26 January: CAMS Knows Best

The excitement and buzz of a new season, as the cars hit the track for a whole new event to start the year off with a bang. The mood was only slightly dampened by the latest round of executive meddling from the offices of CAMS, but – and go with me on this – what if the rule-makers had actually got it right?

Starting line-up for Heat 2 of Round 1, Amaroo Park.

26 Jan: the Winfield Triple Challenge
The year opened with the Winfield Triple Challenge, a new event at Eastern Creek Raceway in western Sydney. The concept was touring cars, motorcyles and drag racing all in one meeting, held on the Invasion Day long weekend when the crowds had plenty of free time. In this era both Oran and Amaroo Parks were still open, so Eastern Creek had to come up with a reason why you should visit their circuit rather than one of the others. The Nissan 500 enduro of 1990 had proven less than the killer app they were looking for, because it hadn't been repeated; 1991's poaching of the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix from Phillip Island had been more successful, even if they wouldn't keep it for very long. 1992 would see Eastern Creek's first championship touring car round, so with that on the horizon, the Winfield Triple Challenge might be just the thing to prime the pump.

Drag racing that weekend was held on the long front straight, heading in the opposite direction to the road circuit (the accompanying Sydney Dragway wouldn't open until 2004). Whether they had funny cars, doorslammers or whatever I don't know, but the Top Fuel event was won by visiting Californian Glenn Mikres.

The bike racing on the other hand has seemingly disappeared down the memory hole, as it's really hard to find information. Some Sherlock-style deduction leads me to believe the headline event was a non-championship 750cc Superbike race, with at least one supporting race for 250cc bikes (won by Garry McCoy). Some patient Googling dug up, of all things, an interview in an obscure aviation magazine, which revealed the main event was won by a young Mat Mladin, impressive when it was his first-ever Superbike start. He went on to win the 1992 Australian Superbike Championship on a Kawasaki ZXR750R, and from there went on to set a record number of poles, wins and championships in Superbike racing Stateside, so it was no fluke.

The Group A touring car segment of the weekend consisted of a pair of 15-lap sprint races, basically a dry run for the new ATCC format. Despite the cultural memory of Godzilla's total dominance, the reality turns out to be more complicated, because here in January it seemed CAMS's attempts to peg everyone back to the same level had actually borne fruit. Glenn Seton had taken pole position for the first race with a lap of 1:35.44, with Dick Johnson alongside with a 1:35.83. The newly-hobbled Nissans were only on row three, with Jim Richards ahead of Mark Skaife with a time of 1:36.74 – beaten by 1.3 seconds!

The GT-R's 1992 Winfield livery is so iconic hardly anyone even remembers the Nissan corporate livery of '91.

Holden was somewhat under-represented this weekend, with both HRT and Peter Brock's "Advantage Racing" teams staying home to prepare for the season proper, and Larry Perkins fronting up in an unsponsored VL Walkinshaw. That left the Lion's latest to be represented by the privateers, starting with Bob Pearson in his #33 Pro-Duct VN Commodore, now with a very cool "spider web" livery on the bonnet (the same livery the car's current owner has restored it to, right down to the Winfield event stickers on the doors). There was also Steve Reed in the #3 Lansvale Smash Repairs VN; Terry Finnigan in the #27 Foodtown VN; young Tim Grant in his dad's Sizzler HR31 Skyline; Brian Callaghan Jr in Sr's VL Walkinshaw; Bryan Sala in a #50 Tyrepower Sierra; John Cotter and Peter Doulman in their M3 Motorsport BMWs; John Vernon in the green Verheyan Corolla; Garry Willmington in his MA70 Supra Turbo... basically the whole Sydney scene had turned up for the event. It showed how much money BAT was spending this year that they were simultaneously funding Jim Read's Top Fuel dragster, the Gibson Motorsport GT-Rs, and the Eastern Creek meeting as a whole.

Heat 1 began with Johnson making a demon start to lead the early laps. Behind him, Glenn Seton started a tough race by squeezing John Bowe up against the pit wall and dislodging the Shell Sierra's front bumper – messy. Having dropped to 3rd behind Larry Perkins, Seton then lost another place to a daring Mark Skaife, who threw his GT-R up the inside at Turn 9. Chastened, Seton got his head down and started pushing, getting the place back under power along the front straight. Then he started inching up on Perkins, who made it easy by fumbling Turn 9 so he couldn't get smoothly on the power, leaving Seton to ease past on the way out again (amusingly, just as Alan Jones in the commentary box was telling us how the linear torque of the Commodore was such a huge help at Eastern Creek – Commentator's Curse never failed us). Only Dick Johnson now stood between Seton and the win, and although he was a long way ahead, Glenn began steadily reeling him in.

With five laps to go, Seton was right behind Johnson, close enough to catch a slipstream down the front straight. With the margins so tight, that was all he needed: as they crossed the start/finish line, Seton pulled out and eased past Dick in a straight line, assuming the lead with just four laps to the finish. Seton's car was on Bridgestones where Johnson, of course, was on Dunlops, and it seems Dick had made a slightly wrong choice of compound as his car was now sliding around more than Seton's. Indeed, dying tyres meant Johnson lost 2nd place to both Nissans shortly before the flag, leaving Seton free to cruise home at his leisure.

Bowe's miserable race was completed when Skaife lunged up the inside of him at Turn 9, couldn't quite pull the heavy Nissan up in time and tagged him amidships, tipping the Sierra into a half-spin. That dislodged the loose front spoiler completely, and Bowe finished the race in a car that looked like it was missing its bottom jaw. "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy," snapped Jonesy in an amusing case of sour grapes: John Bowe may or may not have been his equal in an open-wheeler, we'll never know for sure, but there can be no question Bowe was a far better driver in a car with a roof. John Bowe was one of the few who wouldn't be bullied by Jones on track, and he didn't like that much.

Heat 2 – apparently, later the same day – they all gridded up in the order they'd finished Heat 1. This time Seton won the drag into the first corner and never looked back, holding it to the flag for an easy win. With different tyre compounds fitted, Johnson and Bowe got ahead of Richards and Skaife, leaving the big Dick to end the weekend ahead of Richo overall.

23 Feb: The Championship Beginneth
Almost a month later, the circus gathered back in Sydney for the first round of the Shell Australian Touring Car Championship, the joint AMSCAR meeting at Amaroo Park. It was here we got our first look at the new format for ATCC rounds, which was appropriate when it had basically been nicked from AMSCAR in the first place.

Channel Seven had noticed the popularity Amaroo's one-track AMSCAR series had been enjoying, thanks to a combination of generous sponsors, a lights-to-flag TV deal, and a preference for short, sharp racing with as few as ten laps. They also couldn't help noticing they were spending all this money sending camera crews to the championship races, and so far weren't really getting much for it. They wondered if applying a more AMSCAR-ish format to the ATCC might generate some more excitement for TV audiences, and start bringing in some profit.

Traditionally, an ATCC round had been run like a miniature Grand Prix, with practice and qualifying sessions culminating in a single hour-long race. For 1992, Seven got that changed to an AMSCAR-like format of two short half-hour races instead. A normal qualifying session would determine the bulk of the grid, with the top six graduating to a new "Peter Jackson Dash For Cash", a three-lap sprint race to sort out the grid from 1st to 6th (and hand out some extra prize money). This would form the grid for Heat 1, while Heat 2 would see everyone start in the order they'd finished Heat 1, with the crucial detail that no tyre changes were allowed between the heats. Some strategy would therefore be necessary to ensure a good finish in both heats, as drivers would have to decide whether to drive hard early and sacrifice Heat 2 for a higher result in Heat 1, or vice versa. The overall round winner would be determined by applying the new points structure to each heat and adding them together, ranking the drivers by the total. Convoluted maybe, but it promised plenty on-track action with a touch of intrigue as drivers fought to keep some rubber under them.

Crucially, however, all rounds had to count toward the driver's season total – no more dropped scores. Mark Skaife was unable to be reached for comment.

The Peter Jackson Dash had promoted Brocky from 5th to 2nd on the grid and he made the most of it, powering up Bitupave Hill to take the early lead in Heat 1. From there he was never headed – despite the best efforts of Seton – to take the first championship win by a Holden since he'd won Surfers Paradise in his VK in 1986.

Heat 2 was another matter, as the rain came down and made it a wet race. On the upside that gave everyone fresh tyres, as they couldn't run their existing slicks in the wet, but on the other hand it left no-one with a prayer against the 4WD Nissans. As Brock and Seton virtually stalled on the line, both GT-Rs zoomed up the hill and left the rest in their spray, swiftly joined by Mark Gibbs' GIO car who'd had to pick his way through the crowd. The BMWs also moved forward during the race, including a third M3 Evo entered by the Gardner team for youngster Paul Morris. Longhurst even put a move on Gibbs in the GIO Skyline, but had to retire the car when he got pinged for a noise infringement, so thank you once again NIMBYs. Amaroo Park had been open for 25 years – you all knew it was a racetrack when you moved there, goddammit...

Anyway, with a 3rd and a 1st in the two heats, Mark Skaife emerged the overall round winner, opening his 1992 bank account with a perfect 30 points. Richards was 2nd with 27, with Peter Brock 3rd (thanks to that stunning and unexpected victory in Heat 1), Seton 4th and Mark Gibbs rounding out the top five. At which point, it might be worth going back to Gentleman Jim's comment at the Eastern Creek weekend, which had been captured by the onboard TV cameras:

Darrell Eastlake: Jimmy Richards, I can't believe the difference in straight-line horsepower now?

Jim Richards: Nor can I, Darrell. That's what you get for winning all those races eh?

Eastlake: Well mate, they're doing to you what you were doing to them all year. It must be pretty frustrating knowing how fast the car can be?

Richards: CAMS knows best, Darrell.

That was a shocking outburst by the imperturbable standards of Jim Richards, the equivalent of kicking the cat for those of us who explode at normal temperatures. But here's the thing: CAMS did know best. Four races into 1992, and we'd had three different winners in three different makes of car, with the GT-Rs proving competitive, but not dominant. The scales were now balanced finely enough that variables like tyre life, inclement weather and, yes, driver skill were affecting the outcome, rather than which car you happened to be driving. It was early days yet, but so far it seemed the extra ballast and boost restriction for the Nissans were just what the doctor ordered.

In fact, if you really wanted to be a Pollyanna, you might even have suggested that Group A wasn't entirely beyond saving...

1992: We Touched The Stars

The end was nigh.

By the time engines fired up for the first race of 1992, the Principalities & Powers had already agreed this would be the final season run to Group A rules. '92 was officially a throwaway season, as everyone's focus shifted to the brave new world of 1993 and beyond. For Holden, that left them with a mere token commitment to racing this year. But for others – Nissan Australia's official works team, Gibson Motorsport – 1992 would see them going, almost literally, for broke.

 

The Holden Not-Racing Team
Predictably, the people in charge of the rulebook – the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, or CAMS – made one last attempt to re-balance the scales for 1992. To combat the short grids of 1991 and bring back the low-funded teams in the face of the ongoing Recession We Had To Have, they introduced a 7,500rpm rev limit for both the Holden VN Commodore and the Ford Sierra RS500.

It was a good idea in theory – eliminate the need for an expensive engine development programme, and reduce the need to constantly build new engines as existing ones were revved into oblivion. In practice, it took all the hard work of HRT's engine department and threw it in the bin. Bye-bye several million dollars' worth of investment, and bye-bye also to 400 kW from your naturally-aspirated Holden V8 – power that was desperately needed to make the car competitive. Being a genuine four-door family car, the heavy Commodore would continue to chew its tyres with or without a screaming 8,500rpm redline, so it might as well have kept the power...

There was only so much it could take... (source)

So inevitably, Holden simply threw in the towel for 1992, and put their focus into developing the new VP Commodore for the upcoming 5.0-litre V8 formula. Win Percy, former boss and lead driver for the Holden Racing Team, had now outstayed his visa, so they needed someone to replace him. It wasn't obvious who that should be, however. At the '91 Adelaide Grand Prix meeting the announcement had been made that John Harvey would be seconded from his role as marketing director of HSV to take on management of HRT, but who should fill the driver's seat?

Win Percy did return briefly in March, but then just as quickly departed again, with Auto Action citing, "a pressing family problem." In fact, we now know he was quietly edged out by HSV managing director John Crennan, who was looking to take a more active role in running the race team.

Tom [Walkinshaw], at that stage, entrusted me purely with the commercial side of things; I didn't get involved in the relationship he had with Win Percy.

I found that very, very frustrating that while you were responsible for the overall operations – to a large extent – the racing team aspect of it was to the side.

That existed through to 1992-93 when I said to Tom, "Hey, I'm really not interested in just doing purely the commercial side, I need a greater feel for the overall business."

... Up to that point it was a hell of a struggle. – John Crennan, interview on Supercars.com

I can tell you at the end of 1991, when I came back to reality, I had a tough time coming to grips with the loss of my son. I phoned Tom and said forget the bonus he had promised me, and I will go back and be with Wally [Storey] and the boys.

Sadly, John Crennan was determined I wasn't coming back and he made it unbearable for me. He said I wasn't welcome and I was only there for a week and then I went home again. He wanted to run the team. I had no way of working there. I never told Tom that, but I can say it now because it's old history. But that was why I came home.

There's a book out that gives the impression that what was left over when I left was ready for the skip. The reality was we had second [place] at the Grand Prix and Bathurst and it took an awful long time for a Holden team after that to come up with any results. – Win Percy, Holden Racing Team: 20th Anniversary

Crennan's ambition also explained why the next most obvious choice for the role was an utter impossibility. Peter Brock was a fan favourite and would probably have welcomed the job, having just split with Larry Perkins after only a single season back together, but with the Polarizer scandal only a few years in the past he was still persona non grata at Fishermans Bend, never mind the personal animosity that would continue to simmer between himself and Crennan for several more years. No, Peter could remain in the midfield with his own team, running on his Mobil sponsorship, thank you very much.

Well, what about Perkins then? No doubt he was approached, but Larry remained fiercely, even bloody-mindedly committed to independence, and in any case he was far too busy – with the incoming V8 formula, Perkins Engineering was the go-to for a new Commodore racecar, and the phone was probably ringing off the hook. So even though Brocky had departed and taken his Mobil money with him, Larry was still able to put together a bare-bones race programme with an outdated VL Walkinshaw, which he brought to the races on an open, single-car trailer.

So in the end, the man selected to fill the HRT seat was Perkins' 1991 co-driver, Tomas Mezera. As a former Bathurst winner he had the star power required to be a Holden factory driver, but more importantly, he was cheap and pliable. With development of the '93 car taking priority (with the intention to be ready for a beta run in the Sandown 500), HRT was planning an even more slashed '92 schedule than Perkins, contesting just three ATCC rounds (Sandown, Lakeside and Eastern Creek), plus the enduros. It led to grumbling from the media about Holden's apparent lack of commitment, and plenty of barbs about the "Holden Not-Racing Team".

Crennan summed up that decision with a single word: "Disaster... How could we tell sponsors to come and sponsor our race team but we wouldn't really be doing any racing?" Mezera agreed, saying, "It was just money pinching. They were crying poor, and I should say it wasn't much money in those days, but it was difficult. I'd do a race then I'd have two months off, it was a full time gig without being a full time gig."

Faster Horses: the Sierra in '92
Injury, meet insult: slapped with the same rev limit as the Holdens, the Sierra teams were then hit with a weight increase as well, taking their '92 homologation weight up to 1,150kg – an extra fifty kilos over their minimum in 1991. As the spearhead Sierra team, Dick Johnson responded by moving team manager Neal Lowe over to the V8 Falcon programme, and instead put technical development of the Sierras in the hands of a certain Ross Stone.

Stone had originally come to Australia in 1986 with fellow New Zealander Graeme Crosby, and in 1988 and '89 had relocated to Sydney to look after the Sierra of Andrew Miedecke. He'd then spent 1990 and '91 doing the same for Kevin Waldock's Playscape Sierra, giving him a thorough grounding in the car and its foibles.

With his input, handling issues that had plagued the Sierra since the very beginning steadily disappeared. They used MacPherson struts at the front and independent rears; they even used some exotic materials.

The rear arms and front uprights were made from magnesium. We bought them off Ford Motorsport and used to modify them. Basically we invested a lot of time in making the thing turn and the handling greatly improved when the Stone brothers joined us later on. – Dick Johnson, AMC #77

The first couple of years [1988 and '89] were great, as Neal Lowe had a very good grip of the electronics with it. The Nissan GT-R then came along [in 1990] which meant we weren't so successful for a spell, but then the last year with it, '92, Ross Stone had come to DJR by then and made a major contribution to improving the cars chassis-wise. – John Bowe, AMC #77

This, combined with the new rev limit that forced DJR to re-tune the engines for mid-range torque, made the cars far more driveable and actually increased their overall pace! The RS500 went from a rocket-powered sack of cement to a turbocharged, thoroughly modern racing machine, in a final burst of life for a machine that was now realistically past its use-by date.

Gardning Holiday: the Longhurst M3s
The giant-killers of 1991 had been the two Benson & Hedges BMW M3s of Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones. They were not afflicted with the Ford & Holden rev limit, but instead were saddled with an extra weight penalty – some 20-50 kilos' worth, depending on the source. Neither Longhurst nor his team manager Frank Gardner were particularly happy about it, but in the event it didn't make much difference. The real schism was emerging in the team itself, as its two heads had increasingly disparate views on which way the team should go for the future – to switch to the incoming 5.0-litre V8s, or to remain with BMW in a Super Touring effort. The team would soldier on through 1992, keeping a firm eye on upstaging the faster cars above them, but it was clear the cracks were widening.

New Car, Caviar: the Nissan GT-Rs
By 1992, Nissan Australia was in the process of shutting down local car manufacture – the last Aussie Skyline would leave the Clayton production line before the end of the year. As such, the company could no longer afford an extravagance like the GT-R programme, so Gibson Motorsport went fishing for a sponsor – and found one in British American Tobacco, who were looking to market their Winfield brand. Team boss Fred admitted the deal came about through his connections.

Mates of mates – that's how those big deals were done. The Winfield blokes were oldschool cigarette company executives – smoked like chimneys and drank like fish.

"How much do you want?" they asked.

"Four mil."

"Geez, you're expensive!"

I explained that if they wanted the best drivers, to be up front, on TV, it would cost $4 million.

"Okay," they said, "we've got a deal then."

It happened just like that. I asked these blokes if they wanted to see the workshop and cars and they said, "Nah, why would we want to do that?" All they wanted to know was that the races were on TV. – Fred Gibson, Australian Muscle Car: Muscle Racers Vol.1

$4 million in 1992 works out as nearly $7.7 million in 2020, a figure all but the wealthiest V8 Supercar teams would envy today. But let's be honest, BAT could afford it – the site Tobacco In Australia reveals that a quarter of Australian women and almost a third of all Australian men were smokers in those days, compared to less than 15 percent today, and there was no brand more associated with this country than the ubiquitous Winnie Blues. That said, the stats were well down from 1960 when more than 60 percent of Australian men were on the darts, so to the BAT execs it would've looked like a sales slump that needed rectifying, which some "incidental" TV advertising would help no end. Capitalism, man...

Heavy to begin with, the GT-R’s racing weight was increased from 1,350kg to 1,400kg as CAMS tried to rein the car in. "So we shot the thing!" said Fred Gibson. "What I mean is, we added lead shot as low as we possibly could, which usually meant putting it in the rear cross-member, to keep the car's centre of gravity both low and towards the rear – remembering, of course, that big in-line six sitting up there over the front axle." Even so, Gibson was bitter about that and remained so even decades later, feeling his team was being penalised for doing a good job. "I even took CAMS to court to get an injunction," he admitted, though it was unsuccessful.

It was already a heavy car, but they [CAMS] just kept putting weight on it. We were handicapped because we built a better mousetrap within the regulations. We did our homologation properly – and that took time and money. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787

CAMS also did something which I, personally, think they should've been doing all along – introduced turbo boost limits via a pop-off valve fitted to the car's inlet manifold. These items had been reviled in Formula 1 (and indeed, the valves used were apparently F1 surplus left in the country after the 1988 Australian Grand Prix!), but that's because they were all wrong on an F1 car, which theoretically represents the pinnacle of technology. A touring car is a different beast, with a strong connection to its roadgoing cousin, and sports cars of the early 1990s were still very limited in the amount of boost they could take – 0.5 bar was a high-boost car in those days. So at the risk of sticking my head through the noose, I'll admit I think there should've been some limit on turbo boost – something tied to the roadgoing product – built into the Group A regs from the beginning. Instead, it was only brought in at the very end, and only on one car, which happened to belong to the only team that would be able to find a way around it...

Nevertheless, Gibson Motorsport suffered in the very early season as the 470 kW they'd had in 1991 was slashed to 335 or so. They also lost Nissan mastermind Alan Heaphy, who'd fulfilled his brief of winning Bathurst and returned to the U.K. to be part of Nissan's Super Touring effort, run by Janspeed. After the magnificence of the GT-R, a 2.0-litre Primera – even one featuring the spaceship engineering of a Super Touring car – must have seemed a tad ordinary.

The outstanding part out of all that was the group of blokes that were there in the engine, machining and fabrication shops were just exceptional. They were all very capable blokes, who understood the basics of what we were trying to do. Around the lunchroom table it was all about making the car better. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

No-Man's Road
So that was the state of play at the dawn of '92 – with most brands just treading water, most teams just refining what they already had. Only one team actually pushing ahead with development, and even that was only to overcome a handicap. But realistically, that was how it had to be right now: the first half of the '90s were spent paying the bill for the all the cocaine and Porsches of the '80s, and in a phenomenon familiar to V8 Supercar fans today, the teams had locked themselves into expensive cars just in time for the economic music to stop. They'd touched the stars, that now mocked from afar at they, the damned...

Something cheaper was needed, and indeed it was on the way, but we'd have to cross this last bit of no-man's land to get there. The next few months would determine whether Group A in Australia went out with a whimper, or a bang.