheel for a double stint, although despite pre-race claims no brake pads were changed. It was a smooth stop, as it should've been when this wasn't even the team's big contender, and after 30-odd seconds the car was dropped and Price continued on his merry way, the stop having dropped him from 6th place down to 14th.
But all was not well on the lap that followed: the #2 Nissan GT-R was very slow coming over the Mountain next time around. Price gave it one extra lap to see if the problem would be self-correcting, but no such luck: on lap 31 he returned to the pits and the Gibson team swarmed over the car. A big fan was parked just in front to cool the radiator, and one brave crew member removed the right-front wheel then stuck his face into the wheel arch to inspect the parts behind! Would you put your beautiful face that close to an 800-degree brake disc straight off the track? Me either! In the event, the second Nissan would spend almost five minutes sitting on its haunches in pit lane, not to rejoin until lap 34 – way down in 30th place. They'd given up an awful lot of time, and worse, hadn't actually found out what was wrong with the car – Price said it was wandering around on Conrod, but Fred eventually suggested it was just that the tyres were still cold and sent him back out. It was the start of a long and troublesome day for the #2 Nissan Skyline.
Through it all, Richards carried on serene and untroubled, as you would when you had a 12-second gap over P2 (which was now Glenn Seton in the Peter Jackson Sierra). It wasn't until the end of lap 32 that he pointed the thing toward the pits, already removing the belts as he entered the lane. Richards hopped out and made way for Mark Skaife, while the mechanics gave it fuel and tyres and gave the windscreen a quick polish. It wasn't a super-quick stop, but then they did have a sizeable lead, so why hurry? Skaife was dropped and rejoined in 4th place, just ahead of Tony Longhurst in the BMW. Yep, the pit stops had elevated the M3 up to 5th outright: this was looking pretty good.
The GIO Nissan didn't pit until lap 34, the car getting some fuel, a fresh set of Dunlops and a driver change to Rohan Onslow, who rejoined only 9th thanks to a somewhat sluggish stop. Shortly after Charlie O'Brien pitted in the #10 Cenovis Sierra to hand over to Gianfranco Brancatelli, and as he departed in came Glenn Seton, who likewise handed over to Gregg Hansford to rejoin in 4th.
But, as Blake told us, where some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night. For every car having a good run so far, another was encountering disaster. The #44 Queensland Plastics Sierra, driven by Glenn McIntyre, was stuck in the pits with a faulty starter motor, while the #50 Tyrepower Sierra of Bryan Sala encountered difficulties when it got jammed in first gear, although it was fixed and the car eventually rejoined.
But none of their woes measured up to Drew Price, who brought the #2 Nissan back to the pits after just one lap with the same complaint as before. Clearly it wasn't just cold tyres. Price reckoned he could feel something vibrating, but having inspected everything the team still couldn't find what the problem was, so he was sent back out yet again. This time John Brady was able to get an interview out of team manager Alan Heaphy, despite Heaphy still wearing his team headset, listening to the tech geeks as they diagnosed the problem.
John Brady: A lot of confusion over it. Alan, what's as close as you've got to it?
Alan Heaphy: Wait... [listening to his headset]... Basically, Drew came in for his scheduled stop, and we changed tyres. He stayed in to do his next stint, and whatever's happened to a tyre or wheel or something has created a vibration in the car, it's fairly severe. And just as a precaution we thought, well, we'll bring him in and have a good look over it, because there's still a long way to go.
Brady: How's it running now?
Heaphy: Perfectly.
Brady: So you got any idea what it was? Was it just the tyre, or wheel, or...?
Heaphy: Yeah. Hang on, actually they're speaking about it now... [listening some more]. Yeah, the car is running okay now. There's no dramas whatsoever.
Brady: Just gotta make up some lost time.
Heaphy: Yeah, that's right.
The upshot of all the pit stops was that Dick Johnson now led the race, ahead of Skaife, Hansford and then Tony Longhurst, who wasn't expected to pit until lap 45 or so. Johnson was aiming to stay out until lap 40 if at all possible, which would be an almost unprecedented stint for a Sierra if he was able to do it. In-car shots revealed Johnson was driving it very gently, low-revving it and timing the boost through the tricky turns at the top of the Mountain, so if he was able to eke out enough speed from this economy run he might actually be in with a chance. Naturally, however, Johnson's time in the lead lasted only until Mark Skaife caught back up in traffic and passed him between the exit of the Chase and the pit entrance – not that it mattered, because Dick headed for the pits immediately after. It showed the Nissan team effectively had a whole pit stop over the #17 after just one stint of racing, which was an astonishing burst of speed so early in the game.
Case in point, on lap 44 the BMW team finally made ready for a pit stop... not for Longhurst, but for Denny Hulme, whose co-driver Peter Fitzgerald was now standing by (Denny kept going for another lap, though, which showed Frank Gardner's penchant for mind games never diminished). Tony Longhurst himself managed to hold off on pitting until lap 47, and even that was a lap earlier than planned
I came in one lap earlier than what I was s'posed to. But as I was going up the straight I started to get very conscious of the gauges, and I thought I saw the fuel pressure gauge move. I thought the other car was gonna come in about lap 42 or 43, so the boys should've had a bit of a breather. Anyhow, we're in and out okay.
Alan Jones took over in a mostly-orderly stop, although Jonesy had trouble reaching his belts and needed a hand getting strapped in. After a 42.87-second stop (about 12 seconds longer than planned), Jones rejoined 9th, down from 3rd before the stop. "You're happy with the way things are going?" asked Channel Seven talking head Cameron Williams, and on this Tony was unequivocal: "Oh, fantastic! I just can't believe it. Who could've imagined that little car could be 3rd or 4th, whatever we are now." As if to pour cold water on his joy, however, the footage at that moment showed Jonesy pulling through Murray's ahead of the Gazzard Walky and about to overtake Bryan Sala's Tyrepower Sierra... just as they were all caught and lapped by Skaife. The Longhurst team might've been exceeding expectations, but there could be no doubt about who as leading this race just now. Skaife in fact was about to put a lap even on Rohan Onslow in the third Nissan, currently 9th!
Indeed, the only thing going wrong for Nissan were that the #2 car still wasn't living up to expectations. With nearly two hours gone, the second car was way down in 32nd place, seven laps behind its race-leading twin. You'd be forgiven for wondering if Freddo had called in some kind of mechanical witchdoctor to put a curse on the #2 car and ensure that whatever went wrong for the team went wrong with this car, for soon it was back in the pits for a third time. Peter McKay reported live:
More problems for the Nissan car number 2. The driver Drew Price reported that the car had lost power. The crew was waiting for him when he arrived, they lifted the bonnet, and the small hose that takes the air into the plenum chamber had come off. They fixed it, and it was out in about thirty seconds. The point to make is, that never happened to this car before. So there's always a first time at the Tooheys 1000...
Complications
It was at this point that things started to go sideways for a lot of people, all at once. David Sala's red #72 Corolla hatchback had become the first proper retirement of the race on lap 28 (for him), the engine giving up the ghost on the climb through The Cutting. The car remained parked there for the rest of the day. Then on lap 53, the #19 Shell Sierra was also in the pits with a problem, having been running all day with a misfire; this car would never be truly healthy again. Then at the same time, the #44 Queensland Plastics Sierra of Dave Barrow & Glenn McIntyre – the same ex-Longhurst car that had suffered starter-motor problems earlier – then pitted with the front-right wheel missing! The driver brought it back to the Brian Bolwell Racing garage where the team gave it a quick check and a spray of WD-40. The replacement nut went on easily enough, so the Bolwell mechanics simply replaced the lost wheel, topped up the fuel and sent it on its way.
While that was going on, the #33 Pro-Duct VN of Bob Pearson lost the rear, spun around and hit the tyre barrier just before Hinxman Vista, virtually head-on. The car wasn't a write-off, but its Bathurst was over with just 48 laps covered. If that had been the only setback for Holdens today then it would've been a good day, but things were about to get a whole lot weirder. A lap later (on lap 54 for the leader), Andrew Miedecke brought Brock's 05 car to a halt on the run up to The Cutting, pulling over on the right-hand side of the track where in theory he'd be out of the way. It looked like the car had stopped with an electrical problem, but there was no way to tell yet whether it was terminal (heh). He'd lost a very promising 7th place, so Miedecke was highly motivated to fix it, so he went to work.
On the radio to the team manager Graeme "Mort" Brown, he reported back: "You there, Mort? We have no fuel pressure. I've been giving it a break, and fifteen seconds doesn't help, what d'you want me to do next...? Already tried… Yes, no fuel pressure..." And so on. Naturally enough, with the sport's biggest star having dramas, the TV cameras hurried down to the Mobil team garage to interview 05's other driver.
John McKay: A rather bemused Peter Brock watching proceedings on television. Your car looks like it has a fuel pressure problem, Pete?
Peter Brock: Yes, well that will probably be an electrical connection I imagine. And at the moment it's quite interesting to stand here listening to Andrew explaining on television he's got no fuel pressure. We're going through a test procedure with him to try the reserves and everything else, but he's done that... I don't know. I don't know what he can do at the moment. We'll wait and see.
McKay: Is Andrew much of a mechanic?
Brock: Uh, well... if it was a straight-up mechanical problem I don't think a lot of us would have a great deal of concern, but when you start talking about electronics, and the number of systems and microchip technology et cetera, really you've got to get the experts in.
McKay: So will the plan be now that you might step into car 11?
Brock: Well, one never knows, does one?
The saga between Miedecke and 05 would take the best part of half an hour to play out, and solving it would come down the ingenious use of onboard technology. It would emerge after the race that an electrical connection had simply vibrated apart – just one of those things – and to diagnose the fault, the team actually used the onboard Channel Seven RaceCam to inspect the wiring loom! Said Brocky after the race:
The guy's parked out there – this is Andrew Miedecke – it's got an electronic fault. Now, I don't know anyone who knows about electronics, outside of the RaceCam guys [and the] RaceCam guys came to the rescue. I had my electronic guy in the RaceCam area [in the pits], and they were actually driving the RaceCam and looking at the wiring loom and my guy's back here telling Andrew Miedecke how to fix the electronic fault in the car, parked up there on the Mountain! He did it, he got the car back on the track ... I thought, that's astonishing. But it's one of those ridiculous things that can happen – an electronic component that actually vibrated apart. It wasn't a bad connection, it simply broke.
That said, fixing it didn't come easily. At one point Miedecke had the boot open as he tried to get the fuel pumps working manually, at another he was seen fiddling with the electronics in the centre console. But whatever he did, it worked: Andrew Miedecke got the 05 moving again and limped it back to the pits, where the team would be able to carry out a proper repair job. The car actually stalled on the entry to the pits, but it was close enough that it didn't matter: the pit crews just pushed it until he reached his pit box and the lads got to work.
While Miedecke was distracted, on lap 56, the #2 Nissan GT-R came back in the pits for the fourth time, and once again the bonnet was raised as mechanics worked on something at the front of the engine. It seemed the same air pipe problem as last time had recurred. The team took the opportunity to run a scheduled stop at the same time, putting Garry Walden in the car, which was probably wise when Drew Price was almost out of time anyway. By this stage Mark Skaife was still leading over Gregg Hansford (#30 Peter Jackson Sierra), John Bowe (#17 Shell Sierra – the economy run seemed to be working out), and Allan Grice (#16 HRT Commodore), who'd carried on Percy's workmanlike job of steadily moving forward. Behind them was Radisich in the #18 Shell Sierra, Tomas Mezera in the #11 Mobil Commodore, Rohan Onslow in the #4 GIO GT-R, then Alan Jones in the #25 Benson & Hedges BMW, who'd made up only one place since his pit stop but was maintaining a much higher placing than a class car really should've. Don't believe me? Behind him was Gianfranco Brancatelli in the #10 Cenovis Sierra, a world-beating car only a few years ago, but now shortly to be lapped by Grice. Last of the top ten was Wayne Park in the #35 Peter Jackson Sierra, benefitting from 05's mishap.
Then the Sala/Lusty Tyrepower Sierra lost a right-front wheel on the entry to the Chase, which was just about the scariest place imaginable for such a thing to happen. The car had already lost time with starter motor and turbo damage earlier on, so this team was officially having a troubled run. On arrival in its pit box the wheel hub seemed in working order, but there was a big gouge out of the brake calliper, pointing to there having been a big hit from something that would've bent the whole brake assembly (slight tyre scuffs on the wheel arch pointed to a touch with the wall somewhere). They had to trim some excess steel away before the wheel would fit, but once again, they got it going. Thus trimmed, the replacement wheel went on without a hiccough and the car was dropped and sent back out on track.
Over at the Dick Johnson garage, meanwhile, Paul Radisich pitted the #18 Shell Sierra from 5th place, handing it over for Terry Shiel to have his first shift. "Regulation stop" was the judgement of the commentators, and at 29 seconds, it was one of the quickest we'd see outside of the HRT boys. The bad news was, not all their cars were doing so well. Although the #19 Shell Sierra was a very distant third in the team's priorities, it was having a fairly disappointing run even by those standards. By lap 59 it was in the pits for the second time – third? Who even knew? – and, bad sign, both the bonnet and the rear hatch had to be lifted this time. The car had been running with a misfire almost since lap 1, and the team had already changed the plug leads and the distributor cap trying to get it to run properly. With nothing much else to lose, it seems this time they'd decided to should look at the fuel feed and see if that would cure it. Hey, why not? They weren't going to win from here anyway...
Then – and this was becoming a bit of a fad – the #43 Brian Bolwell Sierra was also seen three-wheeling across the top of the Mountain at McPhillamy, having lost a right-front wheel! Thankfully that was not a fashion befalling every Sierra, as by the start of the 61st lap John Bowe had made a move and passed Gregg Hansford, returing the #17 Shell Sierra to 2nd place. That Hansford almost immediately then found himself fending off Gricey in the HRT Commodore suggested the Peter Jackson Sierra was having a mechanical issue of its own, but what that was we didn't yet know – it might have been something as basic as running out of tyres.
A lap later and the race leader was back in the pits, Jim Richards returning to the cockpit of the #1 GT-R and giving Mark Skaife a spell. It was a quick but routine pit stop, and Channel Seven arguably would've done better to turn their cameras around and point them at Murray's Corner at that moment. Neil Crompton in the #7 HRT car was suddenly circulating with a VN that looked like it had rammed a red kangaroo: the bonnet was buckled upwards, the radiator grille had been pushed in, one headlight had been smashed, the works. It took one of Channel Seven's patent after-the-fact replays to reveal it hadn't really been his fault: running just ahead of him, Allan Grice had lost the rear of the #16 on the ripple strip at Murray's, getting sideways and robbing him of speed. Poor Crompton had been left with nowhere to go, and simply piled into the back of him. Both cars kept running, but they'd carry the scars for the rest of the day, which wasn't a good look for a young driver trying to generate buzz. The Golden Rule of motor sport is, after all, that you don't hit your teammate...
Neil Crompton: The old boy got sideways coming into the pit straight in a fairly big way. We were tangled up in a scrap with John Bowe and Gregg Hansford. Gricey had virtually a spin, I ducked to the inside to miss him but gave him a Liberace [presumably referring to a famous TV bit where Liberace smashed up a grand piano with a sledgehammer].
Gary Wilkinson: Well, it's done a fair amount of damage...
Crompton: No kidding.
Soon after Grice pitted the #16 and handed it back to Win Percy. The car was still running okay, slight damage to the left-rear bumper from Crompo's fumble, but not enough to really hold it back. This was a more intensive stop than the previous 21-second blitz job: this time the brake pads were changed and the brake fluid was topped up before they let Percy rejoin. In the middle of it all, the #30 Sierra also pitted neatly; Hansford got out and Seton got in, the car remaining in 3rd place. Compounding the Holden fans' woes, however, it was around this time that Miedecke got 05 going again, albeit now 33rd and several laps down... just as teammate Tomas Mezera brought the #11 in with an out-of-the-blue engine problem. The Perkins team spanner-twirlers got to work under the bonnet, changing the plugs in the hope that was all that was wrong, but it turned out to be rather more serious than that. By lap 66 the team had given up and were pushing it back into the garage, having diagnosed a broken valve spring, although pushing it back was somewhat complicated by the arrival of their neighbours, the GIO GT-R which was in for a routine stop from 4th place. Adding insult to injury, the time spent working on the Perkins/Mezera car had forced Miedecke to stack and wait for service in his – now-running – 05 sister car. And Peter had been on the verge of taking over that 11 car, too...
Cameron Williams: Peter Perfect, it seems like things have gone perfectly wrong just at the moment?
Peter Brock: Yeah, it's been a very interesting day. The car started off beautifully, and Andrew's had an electronic gremlin in the car and through persistence he's actually got the thing going again, and arrived in here as Tomas was in to do a planned pit stop, but as he arrived he said the engine's got a problem, it dropped a valve in it. So we sent Andrew back out to soldier on, and I guess this'll be pushed the one side, this was our big hope of course, and I'll hop back into 05 and see if I can finish somewhere respectable through the day. But, gee, electronics? A bit of a strange one.
At the front Godzilla rolled onwards, as unbothered and unstoppable as a natural disaster. By now Richards was coming up to put a lap on Brancatelli in the #10 Cenovis Sierra, who was currently in 9th place, and he muscled past on Conrod like it was easy. Given Rudi wasn't there, it probably was.
At the end of lap 76, John Bowe headed for the pits. He unplugged his radio while he was still on on Conrod; his belts undone by the time he was in the lane proper. He stopped the car precisely on its marks, of course, and hopped out while the mechanics got to work on a full stop, including a pad change. John Brady passed on the team's claim that there were less than two litres of fuel left in the tank – they were stretching their stints right to the limit. Team manager Neal Lowe had in fact wanted the car to do one more lap, but the fuel was so marginal they decided it wasn't worth the risk. Johnson had done 37 laps in his opening stint; Bowe had just done 39. If they could keep this up, they'd see another stop around lap 115, then a final splash around lap 153. So as of right now, it sounded like their fuel gamble wasn't quite on target, but then again the race was only half over. Lowe told Channel Seven that their current projections had the car coughing across the finish line with only a few drops left in its tank, and that when that moment came his heart would be in his mouth... but what else were they gonna do, not try to win? The stop took just under 55 seconds, not super-quick but not a problem child either. A sign of how spread out the field was by now, they lost only one place in the meantime, dropping from 2nd to 3rd. Which is to say, the stop had put Seton's car back up to P2.
Of course, Johnson came out of the pits right in front of Jim Richards, and although they disputed the place all the way up the Mountain, by Skyline the Skyline was in front, putting Dick a lap down. By lap 80 – half distance – the order was Jim Richards (#1 Nissan GT-R), Glenn Seton (#30 Peter Jackson Sierra, the only other car still on the lead lap), Dick Johnson (#17 Shell Sierra, a lap down), Win Percy (#16 HRT Commodore) and Terry Shiel (#18 Shell Sierra). They were followed by Tony Longhurst in 6th (#25 Benson & Hedges BMW, leading the Goldilocks class), Rohan Onslow (#4 GIO GT-R, two laps down), Gianfranco Brancatelli (#10 Cenovis Sierra), Steve Millen (#9 Cenovis Sierra, three laps down) and finally Peter Fitzgerald (#20 B&H BMW).
None of these cars were yet wilting under the strain, but then again there were five hundred punishing kilometres still to go. Whether by mechanical failure, driver error or a strategic gamble, it was in the second half of the 1991 Tooheys 1000 that the race would be decided.
