Kick-Off: Sandown & Symmons

It was amazingly fast. You could tell it had plenty of potential. [But] It was a pretty raw beast. Crude to begin with, lots of things broke and it wasn't very driveable at the start. It all came right in '91, but we had to spend a huge amount of money on it. – Mark Skaife, Auto Action #1787

1991 was the nadir. The evidence of that came with the entry list for Round 1 of the Shell Ultra Australian Touring Car Championship, at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne, where just nineteen cars showed up to attempt the race. That wasn't quite the record, as in the Oil Crisis days of the mid-1970s grids as small as fourteen or fifteen were common – but it was enough to be concerning. The recession plus the new generation of money-hungry Group A cars was proving a toxic combination.

R1 – Sandown
So who were these irrepressible nineteen? Well, obviously there was reigning champ Jim Richards and his sidekick Mark Skaife, riding high in a pair of Nissan Skyline R32 GT-Rs. Both cars looked smart in their shiny new Nissan corporate livery, which recalled the R90CK prototypes that had raced at Le Mans rather than their old HR31s, making it clear their mission this year was to advertise the Nissan Motor Company. Sanctioning body CAMS had made another attempt to rebalance the scales by adding 15 kilos to the GT-R's homolgation weight, but with the boost turned up for qualifying they'd barely even noticed it, claiming the front row of the grid with times of 1:13.91 and 1:13.94, respectively. They were the only drivers to break the 14 barrier.

Next-fastest was John Bowe, first of the Dick Johnson Shell Sierras, with a time of 1:14.59 – a heroic effort here at the Home of Horsepower, where the straight-line speed of the Sierra should've minimised the damage, but still more than six-tenths slower than a GT-R. With last year's 85kg weight penalty gone the Sierra was theoretically back to its winning ways, except that Dick himself was back in 5th, kept off the second row by the startlingly quick #30 Peter Jackson Sierra of Glenn Seton. The younger Ford Hero continued to be a thorn in the side of the older.

In 6th place was Win Percy, fulfilling his brief as the works driver by being the fastest of the Holdens. After the buzz and success of last year the Holden Racing Team were entering 1991 with high hopes – hopes that would soon be brought crashing to earth. Holden's share of the 1991 performance re-balance was a 75kg cut to their homologation weight, dropping from 1,325 to 1,250kg, plus the axeing of all the rules regarding stock inlet and exhaust manifolds. The Group A engine philosophy had always been that you could make them rev, but you couldn't make them breathe: teams were free to heat-treat and modify and generally toughen-up their internals as much as they liked, but they were restricted to breathing through road-car inlet and exhaust manifolds. CAMS did away with that for the naturally-aspirated cars on the theory that it would give the Commodores a boost, which it did, but it also ticked off a lot of people at Holden who'd just seen all the expense and effort put into the VN Group A voided overnight. To take advantage and actually gain the promised power, the teams would have develop new intakes and exhausts for their engines, and that would take time and yet more money.

HRT owner Tom Walkinshaw took the opportunity to sound off to the press, telling Auto Action: "I think the rules are flawed in their conception in several important areas. I am confused to know why a country like Australia is playing with fire in regulations to allow imported cars in, while eliminating any possibility of a home-built motor car being competitive." He'd even placed HRT's season commitment under review, although some couldn't help seeing this as a cynical ploy to squeeze more funding out of Fishermans Bend. Either way, Win Percy was back on the grid for 1991 in a brand-new VN Commodore built by Dennis Watson's Dencar operation, who'd formerly built Sierras for Peter Brock. It came about after a chance meeting following HRT's win at Bathurst the previous year, but it meant Dencar, including Watson's friend and partner-in-crime George Smith, would build most HRT cars for the rest of the decade.

I didn't know Win from a bar of soap. He was in a very good mood having won the race. I'd been working on Brock's pit crew and introduced myself, and he stopped and chatted. I had some business cards and told him we were setting up to do bodyshell and general fabrication work. I think I just caught him at the absolutely right moment. Win put the card in his race suit, then rang two days later. We had a meeting and it was pretty much agreed right there and then that we had all their fabrication work. – George Smith, AMC #97

With an 8,500rpm redline and slippery new aerodynamics, this VN had turned test laps nearly a second faster than last year's Walkinshaw VL, but risk to the engine meant 7,800rpm was a more sensible limit over a race distance. Despite that, Percy had posted a time only slightly behind the leading Sierras, his 1:15.47 even placing him ahead of Colin Bond and Kevin Waldock in their familiar Caltex and Playscape Sierras, respectively... but still nearly one-and-a-half seconds slower than the benchmark GT-Rs. Maybe Tom had a point.

Lining up 9th and 10th were two very familiar names. After winning the Pukekohe 500 at the end of 1990, Peter Brock had put his Sierra inventory up for sale and moved back to the Holden camp via an arrangement with Eastern Creek winner Larry Perkins. Peter Perfect's grand return to Holden was a story in itself, but if it looked like Peter was getting the band back together, that was an illusion: this was a marriage of convenience, not a love match. Perkins Engineering had spent the 1990 season desperately short of sponsorship, kept afloat only by bulding customer cars: Brock meanwhile had finished 1990 in the knowledge that 1991 would see the British scene transition completely to the new Super Touring formula, meaning his benefactor Andy Rouse would no longer be building Sierras and would instead be putting all his time and energy into a 2.0-litre Toyota Carina. The pipeline of parts and technical data Peter depended on was about to be closed off, and finding some other source of hardware was imperative. So on one hand there was Larry, with a fully-stocked workshop turning out customer Holdens, but desperately short of cash; and on the other there was Peter with his lucrative Mobil sponsorship, but no cars...

For 1991, therefore, Brock and Perkins would both run in Mobil-sponsored VN Commodores under the Perkins Engineering banner, Perkins in his #11 and Brocky, of course, in 05. With Brock came a contract for Bridgestone tyres, and although they were less durable than last year's Dunlops, at least they were free, which saved the penny-pinching Perkins yet another unwelcome bill. The downside was, he would claim later, that there was a clause in the contract stating he had to finish behind Brock unless it was unavoidable: the hatchet between these two would not be buried in 1991, it seemed.

11th and 12th on the grid were Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones respectively, once again in Benson & Hedges cars under Frank Gardner management. Those cars were no longer Ford Sierras, however, but new DTM-spec BMW M3 Evos, with bigger 2.5-litre engines and aggressive new aerodynamics. As the only entries in Class 2 they were at least guaranteed a class win, provided they could fend off the handful of privateer Commodores all around them – amateurs with 5.0 litres underfoot had proven roughly as fast in qualifying as professionals with 2.5. Of these amateurs we could count Steve Reed of the Lansvale Smash Repairs team, who'd brought along a new VN, as had Bob Pearson in the #33 Pro-Duct Commodore – chassis PE 011, the first VN ever built by Perkins, preceding even the Mobil cars he and Peter were driving.

AMSCAR stalwart Terry Finnigan meanwhile had fronted with an outdated VL Walkinshaw, as had privateer Wayne Park, and Mark Gibbs driving the GIO #21 for Bob Forbes Racing – although that would not be the car the team finished the year with. And rounding out the field were the tiny Toyotas of Class 3, John Faulkner at the wheel of the well-used #13 AE86 Corolla GT of Bob Holden Motors, while David Sala had brought along his red #72 FX-GT hatchback.

And that was it, the whole nineteen. The upshot of this was brought home by the highlights reel posted below – bluntly, there weren't any.

Oh to be a fly on the wall the day they brought the editing team those dailies and told them to make a highlight reel out of them. It was an impossible task: they show the start of the race, and the finish of the race, but the bits in between are sort of a void, with nothing actually going on. About the only moment of interest was Longhurst audaciously diving under Jim Richards at the hairpin and successfully making a pass, which sounds good until you realise he was actually un-lapping himself, and even then only momentarily, as Richo roared off under power just seconds later. In the event the Skyline twins straight-up dismantled the opposition that day, posting a dominant 1-2 to open their scorecards with 20 points for Richards and 15 for Skaife. Richo's post-race comments to Channel Seven's Neil Crompton summed up the situation perfectly:

Neil Crompton: Richo, congratulations. That was a way to start the new season. Reigning champion, you've done the business?

Jim Richards: Well yeah, it was a matter of getting out in front and trying to hold a gap over the rest of the field. We chose a softer tyre than we probably should've, so we had to work it hard at the start and then drive it nice and easy toward the end. But, it paid off.

Crompton: No problems with the car?

Richards: No, car was perfect. No problem.

R2 – Symmons Plains
The second round was both better and worse than the first – better because there was some genuine on-track action, which generated something that might loosely be called interest, but worse because the Nissans not only finished 1-2 yet again, but this time were the only cars on the lead lap!

It was also worse in that there were only thirteen starters this time around, as the continental privateers found the freight to Tasmania too costly for their wallets, and the contingent of local privateers that had once padded out the grid either found the recession was hitting their bottom line (David "Skippy" Parsons), had moved on to other series (Steve Harrington), or were just too grown up for this stuff nowadays (Garth Wigston).

The grid could've been even shorter had only a little bit more bad luck befallen one of the drivers: in practice, Mark Skaife had an impressive shunt that could easily have resulted in an Adelaide 2.0-style crash, but this time he only kicked up some dust. It was a lucky escape.

Neil Crompton: A difficult time for at least one of the Nissans yesterday. Mark Skaife speared off at the end of the back straight, leapt into the mud, mate, there were bits flying everywhere. What happened?

Mark Skaife: All I did was, I turned into the big fast right-hander down the back straight, and the left-front disc brake exploded! Cut the wheel in half, set the tyre flat and speared off down through the paddock. It was a pretty wild ride.

As a result Skaife failed to set a time in qualfying and had to start from the very back of the grid, but Gibson didn't need to stress too much – Richo had delivered pole anyway. In fact, P2 to P9 had all qualified within a second of each other, Kevin Waldock and Larry Perkins clocking identical 1:01.02 lap times, with Bowe, Brock, Bond, Johnson and Seton just barely ahead of them. Win Percy had impressed with a banzai 1:00.31 lap to abscond with P2. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could live with the GT-R, Richo pulling out a 58-dead without a single visit to the panel-beaters.

That's right, 2.3 seconds in 2.4 kilometres. Let that sink in.

The race brought action aplenty. As they waved the green flag, Dick Johnson dramatically launched himself into 2nd place, chasing and actually managing to stay with Jim Richards all the way through the first lap. Into the hairpin at the start of lap 2 he even made an attempt to wrest away the lead, but it was never on, as Richo forced him to the outside to go the long way around. And Johnson was on borrowed time anyway, as his challenge would last only as long as his tyres did. Once the RWD Sierra burned up its tyres (which the 4WD Skyline wouldn't), the race would be firmly in Richo's grasp. He was left free to win as he pleased, even setting a new lap record of 56.84 seconds – 1.16 seconds faster than his own pole time!

But the real story of the race was Skaife, who picked off most of the field in the opening laps to shadow John Bowe very early on. Feeling the pressure, Bowe made an unwise move around the outside of Seton on the dive into the hairpin, touching the blue car's right-hand door and tipping himself into a spin. Seton's tail had a bit of a wag but as he wasn't on the throttle at that point the damage was minimal, and he took the corner gingerly and then zoomed away. Bowe was left with his nose pointed into the traffic, waiting for the whole world to go by before he could rejoin safely.

Skaife, of course, caught Seton on the following straight, taking him up to 4th place. That put Win Percy in his sights next, but the Pommy bastard was an old hand at this so there were no mistakes from him. The canny Percy left Skaife to the outside lane for the run down to the hairpin, forcing him to go the long way, and against a normal car that would've been enough. But the GT-R was no normal car. From the outside, Skaife turned the wheel a little harder and went for the criss-cross, and the magnificent GT-R responded by biting the tarmac with all four wheels and taking off like it had been shot out of a gun. Down the long backstretch they were once more side-by-side, and although Skaife had the inside line for the upcoming corner, the lighter Commodore could go a lot deeper on the brakes, turning this into the chicken run of all chicken runs.

And Skaife won it. Despite crashing here only yesterday, he held off until the absolute last possible moment and then stomped on that brake pedal without a hint of doubt as to the state of his rotors, landing in the corner ahead of the HRT Commodore. As he turned in smoothly and dashed away, he was up to 3rd, with only Johnson and Richards still ahead of him.

Shortly thereafter Skaife reeled in and passed Dick Johnson in a mirror-image of the move on Percy, the GT-R forced to the outside this time as Dick clung doggedly to the inside line. It didn't matter: even if he could brake later and claim every strategic advantage on the track, Johnson simply couldn't unleash the power of his turbo engine suddenly enough to match the Nissan. Skaife held his nerve and moved up to 2nd place, and as his rear tyres burned up Dick fell into the clutches of Win Percy. Those tortured rear Dunlops finally let go and tipped Johnson into a spin at the hairpin, and a visit to the pits for a new set would see him end a disappointing race only 5th. Teammate Bowe provided some more fireworks in a battle with Peter Brock, but it meant nothing as he made two pit stops in the course of the race, finishing a lowly 11th overall. That was the same as second-last, as Percy then became the race's only DNF when the Holden V8 broke a cam follower, leaving the Englishman with a long walk back to the pits.

He might have started last, but by the time the chequered flag came out Skaife was virtually line astern with Jim Richards – the sort of thing that happened when you forgot to turn the difficulty up, not the stuff of championship-level ATCC races! As the two Nissans hummed around their cooldown lap in formation, side-by-side, the message being broadcast by the TV cameras could not have been clearer: this championship belonged to the Nissan Motor Company. For everyone else, it was a race for 3rd.

So after two rounds Richards led the championship with 40 points, with teammate Skaife trailing on 30, and Dick Johnson putting up something that might generously be described as resistance, with 18. Longhurst, Seton and Bowe were deadlocked on 12 points apiece, thanks partly to the practice of awarding bonus points to class cars having gone the way of the dodo. But even with them, Longhurst would've had the devil's own job interrupting the steady points-hoovering of Gibson Motorsport this year. Two rounds in, and it was already pretty clear who was going to win this championship.