The Cutting: December 2021

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.

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

Brock & Miedecke on their way to a 10th-place finish, nothing to sneeze at given what they'd been through.

The Great Race had been very kind to Tony Longhurst thus far, but all that changed on lap 93, when the #25 BMW M3 Evo was suddenly going slow through The Cutting, a wisp of smoke emerging from underneath. At that moment the team's other car, the #20, was in the pits for a scheduled stop, so the mechanics team would have to reset very quickly. As it happened, by the time the #25 reached McPhillamy the wisp of smoke had become a full and fluffy plume, as the right-front tyre had copped a puncture and was now rubbing on the guard. "It was all going too smooth to be realistic, I s'pose..." sighed a resigned Frank Gardner, a man who'd been there and done that so many times before, both as a driver and a team manager. The silver lining was that the car wasn't far off a scheduled stop anyway, so the damage to their race time was about as minimised as it could be. When the car finally elbowed its way into its pit box, the thin sheet metal of the wheel arch was quickly pounded into a rough shape and a new tyre was fitted. Tony Longhurst was shoved back into the driver's seat to replace Alan Jones, and the car was released after just 44 seconds sitting still, rejoining still in 7th place.

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.

Unstoppable.

There was nothing the rest could do about it. On lap 97, Seton pitted from 2nd to hand over to Gregg Hansford. As was now the fashion the car got a pad change, and some oil was added, while Gregg gestured furiously for the mechanics to clean the windscreen, which at first they seemed hesitant to do. The stop ultimately took 64 seconds to complete, leaving Gregg to rejoin having tumbled down the field to 4th. In fact, he fed back out only a few hundred metres ahead of the GT-R and was instantly under pressure not to go a lap down. By lap 99, at Murray's, the question was no longer in dispute, as Godzilla would shortly become the only car on the lead lap.

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.

HRT's lead car before its mid-race panelbeating.

At the same time, the GIO car came back to the pits for a scheduled stop: Rohan Onslow was out and Mark Gibbs was back in, with fresh brake pads to play with. The left-front of the car had given something a nudge, though, and some red tape was needed to hold a loose front bumper on. Having come in 5th, when the car was dropped Gibbs was off and away still 5th, rejoining without losing a spot. If all was looking rosy for the Nissan teams, it was still too early to pop the champagne: from the commentary box, Mark Oastler pointed out that it was about here, roughly 4½ hours into the race, that the GT-R had struck transmission trouble in 1990. Every lap from here on out was virgin territory for the GT-R.

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.

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.

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...

Reminder that Falcon and Commodore body styles for NASCAR already existed.

Paper Beats Rock, Rock Beats Fire
Back on track the Hansford Sierra continued to slow, and by lap 122 it had a definite misfire, crackling and popping its way past the Channel Seven microphones placed all around the circuit. The Seton team claimed it was a plug problem and they'd be able to fix it at the next stop, and so far the car was still running, but there could be no doubt it was also getting progressively worse. Case in point, two laps later Hansford was passed by Brock on the climb out of The Cutting – a Sierra passed by a Commodore under power? Only if the Sierra was very sick! Since Seton was already standing by in pit lane, Hansford ran up the white flag and pitted at the end of that lap so the team could nurse the car's wounds.

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.

Even the Lusty/Sala Tyrepower Sierra was doing better than that.

On lap 123, with a yawning three-minute gap back to his HRT rivals, Mark Skaife pitted once more in the leading GT-R, after a slightly abbreviated 30-lap stint. Fuel and tyres only should've made it a quick stop, but the right-front wheel was once again giving the team grief, refusing to part with the hub until persuaded by the mechanic, leading to a slightly elongated 40-second stop. This wasn't a perfect run, but nothing crippling was happening to Nissan today, and Jim Richards – now behind the wheel for the duration – rejoined still leading by a lap.

The following lap then saw John Bowe emerge from the Elbow with smoke coming from beneath the #17. In the Dick Johnson Racing garage, hearts sank: this looked pretty terminal. Poor Bowey was sitting in a smokehouse, the stuff pouring into the cockpit through the dashboard air vents, to say nothing of what was coming in through the window. Having limped all the way down Conrod, he pulled up in his pit box while they were still giving service to the #18 – now the only DJR car still running – but it hardly mattered: they weren't stacking the #17, they were retiring it. Ever the optimist, Bowe remained in the driver's seat even as they lifted the bonnet to find out if it was recoverable, but no such luck: eventually team manager Neal Lowe leaned in the window to give him the bad news, and Bowe cut the engine, undid his belts and climbed out. The TV cameras asked Lowe what the problem was, and his only answer was a single shrug of the shoulders: they didn't know. The mighty Cosworth turbo just didn't have more than 123 laps in it, so the car was pushed to the back of the garage to tick itself cold.

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.

To everyone else, this car was having a surprisingly good day. To Allan Moffat, it was just another disappointment.

The team persevered until lap 140, when Seton brought the #30 back to the pits permanently: the bonnet went up as the team had one last look at curing it, and then Bo climbed in the passenger seat to have a word with his bitterly-disappointed son, who finally killed the engine. A long-faced Glenn told the cameras, "As soon as you put the engine under load on throttle it just starts missing and farting. I don't really know [what's wrong]." The car did return to the track to tour around slowly a couple more times, but eventually the Seton crew had to do an Elsa: running or not, all hope of a good result was gone. The #30 Peter Jackson Sierra of Seton & Hansford would ultimately be classified 9th overall, with 146 laps completed.

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.

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.

More positively, by lap 132 Neil Crompton had finally been given permission to return Elvis to the pits, though he kept it as far off the track as he could so's not to interfere with anyone else's race – on the narrow, walled-off Mount Panorama circuit, easier said than done! Said Crompo of the whole affair later:

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.

They mightn't have won the cheque from Prima Holidays, but HRT were the pit stop kings when it mattered.

Now, at this stage the Gibson team's other car, #2 GT-R, was down in 12th place on only its 128th lap. Eight laps earlier, its driver Drew Price had set a provisional lap record with a 2:15.14... assuming that it was, in fact, Drew Price behind the wheel at the time. On lap 140 (for the leader), the broadcast mentioned that Price had again demolished the lap record with a 2:14.88, even though the car's driver was now almost certainly Mark Skaife. Exactly when Skaife got in the car is hard to determine, as either I or Channel Seven (or both...) had missed it entirely: adding to the confusion, the final handover of the #1 car had taken place during an ad break, and although they apparently showed a replay moments later, they neglected to mention that it was a replay. Eventually the commentators corrected themselves and admitted it was now Skaife driving the car, but by then that was fairly obvious. Whenever it happened, Fred Gibson had now put his fastest driver in the #2 GT-R with instructions to drive it until it broke: it was too far behind to act as a backstop, so they might as well go for fastest-lap honours instead. And indeed, on lap 130 Skaifey set Group A lap record that would stand for all time: 2:14.50.

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.

Longhurst at his first stop, when the guard was all that needed fixing.

In the meantime, we got perhaps the biggest shock of the entire race. While Gibson Motorsport were dealing with their sick child, Alan Jones abruptly returned to the pits in the Benson & Hedges BMW, switching it off and hopping out. That something terminal had happened to the class leader was borne out when the mechanics didn't even bother trying to fix it, immediately grabbing the various window pillars and working together to push it back into the garage. Whatever that Sport Evo update had given the car in speed had come at the cost of reliability, which had hitherto been the M3's biggest asset. Although known for being a bit of a diva, Jonesy was surprisingly sanguine about it all when John Brady came knocking.

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.

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.

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.

The main difference between lap 1 and 161? Dead bugs.

The job was finally done. After a decade of disappointment, Nissan had won Bathurst, and in dominant fashion. Their total race time – just 6 hours, 19 minutes and 14.8 seconds – set a record that wouldn't be beaten for nearly 20 years. This one had never even been in dispute.

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!"

Source

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

The Cutting

Wednesday 22 December 2021

The '91 Adelaide Grand Prix

Sunday 12 December 2021

Bathurst '91, Pt.3: Godzilla