AMSCAR Interlude: the M3 Sport Evo

For some teams the next event on the calendar was the first Lakeside round, held a fortnight after Skaifey's maiden win at Wanneroo. For others – namely, those based in Sydney – it was the first round of the AMSCAR series held only one week later at Amaroo Park. In such a sparse season there's time to branch out and take in these lesser events, and in this case it might do to have a closer look at the car Tony Longhurst was driving as well. After all, it was about to start winning...

Hidden Talent Counts For Nothing: the BMW M3 Sport Evolution
It's important to realise the new Benson & Hedges cars were not the ones Jim Richards had taken to the championship back in 1987. This was not just another M3: this was the BMW M3 Sport Evolution, sometimes known as the Evo 3, and comparing it to the old one it was like putting your morning espresso down next to a crack pipe.

BMW hadn’t exactly left the M3 alone through the long years of Sierra domination. In 1988 they’d released the Evo 1, with engine tweaks to give the race teams a tad more power. The Evo 2 that followed in 1989 had ditched the catalytic converter, swapped out the window glass for something thinner and lighter, and fitted a deeper chin spoiler for better aero. With the demise of the European championship, however, BMW had simply turned their attention inwards to the domestic series, and in the process they'd only got even more intense.

The Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft, or DTM, was nothing less than a war for supremacy between the West German manufacturers, where no quarter was ever asked or given. Key to the new-look DTM was a ban on turbocharging for 1990: in this post-Sierra landscape, Mercedes-Benz had coughed up the 190E Evo 2, with more power and a cartoonishly huge rear wing to give it proper downforce. Audi had also given the pot a stir with a new Quattro powered by a V8 made by welding two Golf GTi engines together, and even Opel had pitched in with the Omega A2.

The opposition: *deep breath* the Mercedes-Benz 190E Cosworth 2.3-16v Evo 2.

The Sport Evo was BMW’s big stick in this contest, built to homologate a body able to take the 18-inch wheels needed to win, as well as an engine taken up to the new 2.5-litre limit. Only 600 of these cars were made, all of them in 1990, and BMW Motorsport (as the M Division was then known) took the opportunity to really push the boat out.

The Sport Evo sat 10mm lower than the previous M3s, hitting the road on sizeable 16-inch wheels (albeit with wheel arches enlarged to take the 18s of the racecars). The storied four-cylinder S14 engine was upgraded to the new S14B25: by boring out from 84 to 95mm and fitting a longer-stroke crankshaft, the engine’s swept volume increased to 2,467cc, just nicely below the category limit. The engine also got slide throttles, eight injectors, larger inlet valves and sodium-filled exhaust valves, with a larger exhaust manifold and chrome-tipped exhaust to help the whole thing breathe. A more aggressive camshaft was fitted, and extra oil nozzles sprayed oil at the underside of the pistons to help keep them cool. BMW used 8mm red spark plug cables to make sure deine Freunde noticed if you lifted the bonnet.

The result was 177 kW at 7,000 rpm, with only a slight decrease in torque compared with the standard M3 – some 240 Nm at 4,750rpm. 0-100km/h was done in 6.1 seconds, with the standing 400m covered in 14.8 or so, depending on the slickness of your gear changes. The U.S. and Japan only got a normal H-pattern gearbox, but European cars got the the dogleg variant of Getrag’s 265 5-speed, meaning first gear was to the left and down rather than left and up – a trap for young players maybe, but a tactile link to the racecars, and very cool.

Source.

Luxuries like a thirteen-button trip computer, air conditioning, leather sport seats, central locking, electric windows, electric sunroof, premium stereo, map light mirrors, active check control and seat heaters were all deleted in order to keep weight down, though they could be put back as options. Since 1988, Euro-spec M3s had also been available with Electronic Damper Control by Boge. This offered three shock stiffness settings, Komfort (K), Normal (N) and Sport (S) in order of increasing firmness, adjusted via a dial on the centre console.

Body-wise, the Sport Evo had thinner glass, extra cooling ducts that took the place of the fog lights, and reprofiled radiator grille slats for better air penetration. It was available in only two colours, Jet Black (sometimes listed as Glossy Black), or Brilliant Red. But the real standout feature was the adjustable rear wing, which gave you three options to tailor the car to the tarmac – choose between Monza, Normal or Nürburgring, then put your foot down!

Low-drag setting called "Monza" because Hockenheim was the Mercedes test track, I guess?

As you can probably tell, this was a car never intended for shopping or school runs. But on the other hand, pairing the 2.5-litre engine, aggressive aerodynamics and huge 18-inch wheels with slick racing tyres made for one hell of a racecar, much quicker than a proper Group A car: CAMS only allowed it into the country because they’d realised something had to be done about Dick Johnson’s Sierras, and the Sport Evo was BMW’s slice of the pie. That the Nissan GT-R had since become even more dominant than the Sierra was an unforeseen headache.

Still, Tony Longhurst’s yellow machine was hitting the track with some 274 kW under the bonnet, at a screaming 8,750rpm, and in a car that weighed only 900kg – plus a touch of real downforce. A brave driver could really fling such a machine around, and even expect to bring home results if the circuit that week didn’t have too many long straights...

Enter Amaroo Park, stage right.

24 April – AMSCAR Round 1
A reminder for those who came in late: AMSCAR, or "Amaroo Super Cars", was a single-track championship run solely at Sydney's Amaroo Park. A track running its own championship was nothing new, especially in the crowd-pleasing "multi sprint race" format, but AMSCAR was different for a couple of reasons. Firstly, thanks to generous sponsors, there'd always been serious money up for grabs, which made the series an important earner that regularly attracted Sydney-based pros like Colin Bond. Secondly (and not unrelatedly), the series had a lucrative TV deal with Channel Seven, foreshadowing the coming age when watching races live from your living room would be de rigeur.

This being 1991, however, the recession was hitting AMSCAR as well, and the series was down to another anaemic three-round schedule with grids getting awfully close to the ten-car barrier. Those ten included Bob Holden in his #13 Toyota Corolla, Colin Bond in his #8 Caltex Sierra, Garry Willmington in his Toyota Supra Turbo, and of course Tony Longhurst in the #25 BMW M3 Evo. Sadly for everyone else, however, Gibson Motorsport had entered one GT-R for Mark Skaife.

Mark Gibbs in the new GIO Commodore (photo taken at Lakeside)

All these had been competing since the start of the year, so the new cars on the grid were a quartet of Holdens, as Trevor Ashby (in the #3 Lansvale Smash Repairs entry), Bob Forbes' driver Mark Gibbs (#21 GIO car), and privateers Terry Finnigan (Foodtown #27) and Bob Pearson (Pro-Duct #33) all upgraded to the new VN Commodore to replace their outdated Walkies. Of these Pearson's was probably the most notable – chassis PE 011 was actually the first VN ever built by Perkins Engineering, anteceding even the Mobil cars Peter Brock and Larry himself were driving (indeed, it was probably Pearson's order that had funded Larry's entry in last year's Eastern Creek 500...). Unlike Win Percy's factory car, however, none of these had the means to develop the new engines allowed in the rules, so they had to improvise with what they had: all four simply acquired a VN bodyshell (plus a Group A bodykit, available through Holden Motorsport), then fitted it out with their existing fuel-injected Walkinshaw V8.

As with last year, the AMSCAR format was a pair of sprint races of 10 laps each, a very different beast to the 50-minute ATCC rounds – no preserving the tyres, just maximum attack! That approach suited the GT-R just fine, as despite struggling with understeer, Skaife still claimed pole position having got around Amaroo Park faster than any Group A car had gone before.

The speed of the GT-R was an old story by this point, but it was still sobering to watch it happen in real time. At the start, Skaife blasted away from the line and simply left the rest behind, setting a blistering pace around the tight Sydney autodrome. By the second lap he was 2 seconds clear of the next car (Tony Longhurst in the M3), so we may be grateful that Bond, Finnigan and Gibbs made the first heat worth watching with a brilliant little dice for 3rd. All the same, Skaife took the flag with a 16.3-second gap back to Longhurst, having pulled out better than 1.5 seconds per lap (and reduced the lap record to 51.16 seconds along the way).

Heat 2 looked like being a case of second verse, same as the first. Skaife once again had, "A lead of three seconds in the first five seconds!" in Neil Crompton's words, but this time he was unable to extend it any futher. Longhurst drove his heart out to stay within 1.7 seconds of Skaife, in 2nd, while Gibbs and Finnigan resumed their proto-V8 duel. The point of difference was that Heat 2 didn’t really feature Bondy, who received a love tap from Gibbs off the line that ruined his start. In his recovery drive, Bond had to fight his way past Bob Pearson in his #33 Pro-Duct Commodore, and by a stroke of luck, Channel Seven were taking feed from Bond's exterior RaceCam when he was exiting Stop Corner and caught Pearson lighting it up, getting sideways and tapping the wall!

Skaife, however, lost the race when his Nissan sickened with a misfire on lap 4, leaving Longhurst free to win as he pleased. "I could have got out and run alongside, it was going so slow," Skaife moaned, and he wasn't wrong. The car made it back to the pits and retired, a surprising development when the GT-R was supposed to be reliable by now. My guess? The race was only intended as a money-maker for the Gibson team, so the car had been put together with spare parts left lying around the workshop. If that was the case, it would not be something the Longhurst team could count on when they returned for the shared ATCC round in June...