Back to Business: Lakeside, Winton & Amaroo

Normal service resumed when the scene returned to the Australian Touring Car Championship proper. Rounds 4 and 5 at Lakeside and Winton respectively fell to Jim Richards and his Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R – but famously, not Round 6 at Amaroo Park.

One thing I haven't really done this year is discuss chassis numbers, detail exactly which cars each driver was sitting in for each race they entered. I apologise. To remedy that, ahead of this entry I set myself the challenge of getting chassis numbers for every single car in these middle three ATCC races and... to be honest, I failed. There are still a handful of privateer Commodores and especially Corollas in the tiddler class that never seem to get identified, falling through the gap where, "Really Obscure Car" fails to overlap with, "Punters who Care Enough to Find Out". There's only so much I can do given a subscription to V8 Sleuth costs omigod $440 a year, a price that tells me it's aimed at the socially-secure older gentlemen who own and race the actual cars rather than bloggers who needed a cheap hobby back in the GFC. As a Millennial, most of my money is of course tied up in massive stockpiles of avocado toast, so as tantalising as a day in the Sleuth's vaults would be it looks like I'll be locked out for a while yet.

That said, chassis numbers for most of the big-name drivers are fairly well established at this point, so here's the list so far:

• Cars #1 and #2, the GT-Rs of Richards and Skaife, chassis GMS GT-R 3 and GMS GT-R 2, respectively. GT-R 1 was written off after that crash in Adelaide, so GT-R 3 was built to replace it while GT-R 2 did the spadework of that epic off-season test programme. So I'm guessing that GMS GT-R 2 would've been Skaife's car and GT-R 3 was Richo's, because why wouldn't you give your newer, better car to your championship contender?
  
• Car #3, the Dulux-sponsored VN Commodore of the Lansvale Smash Repairs team, was probably chassis LRT1.
• Car #05, Peter Brock's Mobil Commodore, was of course Perkins Engineering chassis PE 012.
• Car #6, Tim Grant's Sizzler Skyline. Haven't nailed a proper chassis number for it yet, but the commentary from Bathurst 1990 led us to believe it had been Mark Skaife's '89 car.
• Car #8, Colin Bond's trusty Caltex Sierra, chassis CXT1. Debuted back at the Oran Park enduro in 1988, raced by Bondy more or less ever since.
  
• Car #11, the other Mobil Commodore of Larry Perkins, built by the man himself as chassis PE 013.
• Car #13, Bob Holden's long-suffering Toyota Corolla. Would actually end up with more Bathurst starts than any car in history, but no actual chassis number that I know of.
• Car #14, Warren Jonsson's VL Walkinshaw. Was actually chassis TWR 022, the purple Herbie Clips car driven by Tom himself over in Europe in 1988. It had been sent back to Australia for that planned '89 ATCC that never happened, and since been Perkins-ised and used by the Holden Racing Team before being sold off to the privateers. Today, that was Jonsson.
  
• Car #16, Win Percy's VN Commodore, chassis HRT 026. Built new for 1991.
• Car #17, Dick Johnson's Shell Sierra. Chassis DJR5, originally built for the 1989 endurance season and used by Dick to take his final ATCC wins (at Symmons Plains and Phillip Island 1990). It was also the car Radisich & Allam had driven to 2nd place at Bathurst 1990.
  
• Car #18, John Bowe's other Shell Sierra. Chassis DJR6, the final Dick Johnson Sierra, built for the 1990 enduros. This was the car that failed at Bathurst that year, and then exploded so close to the finish at the Eastern Creek 500.
  
• Car #20, Alan Jones' BMW M3 Sport Evo. Forum-searching reveals this car was originally built by someone called Matter for the works Schnitzer BMW team for the 1990 DTM season. I haven't been able to find anything definite, but it feels like "Matter" was the equivalent of Dencar for Commodore teams, an outsource for caged bodyshells utilised by several teams. As such, both Longhurst Racing machines have rather confusing chassis numbers, with Jones' recorded as M3 1-166 3/90. Unfortunately the information doesn't get more specific than that: I'd love to know who drove it in which races of the 1990 DTM, but further Googling had so far revealed nothing. As with Japan, the information is probably out there but not recorded in English, and the sheer number of cars built by Schnitzer would make it a tough slog. Which sucks for me, because I want to know and mein Deutsche ist Scheisse.
• Car #21, Mark Gibbs' GIO Commodore. Chassis RF04, also known as Dencar 01. Built new for 1991, and due to have a very short career.
  
• Car #25, Tony Longhurst's Benson & Hedges M3 Evo. Chassis M3 1-161 3/90 (see above). We do apparently know this was the car that won the 1990 Wellington 500, but that's based on the TV commentator mentioning it when (spoiler alert) Tony crashed it during the '91 event. Again, I'd love to know who drove it in the DTM, but nothing concrete seems to be out there.
  
• Car #27, Terry Finnigan's Foodtown Commodore. Listed on V8 Sleuth by a VIN rather than a chassis number, AVN914652, suggesting it started as a road car rather than as a Holden Motorsport shell. Would still be around into the upcoming 5.0-litre era, but more than that unknown.
• Car #28, Kevin Waldock's Playscape Sierra. Chassis MM6, the customer Sierra built by Andrew Miedecke for Waldock back in 1989.
  
• Car #30, Glenn Seton's Peter Jackson Sierra. Chassis numbers are a bit cloudy here, as both GSR1 and GSR2 were built for the start of the 1989 season; one of them was crashed and badly damaged at Lakeside, but then later in the year the team were back to two cars. So, was the crashed car rebuilt, or was it scrapped and a new one built? I don't know, and the recent Seton book is likewise beyond my pocket for now. So we'll toss the coin and guess it's GSR2.
  
• Car #33, Bob Pearson's Pro-Duct Commodore. As mentioned in the last entry, chassis PE 011.
  
• Car #43, Brian Bolwell's Sierra. Chassis TLR5, the last Tony Longhurst Sierra built for Bathurst 1990, the one with a yellow cage that set a new lap record in practice.
  
• Car #44, Mike Twigden's Sierra. As Bolwell's teammate, also an ex-Longhurst car, either TLR3 or 4 (the usual confusion applies here, as these Wolf-built cars from Germany are almost indistinguishable).
  
• Car #48, Peter Verheyen's Toyota Corolla. Nothing known, though a rummage through my photo collection made me realise I had a good shot of it coming over Bitupave Hill at Amaroo (still with Eastern Creek co-driver John Vernon's name on the window), so I made it my page image above. The little guys deserve more exposure.
• Car #52, Peter Doulman's BMW M3 vanilla. Probably the second of the three JPS cars built in 1987, as the first one (which started as a 325i with the build interrupted halfway through) probably wouldn't have been worth much to customers. Would've had much in common with...
  
• Car #53, John Cotter's BMW M3. The third and last of the JPS team's hardware from 1987, which is easier to identify because of its unique radio antenna layout. Both non-Evo M3s were now being run by M3 Motorsports, an outfit established by Cotter and Doulman to run their ex-JPS BMWs. As such, they were prepared at Doulman Automotive in Auburn, Sydney, and together they'd won their class at Bathurst in 1989.
  

At the very bottom of the list we have cars #74 and #76, 1.6-litre Corollas entered by Bob Holden Motors so Bob could blood his Bathurst co-drivers (Frank Binding and Mike Conway, since you're wondering). I wouldn't be surprised if they were ex-factory cars from Toyota Team Australia, but I don't know that for a fact. And as for Kevin Heffernan's PACE Racing VL Commodore, I couldn't find anything at all – not a chassis number, not a racing number, not even a good period photo so I'd know whether it was a VL SS or a Walky. Kev, mate, if you're reading this, get in touch.

Round 4 – Lakeside, 28 April
Now that we've scared off of the lightweights, let's get into some actual racing.

At Lakeside (unusually, the first of two rounds to be held at Lakeside this year), Gentleman Jim was very nearly as dominant as any mortal driver could be. Thanks to a brilliant 53.43-second qualifying lap he had the luxury of starting from pole, giving him an open track to make the most of the GT-R's awesome starting capability. From there he inevitably won the race, eking 54 laps out of the allotted 50 minutes and leading every single one of them. The only scratch on this perfect performance was that fastest-lap honours went to his teammate Mark Skaife, who posted a 53.78 at some point during proceedings. Skaife had qualified only 3rd but sprang off the line to make it an immediate Nissan 1-2, which was naturally how they finished.

From there was a yawning 9-second gap to Tony Longhurst in the M3 Sport Evo, while the other local boy and crowd favourite, Dick Johnson, had made a brilliant start of his own to rise from 12th to 6th by the end of the first lap. Having virtually rebuilt the car overnight, with new suspension and a new engine, such a turn of speed was heartening for the de facto Queensland national team, but it all came to nought in the end. To make the distance Johnson had to pit for new tyres, and rejoined almost clouting the Nissans as they roared past the pit exit – meaning he'd gone a whole lap down in only half a race. He finished only 9th, while John Bowe, after a spirited early battle with Longhurst, could only manage 10th.

Of the lesser runners? Glenn Seton took a hit from Win Percy in the Karussell on lap 1 and slid off into the dust, rejoining having lost some places; the right half of his rear bumper hung loose for the rest of the race. For his part, Percy was eventually pressured into a mistake by Longhurst, the Dorset farmer's son locking a brake on the entry to Hungry Corner (so named because it was waiting to swallow you if you got too hungry with the brake pedal). Percy had to abandon the corner to pull up the HRT Commodore, letting Tony skittle through – though only just. He too was pushing like crazy.

In the end though, there was no covering up that this was another overwhelming victory for the R32 Skyline: Richards and Skaife lapped the whole field up to 5th. That doesn't mean Skaife was acting as Richo's tail-gunner, however: "Mark's a hard guy to have behind you, I can tell you!" was the old master's wry comment on the podium, and, a proven winner these days, Skaife half-jokingly agreed: "We tortured each other for the whole distance."

Round 5 – Winton, 5 May
Winton likewise went Richo's way, again after starting from pole. What was his secret? "It's simple," he explained. "You just go as fast as you can without slipping off the track." Skaife would've done well to listen to him, as he ran out of road and landed in the dirt several times in an attempt to go faster. He ended up only 5th on the grid, a fact that would be key to his race the next day.

At the start, finding himself boxed in behind Win Percy, Skaife elected to expand his definition of the track to include the grass between the tarmac and the pit wall, taking the 4WD Nissan four-wheel-driving in an attempt to leapfrog the Commodore. When the flag waved, Skaife turned hard right and roared around the HRT Commodore as it bogged down with wheelspin, out-dragging the Holden V8 even with his Yokohamas biting on slippery grass rather than nice grippy tarmac! He made the pass and rejoined 3rd behind Glenn Seton, but in scrambling back onto the track he supposedly gave Win Percy a tap. So whether it was for that, or just for leaving the circuit and gaining an advantage, he was eventually given a stop-and-go penalty – one not handed down until after he'd fought a hard but clean battle to get past Glenn Seton for 2nd. With a third of the race gone, Skaifey's work was utterly undone and he was forced to start all over again.

Fred Gibson wasn't happy of course, firing off the usual team boss lines about how the infraction wasn't that bad ("It was only two wheels off the track..."; no, Freddo, it was four), the stewards were being overly-cautious (they weren't), and anyway, wasn't it a bit late to enact a penalty? On that one he kind of had a point – while it was true that race control had waited twelve minutes to announce their decision, which makes one wonder what the hell they could've been arguing about, there wasn't exactly a statute of limitations for this stuff... and the argument was predicated on the wrongdoing being immediately obvious, which rather undermined his other points!

Regardless, Skaife got his elbows out and worked his way back up through the field, and when the chequered flag came out after 47 laps he was back where he belonged – in 2nd place, behind his team leader. This time he had to share fastest-lap honours with Richards, however, who’d clocked an identical 1:01.86 laptime.

With the season half over, the stats were incredible: out of five rounds, Gibson Motorsport had taken a perfect five victories, all of them slam-dunk 1-2s. I'll say that again: in five attempts, their cars had finished 1st and 2nd five times. On four occasions they’d also started from pole and taken the fastest lap (with only the Dick Johnson team’s efforts at Wanneroo preventing a complete whitewash on that front as well). With 95 and 80 points respectively, it was clear either Richards or Skaife would be crowned champion within the next couple of races; best-of-the-rest Tony Longhurst was struggling with just 46.

It would be wrong to say this was getting monotonous, however; this had started monotonous, and now it was just getting silly. The GT-R was simply too great a leap forward for anyone to entertain hopes of beating it, and it was beginning to look like it would take nothing less than a miracle for another car to win.

The miracle occurred.

Round 6 – Amaroo, 2 June
From the beginning, the sixth round of the championship at Sydney's Amaroo Park was against the run of play. For the first time all year, no GT-R was starting from the front row: the Dick Johnson cars had both qualified on experimental new Dunlop tyres (and indeed, the head of development from Dunlop in Japan had flown in to watch), resulting in a front-row lockout for the Shell Sierras. Dick himself had earned himself P2 with a time of 51.02 seconds, while Bowe had creased the tarmac on the way to pole with a time of 50.58.

The ongoing tyre war had also thrown the Perkins team a bone, as Bridgestone coughed up a new compound for Larry and their golden boy Peter Brock. Brock's 5th place on the grid with a lap of 50.38 told the whole story – it was an identical time to the one set by Alan Jones in the M3, a heroic effort given the Commodore's obesity and primitive suspension. Unfortunately, like Bridgestones since time immemorial, they would prove great over a single lap but fade quickly, a toxic combination in the current ATCC.

So where were the GT-Rs? Skaife had managed to pull out a 51.06 to qualify 3rd for the race, a disappointment that traced to fitting a set of super-hard Yokohamas in an attempt to balance the car – the 4WD Nissan's tendency to understeer into corners and oversteer out again was going to make for a long day at Amaroo. By contrast, Richards had punched a hole in his engine block when a conrod bolt failed, leaving him without a qualifying time and forcing him to start from last place on the grid. The imperturbable one remained unperturbed, however, no doubt remembering that he’d also started dead last for this race in 1987, and still gone on to win: "It will be fun," he said. The catch was, in '87 he'd been driving a BMW...

At the start, both DJR Sierras got away to good starts running side-by-side – which is how they stayed, appropriately, until Dunlop corner. Happily, the wall of Shell cars prevented Skaife from getting an early break, with John Bowe acting as tail-gunner and keeping Skaife behind him for a good four laps while Johnson pulled out a handy 2-second lead. It was a doomed effort, of course, and everyone knew it – Skaife inevitably used his superior traction to nip past Bowe coming out of Stop corner – but the DJR boys had at least kept Skaife from making a gap off the line and then driving to the flag at his leisure. Now, it would be a tyre war to the finish. Game on.

Richards, on the other hand, had passed eight cars on the opening lap to rise from 22nd to 14th place in just 1.94km, quite an effort on such a narrow track, even if it was mainly against Corollas and privateer Commodores! By lap 6 Richards was up to 8th place and carving through the field fast, while Johnson's advantage over Skaife had been shaved back to just one second. Two laps later Skaife was right on his bumper, and on lap 10, going over the top of Bitupave Hill, Skaife was finally able to out-drag Johnson and assume the lead. Those trick new Dunlops simply hadn't lasted.

Crucially, however, following Skaife through on that move was Tony Longhurst in his BMW M3 Sport Evo, rear wing set resolutely to Nürburgring and setting blistering lap after blistering lap. Longhurst gnawed on Skaife like a dog on a bone for the next eighteen laps, forcing him to keep the pace up as the Nissan’s tyres got sicker and sicker, its handling more and more wayward. Eventually, on lap 28, Skaife's shortage of grip saw him run gently wide through Dunlop Corner and, his BMW still running like it was on rails, Longhurst didn't hesitate for a second: Tony was through and gone, the B&H team leading their second AMSCAR race in a row and, significantly, their first ATCC race for the year.

Richards meanwhile criss-crossed Brock out of the Hairpin to move up another place, then moved on to Seton, and then Bowe whose tyres had also expired. Taking the hint, Johnson pitted for fresh rubber, thus removing himself from the equation altogether. His tyres likewise completely shot, Skaife had a huge powerslide late in the race, and that was enough for Richards to pounce, promoting the man who'd started dead last to 2nd place. With five minutes remaining Richo set off to catch the leading BMW, and got within 1.6 seconds... but then the chequered flag flew, and Longhurst greeted it first, becoming the first car other than a GT-R to win a round of the 1991 ATCC.

It was a shock result, and one that proved what the Gibson team had been saying all along – the GT-R was not invincible and, an aspect of the programme that doesn't get much mention, a lot of their success was down to just doing a very good job. In particular, Richards' mastery in keeping some meat on his tyres for the whole race was thrown into sharp relief by Skaife's inability to do the same, and the canny old Kiwi was still the one they feared when he had a good car under him. As Tony later confessed: "The last ten laps went on forever and when I realised it was Jim and not Mark in my mirrors, I shit myself!"