22 March: Vitória Nas Ruas!

The second running of the Gold Coast Indy was sponsored by Japanese real estate giant Daikyo Incorporated. Daikyo had started building in Australia in 1972, and benefitted heavily from the late-1980s property boom, with projects in Brisbane, Cairns and of course, Surfers Paradise. No doubt a couple of the high-rises overlooking the circuit were theirs, but even so, their name was not especially familiar in this country.

Like Daikyo, IndyCar was busy building a foundation in Australia, but it would be another year yet before they rose high enough for the country to take notice...

 

More Cudgel than Cutlass: NASCAR on the Gold Coast
Once again, CAMS refused to have a bar of this event, leaving the support categories to come from Bob Jane's Thunderdome. Unfortunately, last year's NASCAR support race had been a demolition derby with extra steps, and the '92 edition brought déjà vu of the worst kind. The commentators spent some of their airtime taking exception to one Jackie Stewart's comment that stock cars were clumsy beasts, but the evidence – along with a substantial portion of the entry list – was piling up before their eyes. The Saturday afternoon race was red-flagged on the very first lap due to crashes blocking the first chicane: the restart, when it came, held for all of a lap and a half before the Pace Car was deployed to clean up another wreck at Turn 4.

In the meantime, Charlie O'Brien in his Oldsmobile Cutlass had put a move on the similar machine of visiting American Doug Taylor, edging him out in a chicken run down the Esplanade and into the back chicane. That move ended up deciding the race, because after two restarts in three laps, the people in race control were understandably getting edgy. Ergo, O'Brien was still leading a handful of laps later when the engine in Terry Byers' Chevrolet Monte Carlo went kaboom and the resulting oil slick sent several other cars skating into the wall. With that the race organisers finally called it off and declared O'Brien the winner, ahead of Doug Taylor and then Gregg Hansford in yet another Oldsmobile Cutlass.

So... were stock cars clumsy? In the narrow confines of Surfers Paradise, yes, absolutely. They were just too feeble in the brakes relative to their weight and power, and the resulting long braking zones left the drivers without any options if something went wrong... and those big engines dropped a lot of fluid if you cracked anything open. They might've been good fun in their element, but their element was firmly down at the Thunderdome in Melbourne, and there they realistically should've stayed. Fortunately, there was also...

The More the Merrier: Sports & GT
The so-called "Sports & GT" support race featured a huge grid that seems to've drawn from at least three sources: the Australian Sports Sedan Championship, the equivalent scene from New Zealand, and Group A touring cars, most of them from Queensland. Touring cars were allowed partly because it's hard to infringe the rules when there are no rules to infringe (Sports Sedans were the next thing to Formula Libre, after all), and partly because this was just a bit of fun, not a championship round. So the Benson & Hedges team fronted up with their three BMWs for regular drivers Tony Longhurst, Alan Jones and Paul Morris, and a couple of their old Sierras made an appearance in the Queensland Plastics livery of Brian Bolwell Racing. The Peter Gazzard VL Walkinshaw was also evident, one of several Commodores in the mix, with the rest of the grid made up of the usual Sports Sedan allsorts of Chevy Monzas, Jaguar XJ-Ss and the inevitable slew of Porsche 911s.

In the event both Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones ate the wall before the end, and Paul Morris parked with some sort of mechanical failure, leaving the race an intense struggle between Tasmanian Greg Crick in the white Chevy-powered Honda Prelude, and Brian Smith in the similarly Chevy-powered Alfa Romeo GTV. If you're reading this blog, then the blood-red Alfa with the reptilian eyes painted into its headlights should need no introduction: it's no coincidence the windscreen strip read "B&M Ricciardello", meaning Basil and Maria, the parents of the same Tony Ricciardello who'd one day be the most successful Sports Sedan racer in history. At the time, however, young Tony had only just celebrated his thirteenth birthday...

Greg Crick had won the Saturday race and managed to out-drag Smith on the second lap here on Sunday, but then blew his engine just before half-distance, leaving him with an inglorious DNF. If Smith thought he could relax, however, he was mistaken, as he spent the latter half of the race fending off the Chevy-engined Toyota Supra of another Taswegian, Kerry Baily, who came up barely half a car-length short in the final lunge to the chequered flag. Baily would have the last laugh, however, taking the 1992 Australian Sports Sedan Championship after a tough twelve-race calendar.

The Haves & the Have-Mores: CART in '92
There was a bit of a theme in 1992, and that theme was the re-emergence of Ford as a performance brand. Someone in the paddock had already encountered Jackie Stewart, for example, and got the benefit of his considered opinions: at the time the triple World Champion was Ford's star quality control officer, and would be setting up a de facto works Formula 1 team for them within the next few years. Jackie's presence here was a sure sign the eye of Dearborn was nearby, and you only had to look as far as the end of pit lane to see the proof. The Pace Car this weekend was one of Ford Australia's new EB Falcons, the facelifted update to the EA of 1988 – and even more excitingly, it was one of those new "S-XR8" models, the first Falcons in a decade to leave the factory with V8 power. It says a lot that a V8 Falcon with a yobbo bodykit and wonderfully tasteless early-90's livery could fade into the background, but this was IndyCar, and the Falcon was by some margin the least exotic hardware on display.

Source

A year on from the first CART PPG IndyCar Series race in Australia, the game had moved on in subtle but important ways. Top of the heap was still Roger Penske's Marlboro Team Penske, starring the original Brazilian F1 champion, Emerson Fittipaldi, and the four-time Indianapolis winner Rick Mears. The car was the new Penske PC-21, best known today for being the car Ayrton Senna tested when he briefly considered leaving Formula 1 (although that wouldn't happen until December, after Mears announced his retirement). More significant than the chassis, however, was the engine in the back.

For several years now the Chevrolet Indy V8 had been the engine to have in CART, winning nearly fifty races including the last thirty-seven in a row. But it had always been strictly limited in its availability: in 1988, Ilmor had only had the facilities to guarantee a supply for five cars, with no more on offer for any price (at Indianapolis, they even asked team owners not to indulge in the time-honoured practice of renting out spare cars to ageing pay drivers, because if any of these hopefuls made the race, their workshop would be overwhelmed). For 1989 that expanded to six cars, then ten in 1990, then to an even dozen for 1991... which was still barely half the grid. Since these engines were doing all the winning, the series was neatly divided into the haves and the have-nots, leading to the famous accusation that CART stood not for, "Championship Auto Racing Teams", but, "Chevrolet And Rich Team-owners".

Emmo turning laps at Mid-Ohio.

Roger Penske, of course, couldn't give one rip about that. He had a special relationship with Ilmor and his team had put in the hard yards testing and developing the engine, nurturing it through its unreliable early years... so if the Chevy engine was finally becoming readily available, then of course he'd have to find something better. That something turned out to be the new "B" version of the Chevrolet Indy V8, which swiftly became known as the Chevy/B (retroactively making the older one the Chevy/A). Designed to be slightly smaller, lighter and more powerful than the A, the Chevy/B took the lessons of six years of hard racing and ruthlessly applied them. Since the Chevy/B was exclusive to Penske it resurrected the old complaint about Chevy And Rich Team-owners, but no doubt Penske thought it would be just enough to give his team an edge. It must have been a shock, then, when his rivals pitched up with something that was not evolution, but revolution.

There was really only one team that could stand against the might of Penske, and that was Newman/Haas Racing, the team owned by glamorous movie star Paul Newman, and his cigar-chomping business partner Carl Haas. They were the ultimate customer team, making nothing for themselves but buying or leasing as needed. They had a special relationship with their chassis supplier Lola Cars Ltd, and like Penske they'd soldiered together through the hard early years before Lola got their act together. By 1992, however, the only cars not made by Lola all were home-brews built by the teams themselves, so to maintain an edge Newman and Haas had to be more efficient and effective at the track, and secure some serious driving talent. To that end, they maintained the services of two of the Andretti clan: the patriarch Mario, a legend in his own lifetime, still quick and experienced but now without that extra spark that makes a champion; and his son Michael, the reigning series champ, who if anything had too much of that spark and needed to learn to dial it down.

Mimmo Michael at Loudon.

Like Penske, however, the real news was the engine sitting just behind them. For the first time since the Total Performance era, the Ford Motor Company was returning to Indianapolis, putting the Blue Oval back at the Brickyard for the first time since 1971. With the deep pockets of Ford, Cosworth had been able to put into practice all the things they'd been wanting to do for years, so the new Ford XB Indy V8 was no development of the long-serving DFX. It was a "clean sheet of paper design" built especially for CART racing, with a redesigned cylinder block, different heads and other major castings and forgings. In concept it was the same 2.65-litre, 32-valve, methanol-burning turbo V8 used in IndyCar racing for fifteen years now, but in execution it was a game-changer. Its dimensions were just 566mm in height, 551mm in width and 546mm in length, meaning it sat 11mm lower and 38mm narrower than the "upgraded" Chevy/B; you could easily fit the whole thing within a two-foot cube. So although it produced more than 560 kW at 12,700rpm from its very first outing (thanks to a single Holset HX50R turbo), it was the reduction in frontal area that promised such dramatic gains. By Round 2 at Phoenix, Lola would step up to offer a bespoke version of their latest T92/00 chassis with an engine cowl that was lower and narrower behind the cockpit, to take advantage of the packaging of the XB.

Same car, same corner, different engine. Top, John Andretti in a '92 Lola with the Chevy/A; bottom, Eddie Cheever, also with a '92 Lola, but with the new Ford XB V8. Notice that the silver boost control valve is much more exposed on the red car, and the roll-over hoop seems to stand up more, even though Cheever is a much taller guy than Andretti. Both hint at bodywork pulled in much lower and tighter on the #9 car, allowing better airflow to the rear wing.

Debuting a new car and a new engine was a bridge too far for a "customer" team like Newman/Haas, however, so to keep things simple they were debuting the engine in last year's T91/00. Only four drivers were using the new T92/00, and all of those had the old Chevy/A for power. Most of the backmarkers were stuck with older '91, or even 1990-spec Lola cars, with correspondingly outdated engines.

For the sake of variety, however, there was also the Galles Racing team, who this year had joined Penske in building a car of their own. They were able to do this thanks to a former March Engineering employee named Alan Mertens, who'd quit March to join the team back in 1988. It was said Mertens had changed so much on the team's March 88C that little remained of the original car, so stepping up to building the whole thing from scratch was a logical next step. The resulting car was named for Mertens and team owner Rick Galles, hence the Galmer, with the model number becoming G92. Whether in Al Unser Jr's Valvoline colours or the rich Molson blue of Danny Sullivan, the Galmer was identifiable by its needle-sharp and rather droopy nosecone, which contrasted starkly with the more sturdy-looking item found on the Lolas. 

Little Al steering the Galmer at Long Beach.

Since Galles retained a contract with Ilmor there was no trouble securing Chevy/As for power, but initial tests with the Galmer had been disheartening. The team went back to the drawing board and designed a new front wing, inspired by the one on the Leyton House F1 car (the brainchild of another March employee, Adrian Newey). That unlocked the car's potential, and Al Unser Jr took pole in Surfers Paradise with a lap of 1:38.744, or 1.3 seconds faster than Michael Andretti's time last year. It was a great starting position for Sunday's race, but it meant out of the top ten qualifiers, three had unproven new engines (Mario, Michael, and Chip Ganassi's driver Eddie Cheever); four had unproven new chassis (Bobby Rahal, both Galles drivers, and the Truesports 92C of Scott Pruett); and the two Penske drivers had both. Only the Canadian Scott Goodyear had a battle-tested chassis and engine combo, and significantly, he'd qualified way back in 10th place. It was very much going to be anyone's race.

Race Day
The thing was, Little Al's pole had been claimed with a very taily setup and it wasn't likely he'd be able to race with his car in that state. As it turned out, he didn't even get the chance. As they came around the final formation lap, the flag man waved the double green and Michael Andretti put his foot down, passing Al under power almost as soon as the race began. Thus the 1992 Daikyo IndyCar Grand Prix started off in very similar fashion to the '91 race, with young Michael utterly dominant.

Unser seemed to keep up in the early laps, getting back in the braking zones what he lost under acceleration, but it soon became clear he was putting no pressure on Michael as he steadily fell away into a race of his own. Michael had been racing the Lola T91/00 for a year already and now he had a very familiar, dialled-in car beneath him, but with more power. The Galmer was on its very first actual race, so Little Al was just that little bit more unsettled – a situation that only got worse when spits of rain began landing all around. It was all blue skies and bright sun overhead, but there was a storm just off the coast and it was keeping all the team strategists on edge, as it would take very little extra moisture to force a switch to wet-weather tyres. In these changeable conditions, Michael was supreme and Little Al was good enough: both were pulling away from Emerson Fittipaldi in 3rd.

Behind them, the little outbreaks of mayhem inevitable in racing began to occur. In the greasy conditions Tony Bettenhausen Jr nosed his secondhand Penske PC-20 into the wall on Breaker Street, although he kept it running and would eventually finish five laps down. Then last year's winner John Andretti came into the pits with a deflating rear tyre, followed suspiciously closely by Rick Mears with a front wing endplate missing from his shiny new Penske. That they'd had a coming-together seemed obvious, but no penalties were applied and both rejoined.

The first retirement of the race was in fact A.J. Foyt, a man of Jack Brabham's vintage, who actually had a car of his own in the race (Gregor Foitek, driving the #14 sponsored by Copenhagen, a maker of snuff tobacco). What was he doing driving a Walker Motorsport entry, then, when he'd arrived in the country not planning to drive at all? Most likely it was a start-n-park, meeting the contract for a minimum number of cars started after a pay driver's money failed to show. Hiro Matsushita had been slated to start for Dick Simon Racing, but he'd crashed heavily in practice and broken his leg, leaving him unable to start the race (although, incredibly, he would be back racing only two weeks later at Phoenix). That left the grid with only twenty-two starters, so it was a case of, "Hey, who here has a CART license?" Either way, before too long he was joined by Ted Prappas, whose P.I.G. Enterprises car was seen smoking at the side of the track on lap 18, turning it into nice crispy bacon.

With a 65-lap race to complete the first pit window opened up somewhere around lap 22, which led to question marks over the legs on that new Ford XB engine – sure, Michael had shown it made a lot of power, but wouldn't that come at the expense of efficiency? We soon found out. In fact it was Rick Mears who was the first to blink, hoving into the pits from 9th place for fuel and tyres. He was followed smartly by Little Al and his teammate Fittipaldi, but Michael continued for another lap. When he did pit however it took 15.5 seconds, almost two seconds longer than Unser, suggesting the team were being careful to load every possible drop into the tank in the back of the car. This middle stint would be a long one.

Sadly for Fittipaldi, he had to return to pit lane only a lap later to serve a stop-go penalty, having run over the air hose feeding one of his rattle guns, which was apparently a prosecutable offence. He was still better off than Eddie Cheever, who spent agonising minutes sitting in his pit box while the team diagnosed a gearbox malfunction. Eventually the team revealed it was a clutch release bearing preventing the clutch disengaging. That was why you didn't debut a new car and engine at the same time: the '92 Lolas had mounted their gearboxes backwards compared to the '91 cars, purely so the biggest cog – first – was at the front of the stack, allowing for a more tapering aerodynamic shape. Being fed the extra torque of the new Ford XB engine, the gearbox had proven the weakest link, and although Cheever would rejoin – he'd be fine while he was running, as long as he shifted without using the clutch – his race was now ruined. Notably, Scott Goodyear had managed to strip a gear in the morning practice session and been forced to start the race in his spare car: over in the Newman/Haas pits, the mechanics watched sagely and congratulated themselves for choosing the '91 car today.

Michael Andretti fed back into line ahead of Unser, but only just, as whatever time he'd eked out during his first stint had been eaten up by that longer pit stop. Luckily for him, it turned out not to matter as CART decided to throw a caution and have the Pace Car bunch the field back up for a restart. Their excuse was that there were several cars littering the track that needed cleaning up, and it was true Foitek had picked up a puncture that left him unable to stop, leading to a wreck but no injuries, and in the meantime Scott Pruett parked his Truesports with gearbox failure, followed soon after by Scott Brayton (what was it with gearboxes today?) Overall, then, the real beneficiary of this first caution period was Team Penske, as Fittipaldi's early stop-go penalty was effectively nullified, and the Captain called in Rick Mears to top up his tank while the train was on a go-slow – he was able to do it without losing a place, so why not?

At the first restart it was still Michael Andretti leading Al Unser Jr and Emerson Fittipaldi. Once again Michael was untouchable, so once again race control threw a caution, this time on the excuse that Scott Goodyear had just had a spin. It was after this second restart that Unser finally began to put some pressure on Andretti, although Andretti managed to hold onto it for the moment, and so secured the the bonus point for leading the most laps – we'd just passed half-distance.

Michael in fact led the first 40 laps of the 65, but then things went sideways in a hurry. Coming back from an ad break, it was revealed Michael had a problem and was heading for the pits, and he pulled up with a hint of grey oil smoke curling up from beneath his engine cowl. The team swiftly shut the engine down, and although Michael stayed in the car for a minute or so, it was pretty clear this was terminal. A heartbroken Michael thus unbolted the steering wheel and climbed out, soon thereafter fulfilling his duty of explaining to the TV cameras that it was a broken exhaust header. The commentators speculated that he was telling a white lie to spare Ford the embarrassment of an engine failure on debut, but in truth they didn't have much to be embarrassed about: 40 laps in the lead proved that right out of the box, the XB was the most powerful engine on the grid. But, as the saying went, to finish first, first you had to finish.

Michael's demise left Little Al leading with Emmo hot on his heels, but this race wasn't over yet – indeed, it was finally about to get interesting. You see, there were dark clouds only a stone's throw away, and Emmo (and just about everyone else!) was nearly due for his final pit stop. It was time for the team strategists to get the crystal balls out and decide whether to fit wet-weather tyres ready for the expected rain, or risk it with slicks and hope the rain was brief and transient. The difficulty was that the next round of pit stops would be the last, so whatever tyres were fitted now would have to stay on the car to the finish. So, wet race or dry race? Rain tyres or slicks? Call it.

Sure enough, on lap 44 Emmo dived into the pits for his final load of fuel and tyres. It was a long stop – the fuel hose remained attached for an inordinately long time, but the team had already revealed they were going to go for it, turn the revs all the way up and try to win this thing. If their shiny new engine broke, fine, but if it held together they'd need a lot of fuel to reach the finish. Emerson completed his stop and rejoined in 5th, just behind Bobby Rahal, Mario Andretti in 3rd, Danny Sullivan in 2nd and Al Unser Jr in the lead, a promising 1-2 for the new Galmer car. Rick Mears was currently 6th, but with his extra fuel during the yellow flags he was on a different strategy now, so he wasn't necessarily down and out either.

 

Little Al led until lap 46, when he bit the bullet and made his final pit stop from the lead. The team gambled on dry tyres, but it hardly mattered, as the rattle gun refused to work on the right-rear tyre, dragging the stop on for an inordinate amount of time. When he finally rejoined in a mild panic, he was only just ahead of Rahal – and Rahal was no longer in an especially peachy place, having slowed dramatically with a fuel starvation problem. He'd pushed his middle stint too far, and it had turned around and bit him.

The kerfuffle let Danny Sullivan into the lead, but he was on his inlap, so he initiated a sequence whereby six lead changes occurred in as many laps. Sullivan led lap 47 until he pitted, whereupon the lead passed to Mario Andretti for lap 48, until he pitted too. The good news was, that new Ford XB engine had now demonstrated it had long legs as well as plenty of power, as Mario had gone further than the Chevy-users on every stint, which held promise for the all-important 500-milers later in the year. But all the same, Andretti had to pit, and in a tidy 14.5-second stop the Newman/Haas mechanics ignored the tyres they'd prepared and instead opted for fuel and a turn of front wing only. This was no time for cold, green tyres still slippery with release agent; there was rain coming.

With Mario in the pits, lap 49 went to Rick Mears, but Mears immediately fluffed it, out-braked himself into Turn 3 and landing in the escape road. He'd never been known as a great road-racer, but watching on the monitors was Roger Penske, who wore the face of a golfer struggling to comprehend a disastrous putt. He realised what Mears' unforced error meant: the rain was here. And since Mears had the latest pit stop window, he had the advantage of letting conditions develop. He could choose rain tyres.

 

Mears' mishap meant lap 50 was led  by year's winner John Andretti, but his yellow Pennzoil machine was likewise almost dry, so he too was soon headed for the pits. By the time the incoming wall of rain reached the Esplanade, Roger Penske had already enacted his plan: Mears was already back around the circuit and sitting in his pit box, getting a final top-off of fuel and – gloriously – a set of grooved rain tyres. These were no luxury, as footage of backmarkers like Fabrizio Barbazza and Tony Bettenhausen tip-toeing through ankle-deep water suddenly filled our screen. Mears rejoined in the lead and kept it, as race control finally threw a deserved caution to hold the IndyCars behind the Pace Car while the water cleared. Even so, multiple drivers aquaplaned at absurdly low speeds, but all of them managed to keep their machinery off the walls. The only retirement during the last caution was a rookie named Jim Vasser (no "Jimmy" yet), whose cause of DNF was listed as, "Electrics".

The wall of rain had been intense, but brief: within a handful of laps the sun reappeared and the water began to sluice away down the stormwater drains. When we came back from the final ad break, the order behind the Pace Car was Rick Mears followed by Danny Sullivan, Mario Andretti 3rd, Al Unser Jr in 4th and Emerson Fittipaldi 5th. As the Pace Car peeled off for the final time to leave us an intense seven-lap sprint to the finish, we were set for a mouth-watering Sullivan-versus-Mears, Galmer-on-Penske duel for the win.

At the final green Mears made a clean getaway, but the track was drying and his wet-weather tyres wouldn't last if he abused them. Behind, Sullivan tried to thread his way through the backmarkers to close the gap to Mears, but soon found himself fending off his teammate, Little Al following him around the lap and then going for a spectacular send up the inside into the first chicane... and making it stick!

Eddie Cheever tried the same move on the race leader to un-lap himself, hinting that Mears was running out of grip, but from there Cheever proved no faster and spent several crucial laps getting in Mears' way. In the meantime Danny Sullivan faded, falling into Emerson's clutches as the Brazilian rose through the ranks, so before long it was Emmo edging up on Little Al, while Al crept up on Mears. It had been a long time since we'd seen anything like this from Fittipaldi, who was such a warm and lovely guy away from the track that it was easy to forget what an animal he could be when he had a good car under him and wounded prey in his sights. With the grip level changing constantly and nothing between himself and that chequered flag but two Americans who'd spent too much time on the speedways, the scent of blood was in the air and the feral beast within Emmo leapt forth, and howled.

With just a handful of laps to go, Emmo snuck it up the inside of Little Al into Turn 4, at last putting the Penskes 1st and 2nd on the road. With Fittipaldi on a charge Mears finally threw caution to the wind: he'd been prepared to let Eddie Cheever through because he was a lap down, but his teammate was another matter. Down the backstretch Mears re-lapped Cheever but in the process tore a little more rubber out of his dying rain tyres, and through the twisties at the north end of the circuit Rick's Penske was just dancing, the rear end searching for grip.

With two laps to go Mears finally cleared Cheever, but then so did Emmo, leaving nothing but Mears between himself and the race lead. Down the backstretch the Brazilian stalked his prey, following him through the chicanes that broke up that long run along the beach. And then he saw his chance: into the left-hander onto Breaker Street, Mears stayed out wide to hang onto the grip, leaving the inside open. Instinct took over and Fittipaldi pounced: he braked dangerously late, locking the fronts and converting most of them into smoke... but he landed in the corner still under control, turned in smartly and got away with it. He nearly lost the rear in a massive fishtail coming off the turn, but he'd made the pass and taken the lead.

Caught by surprise, Mears had no answer to that kind of savagery, and Fittipaldi retained the lead to the finish, finally greeting the chequered flag after 2 hours, 20 minutes and 33 seconds of hard racing. Thanks to a late pass on Unser, Bobby Rahal arrived at the finish line in a solid 3rd place, but there was no disputing this was Penske's day. It would've been a win either way thanks to the Captain's masterful race strategy, making lemonade out of an early-race lemon, but it was a 1-2 thanks to the brilliance of Emerson Fittipaldi. It wasn't for nothing the man was a two-time Formula 1 champion, as well as the victor of the 1989 Indianapolis 500.

Touchline Tattles
One name that was also there on the day was the rookie Jovy Marcelo, who finished eleven laps down in an outdated Lola-Cosworth run by Euromotorsport. I'm not sure how his name is actually pronounced ("Yovi Markelo"? "Hovi Marchelo?"), but I'm fairly sure the commentators' "Jovy [as in Bon Jovi] Marselo" is wrong (they never bothered to learn Matsushita's name either, which is endlessly funny to me). But Marcelo's name is worth remembering because, in a 1991 Formula Atlantic race at Lime Rock, he'd become the first Filipino driver to win an FIA-sanctioned motor race. Reaching CART was the dream of a lifetime, so it was deeply tragic when he was killed in practice for Indianapolis less than three months into his career. Formula Atlantic inaugurated the Jovy Marcelo Sportsmanship Award in his honour, but other than that nobody today really knows him. Just another case of what might have been, snuffed out on the walls of Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

15 March: Blue Streak

Once again it was all-aboard the MS Abel Tasman for the voyage to Tasmania, destination Symmons Plains Raceway. As they occasionally see fit to do, the gods of YouTube have blessed us with not one but two videos of Round 3 of the Shell Australian Touring Car Championship. I've embedded the shorter version, but national treasure Super100MPH has the full live broadcast (including all the support races), if that's your jam and you have a couple of hours to kill. There are even some wonderfully "period" ads featuring Telecom (not yet Telstra) spruiking these new devices that look like a brick with an antenna, which they called "mobile telephones" – one wonders if they ever caught on...

Shell Australian Touring Car Championship: Heat 1
As usual, the logistical challenge of getting to the Apple Isle reduced the grid to the real hard nuts: Dick Johnson Racing, Gibson Motorsport, Glenn Seton Racing and Advantage Racing (i.e. Team Brock) each brought two cars to the round, with Tony Longhurst Racing once again bringing all three of their BMW M3s. Bob Forbes Racing fulfilled their usual function of being the third works Nissan, while Colin Bond also made the trip with his Caltex Sierra. But there was no Holden Racing Team, no Lansvale Smash Repairs, no Larry Perkins and no Terry Finnigan, leaving us rather short of Holdens this time around. That left us with a contracted fourteen-car grid, with the fourteenth and last being local man Stephen Bell in a Mitsubishi Starion.

These one-weekend hopefuls always seem to be my white whale: Stephen Bell was (and still is, as far as I can tell) a motor mechanic based in St Invermay, Tasmania, specialising in classic and high-performance cars. His mount for Symmons Plains was the aforementioned JA Starion owned by Scotty Taylor Racing, and although there are some gaps in the car's providence, it seems to've been a converted Group E Production machine, which first raced in Group A with Brian Sampson in 1985. It's difficult to get a clear view of it in the video, but here's the car in the modern age.

Although for Symmons '92 it wore the racing #60 (source).

It's remarkable that a car from the first year of Group A in Australia would still be entering races in the last, but unfortunately for Bell, it rather illustrated how far we'd come in the last seven years. On Saturday afternoon, John Bowe had qualified on provisional pole with a lap of 55.69 (nice). By contrast Bell, in an '85-vintage Starion that had never been a rocket in Group A trim to begin with, qualified dead last with a time of 1:03.66 – thank you, tides of fortune, for putting him 10th on the grid for Heat 2 and giving us that little tidbit! Understandably, he was due to be lapped in both heats.

So the top six for the Peter Jackson Dash were Bowe, Johnson, Bond, Seton, Seton's sidekick Wayne Park, and Mark Gibbs, the only one not driving a Sierra. As noted above, Bowe had been fastest in actual qualifying, but for the Dash he drew 6th and last: stuck behind the other five, there was little he could do in just three laps, leaving the Dash to be disputed between Dick Johnson and his young nemesis, Glenn Seton. Seton had drawn P1 but couldn't hang on to it, a determined Johnson fighting his way through to the lead and securing pole position for the main event. Dick had every reason to be aggressive today: Dunlop had brought an experimental new tyre compound they called M3 (confusingly), and only DJR were allowed to use them. So first order of business had been earning the cheque for pole, but Johnson had also come away with a rear bumper hanging loose after taking a hit up the bum off the start (which I only realised from this very round had a rolling and not a standing start). That loose bumper had then been dislodged when he tagged Seton while passing for the win: they raced for keeps, these lads...

Andy Raymond: Well, John Bowe: quickest again in pre-qualifying, but you're not starting off position number one?

John Bowe: Well, that's the rules for everybody. If you're in the top six, you draw for position, and in my normal run of luck I drew six. But I've just managed to get back up to 3rd, so it's a fifty-percent step, isn't it?

Raymond: And pole position, in fact, teammate Dick Johnson. You must be very happy with that, Dick?

Dick Johnson: Well, certainly. After the start, I had my left foot on the brake, and it was in second gear, and then the thing all of a sudden got all its horsepower at once, and I thought it was going to do a right turn into the fence there for a minute. But I sort of gathered it up, and got a bit of a hit up the backside down the other end there, which didn't really upset us that much.

The question on everyone's mind was, where were Fred Gibson's Nissans? Skaife and Richards had qualified well down the order, 8th and 10th respectively (although sources differ), and the feeling around the paddock was they just had to be sandbagging. Guest commentator Allan Moffat suggested they'd deliberately avoided the Dash to preserve their tyres – remember that the rules mandated on Saturday you nominated a set of tyres, then you qualified, raced in the Dash (if applicable) and then completed both heats on Sunday on that same set of tyres. That was a big ask for a single set of racing rubber, so Moffat wasn't wrong in thinking tyre life was on everyone's mind when they got to a meeting. Indeed, in qualifying both the Gibson drivers had emerged from the pits, done just a single warm-up lap and then banged in two quick laps before parking again, which seemed to bear the tyre life theory out. But the drivers themselves insisted they were driving absolutely flat-chat, and this was the best they could manage: 8th and 10th were true reflections of the GT-R's current pace over a single lap. Like Sandown, Symmons was a power circuit whose two long stretches gave the Fords entirely too much room to breathe, and the GT-R was still struggling to make any power against the boost restrictions imposed by CAMS. In-car shots over the course of the race would reveal the GT-R drivers were short-shifting, the lusty straight-six refusing to rev the way it had in '91, hinting that maybe the Gibson technicians had begun to retune the beast to suit the new regulations.

Not that the Fords were having it all their own way. Colin Bond had arrived in Tasmania with an updated engine management system, having traced a long-standing overheating problem to a bug in the software. With that fixed he'd shown a new turn of speed, setting quick times in practice and then making the Dash on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, he'd then snapped a conrod in the Dash itself, and his smaller crew of mechanics couldn't replicate DJR's feat at Sandown and replace it in the hour before the first heat started. That left him unable to take his place on the grid for Heat 1.

At the green, the whole pack bolted away and started making lap time... all except poor Stephen Bell, who was immediately left behind. The whole field moved off down to the Hairpin in one giant mass, except his Starion, which was left running to catch up like something from a cartoon. He was barely any quicker than the following medical car.

That the Seton team had apparently done plenty of testing here at Symmons was borne out when Glenn swept into an immediate and commanding lead. The young Ford driver won the opening drag to the hairpin (despite the best efforts of Gibbs in his GIO Nissan), and set off on a dominant race despite the DJR cars crowding his mirrors. It was clear from the early laps however that there was not a lot of sliding going on – everyone had taken the lesson of Sandown to heart, and they were driving very conservatively to preserve their tyres lest they pay the price later in the day. The order in the opening phase was Seton, then Johnson and Bowe stringing along together, followed by Mark Gibbs a little way back, then Peter Brock in the white Commodore, the best of the rest. Skaife and Richards were buried way back in the pack.

On lap 9 we got our first retirement of the race, as Wayne Park headed for the pits and, well, parked. The Seton mechanics lifted the bonnet to see his prospects and immediately started swearing and gesticulating at each other, so it must've looked bad. Park remained in his seat just in case, but the car remained stationary for the rest of the heat, eventually chalking up a DNF. It was cruel luck for the 28-year-old Queenslander, who'd disgraced himself neither with his speed nor with his racecraft in his brief career in a top-tier Sierra, but who'd nevertheless had two engine failures in as many rounds.

By the heat's middle stage, Tony Longhurst of all people had managed to creep up on the back of Jim Richards – a BMW outpacing Godzilla, here at a power circuit? What on earth was going on? Sure enough, Tony got past and began to leave Richo behind, just as Skaife finally made a pass on Brock along the back stretch – Brock's Advantage Racing mechanics revealed to Andy Raymond that Peter was running out of brakes and they were standing by for a pit stop if he needed one. Illustrating the point, at Turn 6 – the left-hander before the start/finish line – Brock had a massive lock-up and overshot the corner, landing in the dirt. He waded through and and rejoined behind Longhurst, who'd nipped through in the meantime, but it was wild to see Brocky of all people making such an error.

On lap 12, John Bowe got a run on Johnson and inverted their positions under brakes for Turn 3, showing once again Bowe was the man to watch in these early rounds of the championship. Unfortunately, only a handful of laps later Bowey was abruptly flung sideways into the Hairpin. What happened, happened off-camera (barely), but it was clear the back end had let go with such savage suddenness it could only be an engine failure. It was unlikely a driver like Bowey had over-revved it on a downshift, so the more likely culprit was that the engine had just had enough. Ever the professional, Bowe trickled the car backwards out of the way, doing his best to get the stricken Sierra off the racing line and out of everyone's way, but he left a horrible snail trail of oil before him as he rolled out of the corner. This was a definitive DNF for Bowey, which would require another engine change if he wanted to participate in Heat 2.

After 25 laps, Glenn Seton took the win roughly 3.7 seconds ahead of Johnson – smaller than the gap could've been, but more than enough to get the job done. 3rd was Mark Skaife, then Tony Longhurst (impressive!), then Richards, who'd taken the place off Mark Gibbs by politely flashing his lights and then waiting for Gibbs move over. Knowing his place, Gibbs had let Richo through, though he'd quietly demonstrated his ability to take the place back again if he'd wanted to – even the most courteous and professional of racing drivers have an ego to protect. It had to be admitted, however, that everyone but Seton had benefited from the demise of Bowe, Brock and Wayne Park earlier in the race.

It had been a worthy first heat for Seton, but the real business of the day was yet to come, as they tyres had not yet begun to reach their limits. In the meantime...

Shell Oils Superbike Championship
Ironically, the first of the support categories – the Shell Oil Superbikes – then had to head out onto a track freshly coated with John Bowe's Shell oil! The Tasmanians had sprinkled some cement dust to soak it up, but avoiding that line through the Hairpin would still be a key part of the day's proceedings. In the meantime, you could just about make a drinking game out of all the tobacco liveries on display this weekend. We'd just finished watching the Winfield Nissans battling with the Peter Jackson Sierras; now the pattern repeated, with the Winfield-backed Honda RC30s set to do battle with the Peter Jackson-sponsored works Yamaha FZR750Rs.

Thankfully, the monotony was broken by a third colour – Kawasaki green. The only reason you can't say both heats were won at a canter by Mat Mladin was because, by his own admission, he always raced at one-hundred-and-ten percent. In both heats Mladin simply streaked away from the rest, leaving Scott Doohan (older brother of Mick) to pitch his Yamaha against Tasmanian rider Malcolm Campbell on the Honda, and James Knight on the second Kawasaki. Both heats were lively affairs when the Kawasakis were better under acceleration but the Hondas were amazing under brakes, but it seemed nobody could live with Mat Mladin this year.

Motorcraft Formula Ford Driver To Europe Series
There were some very familiar names on the Formula Ford grid: John Blanchard (not to be confused with Jonathan Blanchard, the famous abolitionist and namesake of Orlando Bloom), Cameron McConville, Steven Richards (son of Jim), and the son of former HDT mechanic Frank Lowndes was driving a seven-year-old Van Diemen RF85, if you looked somewhere near the back. Craig Lowndes, Cameron McConville, Steven Richards and the rest were competing not just for the prestige of a championship win, but for a new prize organised between Shell and Auto Action magazine, whereby the winner of the Formula Ford series would get a test with Ford's flagship touring car team – Dick Johnson Racing. The race was won (in classic Formula Ford fashion, on the very last lap) by Blanchard in the Palm Air Swift SC92F, after a race-long duel with Michael Dutton in another Swift (again, sponsored by Winfield – bottoms up!). Lowndes, however, had an altercation at the Hairpin and ended up having to do a three-point turn in the dust. Clearly he still had much to learn...

Tooheys Australian Drivers Championship
But if open-wheel racing was what you were here for, this was the main event. Having just hopped out of his GT-R, Mark Skaife had just enough time for a quick drink and a towel-off before starting from pole position for the Formula Brabham race, with a time of 51.41 seconds. There were no problems with his clutch this time – at the green he simply motored off into the distance, aided by his closest competition nudging each other out of the race at the Hairpin. The Skaife Show was briefly interrupted when he came in to serve a stop-go penalty for jumping the start, but such was his dominance that he rejoined virtually side-by-side with Mark Larkham, driving an ex-Eric van der Poele Ralt formerly run in Formula 3000 by Eddie Jordan.

There was some scene incest here, as Skaife's SPA 001, the only purpose-built Formula Holden car in the world, had been penned by Jordan's designer Garry Anderson and built at Lichfield in the U.K. And no disrespect to Skaifey, but it was clearly the better tool for the job. Larko's time in the lead lasted almost exactly half a lap, as Skaife drafted past on the back curve to regain 1st place. From there he was never threatened again, and clinched the second round of the Australian Drivers Championship with apparent ease.

Shell Australian Touring Car Championship: Heat 2
Finally, the programme rounded out with the tourers returning for their second heat, for which there were thirteen lucky starters. After blowing his engine in Heat 1, John Bowe was unable to make the grid – not because the DJR mechanics were unable to fit a new engine in time, but because the spare had already been claimed by Dick, who felt his own donk had been ailing. The team only had one backup, so Bowe was left to warm the bench and keep the pit crew company this time around.

Peter Brock wasn't on the grid either, although he did start the race. He'd incurred a 10-second penalty – most likely for changing his tyres as a precaution after flat-spotting them in Heat 1 – which would mean starting from pit lane, to be released ten seconds after the rest of the field was flagged away. He'd drive his heart out, of course, but those ten seconds would be more than he could make up with a misbehaving brake pedal, Allan Moffat speculating that teammate Neil Crompton had made a good choice of brake pads where Peter had chosen poorly. On the upside, Colin Bond had made the grid this time, having completed his engine change following the morning's Dash For Cash. He was sharing the back of the grid with Wayne Park, whose ride had also been resurrected following his engine dramas in the first heat.

Once again, when the green flag waved Seton got away smartly, with Johnson trailing by only a few car lengths and the rest of the pack getting in each other's way not far behind. But within two laps it was clear Johnson couldn't keep this up, and far from pressuring Seton for the win, he swiftly fell back into the clutches of Mark Skaife. As was now well understood, the GT-R would spring out of the Hairpin like a startled hare, but couldn't maintain the edge beyond a couple of seconds as the shortage of kilowatts enacted its penalty, leaving Johnson ahead for the moment – just. 

Smelling blood, Skaife started pushing hard, throwing the car around like a go-kart rather than the big heavy Nissan that it was. After a few laps of frustration he finally claimed the place with a brave out-braking manoeuvre around the outside of the Hairpin, relegating Johnson to 2nd place. That left Seton with a 3-second lead and Johnson with a headache, because behind him was Neil Crompton in the Mobil Commodore, a car running on Bridgestones just like Seton.

Behind Crompton however, was the real man to watch: Colin Bond, who'd not competed in Heat 1 and so had no tyre wear issues to worry about. Bond went very deep into the Hairpin – again, around the outside, the car squirming under hard braking – to run alongside Johnson through the tight left-hander at the end of the circuit. That let Crompton snuggle in behind Johnson on the inside, which should've left Bond high-and-dry on the following straight... except that he ruthlessly barged Crompo out of the way, emerging from behind Dick to take the place! Who was this bloke, and what had he done with the famously affable Colin Bond?!

That Dick was now holding everyone up was borne out a lap later, when Neil gave him a hard shove from behind into the Hairpin – probably not a deliberate bump-n-run, just caught out at how early Johnson was braking. As fragments of white fibreglass and headlight fluttered away, Johnson limped wide and let Neil through for the place, followed through by Wayne Park in the Sierra and Tony Longhurst in the BMW (with Park shortly overpowering Crompton in turn – not finishing Heat 1 was definitely one way to maximise Heat 2).

Bond out-braked Skaife at the end of the backstretch to take 2nd place, and then set off after the race leader. Shortly thereafter Crompton found himself being leaned on by Longhurst, who even flashed his headlights as if he was getting annoyed. But if he thought the Holden driver had resorted to dirty tricks, no-one else saw it: more likely it was just mind games. After several intense laps Tony slipped up the inside of Crompo at the Hairpin, pushing him wide on the way through just to make the point. Crompton had put up a good fight, but the big Holden's tyres were done.

By contrast, Glenn Seton's Bridgestones still seemed to be fine, but he had a charging Bond on his tail and still some laps to go: this could still go either way. Dick Johnson however had to suffer the indignity of first Jim Richards, then a lap later Mark Gibbs and finally Alan Jones all swamped him in a short space of time, dropping him well down the ranks. Those Dunlop M3 tyres weren't able to hold off an actual M3...

By the twentieth and final lap Bond had worn Seton's lead down to 2 seconds, but it wasn't enough. Seton had spent the whole day out front avoiding the tyre-damaging battles, so his Bridgestones had just enough life in them to last the full distance. Seton crossed the finish line with Bond in sight but nevertheless firmly behind, with Skaife a similar distance back in 3rd place. Wayne Park earned some redemption after a shocking couple of rounds by finishing 4th, with 5th place going to Jim Richards after taking some places late in the day – the tyre-saving 4WD system of the Nissan was still paying dividends, even if the margins were much slimmer than last year.

In fact, these days the Nissan boys were basically in the same boat as BMW, praying for short tracks (or rain) where their zip and power-down could make a difference against the brute horsepower of the Fords. The new regulations had hit the Nissans rather hard, hadn't they?

Mark Skaife: Oh they have, but the second race was a good race. At this sort of circuit we knew the cars wouldn't be quite competitive enough, and I think it was a good result for us really.

Added Dick Johnson: "We had a few engine problems, and also the tyres really never really came back on after that first heat so we were in trouble right from the start. Everything passed me, I suppose – everything except a kidney stone!"

Indeed, the second heat had been rather entertaining, with lots of door-to-door action to showcase how the two-heat format could combine with the existing tyre rules to mix up the result. That said, for the second time in two rounds we'd seen a Sierra driver make the weekend all his own, Glenn Seton cleaning up both heats to take a well-deserved round win. That put him third on the championship ladder overall, with 66 points – well within striking distance of Jim Richards on 72, and championship leader Mark Skaife, on 84. But everyone was very aware that the next round would be at Winton, where the Sierras would struggle to build up a full head of steam, and short bursts of acceleration would be the ticket to victory...

8 March: Kicking Sand

The second round of the 1992 Shell Australian Touring Car Championship continued the theme established in the first – the Nissan GT-Rs struggling against a revitalised Ford Sierra, with interference from Holden and BMW. History records that John Bowe took a clean sweep in the second round here at Sandown, but as usual the books are oversimplifying. Watching the actual races reveals it was neither easy nor inevitable for Bowey, and that even at the Home of Horsepower, simple horsepower wasn't everything.

 

Off With a Prang: Formula Brabham
The event was boosted by a clutch of support categories (including the Shell Oil Superbike Championship and Group E Production Cars), but the only one on YouTube was the Tooheys Australian Drivers' Championship, aka. Formula Holden, which this year had been renamed Formula Brabham, because... sure, why not? Mark Skaife was the reigning champion in the Winfield SPA 001, but here in Round 1 he seemed to have a problem getting drive off the corners – Neil Crompton in the commentary box mentioned they'd had a couple of aborted starts thanks to drivers stalling on the grid, and it was possible his clutch was running out of plates. That let Ron Searle into the lead for most of the 8-lap race (in the locally-made Shrike), until a desperate send from Drew Price in the Ralt bumped him into the kitty litter for a DNF. The kerfuffle let Skaife into the lead, but his car was still slow and Price blew by him on the front straight to claim the win, despite a damaged front wing from his altercation with Searle. It was rough justice, but this sort of driving was still de rigeur here, at the height of the Senna era.

Bowe Before Him: Heat 1
For the headline event, John Bowe qualified on pole with a time of 1:13.91, then drew second place for the Peter Jackson Dash – no great penalty so far. But then during the Dash itself he suffered a catastrophic engine failure, which dumped him right down the order to 6th place, leaving the team to frantically fit a new engine for the races proper. This they achieved in, "just over an hour", according to the commentators, a remarkable feat from the team's mechanics. One might've expected that team owner Dick Johnson would have a sour face on his side of the garage, but in fact he'd just just won the Dash for himself, bringing in a very welcome cheque and pole position for Heat 1. That rather mitigated his mood.

Would've been nice to be 1-2 on the front row, but that's the way it goes. We had a little bit of a mishap this morning which I think stretched the conrod bolt, but other than that... I think he'll be out in the race and I think he'll do a damn good job from where he is.

So Johnson was sharing the first row of the grid with Glenn Seton, with the second row comprised of Seton's hireling for the second car, Wayne Park, and the Winfield GT-R of Jim Richards. The third row belonged to Mark Skaife and the luckless Bowe, with the fourth split between the GIO Nissan of Mark Gibbs, and the factory Commodore of Tomas Mezera. This was HRT's first outing of the year, and although both Mezera and the team were doubtless a bit rusty – they'd qualified in only 1 minute, 15.01 seconds, more than a second off Bowe's time – it was hard to criticise them when they were still the fastest of the Holden runners.

Case in point, Row 5 was shared between Colin Bond's #8 Caltex Sierra and the #11 Walkinshaw Commodore of Larry Perkins, second-fastest of the Holdens despite a car that didn't quite cut through the air like the streamlined VN. Behind him lined up Peter Brock, bringing the Mobil 05 to his home race, alongside the ever-impressive Tony Longhurst in the Benson & Hedges BMW. Row 7 was the inverse of Row 6, with the sidekicks Neil Crompton and Alan Jones lining up in their secondary VN and M3, respectively, while Row 8 was an all-Holden affair, with Terry Finnigan bringing his Foodtown Commodore for a personal grudge match with Steve Reed in the Lansvale Smash Repairs car.

Row 9 was where we found the third BMW, Paul Morris in the white #22 Sport Evo, an ex-Bigazzi machine used by the Longhurst team as a test car in 1991. It had arrived still fitted with its original carbon fibre bonnet and boot lid, but the team had replaced them with steel items to comply with Australian regs. Even so, all three BMWs were running 20kg lighter this weekend than they had at Eastern Creek, as team manager Frank Gardner (one presumes) had managed to convince CAMS their previous weight penalty was too high. Morris lined up alongside the 3UZ-backed Walkinshaw of privateer Bob Jones, showing Morris perhaps had something to learn when it came to getting the most out of the German pocket rocket.

Last on the grid, with the two-by-two format leaving him the embarrassment of occupying the tenth row all by himself, was youngster Bryan Sala in the #50 Tyrepower Sierra (or at least it looks like it was still in its Tyrepower livery – the car would see a couple of different paint schemes during the course of the year, but this early it's not impossible it was still in its Bathurst '91 colours). That completed the 19-car grid for Sandown – not a wonderful turnout for a national championship round, but we'd seen worse. Much worse.

When the starting man switched the traffic lights green, both Winfield Nissans immediately launched off the start line to assume the lead into Turn 1. So far, so familiar, but their joy was short-lived. From behind, Dick Johnson simply overpowered Skaife to take P2 on the long back straight, and from there started hounding Richards into the kink. Through the twisties Dick niggled and needled for an opening, and got a nice draft on the front straight to pull alongside Richards again by the start of lap 2. Richards forced him to the outside and made the most of the Nissan's water-cooled brakes to pull up on a matchbox, holding Johnson off for the moment, but it was a losing battle. With only about 330 kW to overcome the drag of its wide, ventilated front end, the GT-R just didn't have the top speed to hold off a revitalised Sierra.

Case in point, the man in 3rd place by this point was... John Bowe, who'd made a demon start to leapfrog both Peter Jackson cars of Team Seton to be 4th into the Turn 1. He'd lost out briefly to Seton on the slow wind up to Peters Corner, but had dispatched the youngster on the back straight in much the same fashion as his boss on Skaife. 4th became 3rd when Bowe too got rid of Skaife, breezing past on the front straight like it was nothing. Now fired up and full of attitude, Bowe skipped past the boss over the Turn 6 Rise, becoming the new challenger to Richards in turn. And then he simply out-powered the leading Nissan, rising from 6th to the race lead in just three laps!

From there Bowe was untouchable, pulling out a gap of 5.6 seconds by lap 5, then 7.3 seconds by lap 11. While Bowe rode off into the sunset, un-noted by the commentary team, one of the Seton car began smoking and soon stopped – Wayne Park's engine had expired. Colin Bond’s car also died on lap 15 for reasons unknown, but none of us noticed because we were enraptured by a train of Richards, Johnson, Skaife and Seton all fighting over positions two through five. Johnson soon won out and left the train behind, while best-of-the-rest not too far behind was a highly creditable Tomas Mezera in the HRT Commodore. Rusty? Don't you believe it!

Then, close to half-distance, came one of those slapstick moments that gave Australian racing such a distinct flavour. The broadcast chose to cut to to the RaceCam mounted in the passenger seat of Dick Johnson's car, and Allan Moffat started giving a play-by-play of what he was seeing. And, well...

Allan Moffat: He just slammed her down from sixth down to fifth through the Esses, into fourth...

Dick Johnson: Down to second, I am.

Moffat: Ohhh! [realising Dick could hear him] Sorry, I beg your pardon, you're gonna have to give me a ride here, refresh my memory. Okay, up to third – do it yourself, mate, you can talk your way through, you don't need me!

Johnson: Yeah, really? There's oil everywhere here, pal.

Mike Raymond: Dick, this looks pretty good. Bowey's taken off like a scalded cat.

Johnson: He must have my engine!

Raymond: How much of a problem [do tyres] give you? You two guys are running at a fair pace, Bowey out eight-and-a-half seconds to you, and the two Nissans dropping back a bit. Can you conserve tyres?

Johnson: It's just that the Nissans are so quick out of the slow corners, that they just leave you standing. It takes everything to pick them up on the straight to be able to pass them.

Raymond: Well I notice they're getting a bit closer again, banging on your butt, so I'll let you go. You put the head down.

Johnson: I've got another 20 laps to do after this, buddy!

As did Bowe, actually, but you wouldn't have guessed it from his pace. The #18 Shell Sierra rounded out the final laps and eventually clinched the win with a whopping 9 seconds to spare over Johnson – a 1-2 like the good old days. But, a heat win is not a round win: had Bowe left enough meat on his Dunlops to eke out a result in the second half of the event? Only one way to find out...

Ain't No Gentleman: Heat 2
Two full-bore starts was a big ask for a single set of tyres. At the green, once again both Nissans shot off the line, but where Jim Richards was able to tear past the Shell Sierras on the outside line, Mark Skaife got boxed in and had to abandon the launch, leaving the Johnson cars 2nd and 3rd. That left a fuming Skaife to be swallowed up by the fast-starting Commodores behind him – Mezera, Brock and Reed might not have had the advantage of four-wheel drive, but neither did they have to worry about a sudden lift robbing the engine of boost.

Bowe got his head down and struck out along the back straight, relieving Richards of the lead with another surge of Ford horsepower. Once again Bowe ran off into the distance, building a lead of 2.7 seconds by lap 4, but Johnson was having a rather harder time of it: he had a look at passing Richo under brakes at Dandenong Road, and although the move didn't come off, it set him up for a run back along the front straight to make the DJR Sierras 1st and 2nd. So the order at the start of lap 2 was Bowe, Johnson, Richards, Gibbs in the GIO Nissan, and then Peter Brock in the Mobil Commodore, with Skaife way down in 6th. While Gibbs kept the pressure on Richards, Skaife went looking for a way around Brock, and found one under braking into the Dandenong Road left-hander. Brock shortly lost another place to Tomas Mezera, and then started falling into the clutches of Tony Longhurst in the BMW; he'd made a good start, but with some 22 laps on them, his Bridgestones were pretty much finished.

Then it turned out Mezera might've been a bit short of practice after all. Under pressure from Glenn Seton, he got a bit over-protective of his corner on the way into the Rise, losing the back end under braking and spinning off into the Esses. Unsighted by the Holden, Seton spun in sympathy for him, which turned out to be far more dangerous than Mezera's own spin. Mezera simply halted in the grass off the circuit, but Glenn lost control of the vehicle and rolled backwards across the road, missing being T-boned in the smoke by the barest of margins (by Brock, Crompton and Perkins in turn!).

An ad break followed (nothing changes...), and then we were treated to a really hard-headed battle for 2nd between Richards and Johnson. With the heat more than half over, Johnson finally lost the place in the middle of Peters Corner, as Richo laid claim to the inside line early and Dick simply couldn't get enough drive out of his ageing Dunlops to hold the Nissan at bay forever. They had a bit of a love tap at the apex, but to these old hands that was nothing, and both powered away from the corner cleanly. Johnson reclaimed the place under power, rising back to 2nd by the time they reached the Rise, and Richards of course did nothing to dispute it. But then into Dandenong Road they were once again hard at it, Richards coming alongside under the Dunlop bridge, forcing Johnson to go fast and use up his tyres. A quick criss-cross into Turn 12 caught Johnson by surprise but Richards didn't back off, and once again they hit – this time, hard. Johnson spun off in a cloud of dust with a bit of his front bumper hanging loose, and although he got going again, he'd lost both time and places. But in-car footage revealed this had been no bump 'n' run: Richo's hands were upside-down before the moment of impact, indicating he'd made an ambitious move and lost the tail, unable to pull the car up in time. So, not malicious, but surprisingly desperate and messy, not the sort of thing we'd come to expect from Gentleman Jim.

Johnson pitted for repairs and new tyres, but he was out of contention either way. The team's hopes now rested squarely on the shoulders of Bowe, still in the lead by 4.8 seconds, but now with a pair of Nissans behind him rather than his team leader-slash-tail gunner. Sure enough, a lap later the gap was down to 3.7 seconds, then 2.2...

With two laps to go, Bowe was now visibly tip-toeing through the turns, trying to get 370 kW of Ford grunt to the ground through the overheated canvas of his Dunlops. Behind, Skaife was driving like an animal, throwing his GT-R across the kerbs like a sack of fertiliser: he wanted this win.

One to go, and the tension was real, but the Nissan twins just weren't quite close enough to make a move. Bowe rounded out the 20th and final lap to take another heat win, and so take a clean sweep of the round. He'd done it: John Bowe took overall victory at Sandown. You could make a case that he was bloody lucky they were 20-lap heats and not 21, but lucky wins counted too: he'd had the car for the job and made the most of it twice over. A thoroughly deserved round win.

2nd place in the heat went to Mark Skaife, with Richards 3rd, Mark Gibbs 4th and Peter Brock a fighting 5th, promoted by the misfortunes of Seton, Mezera and Johnson. With two rounds done, Mark Skaife led the championship with 57 points, the reward for winning the first round and finishing 2nd in the other. Jim Richards sat behind him with 51 points, with Bowe, having just kicked sand(own) in everyone's faces, now slotting in third with 44. Peter Brock's 41 points put him barely ahead of Mark Gibbs on 40, while Glenn Seton slipped down to fifth with just 36 points – cursing that the Winfield Triple Challenge hadn't counted for points, no doubt.

Just two rounds into this championship, and we'd already seen three different race winners in three different makes of car, bringing with them close racing, tense finishes, strategic mind games, and a touch of biffo and hurt feelings as a sweetener. At this point you'd have to say the 1992 Shell Australian Touring Car Championship was looking rather promising, except for the disquieting fact that both Nissan drivers were already sitting 1-2 on the points table...