As the championship reached middle age the talk at the bar was all about the things we least wanted to discuss – words like "parity" and "sandbagging" were flying back and forth. Despite the best efforts of CAMS, the Nissan drivers were still dominating the top of the ladder, and coming up was a round that was sure to favour Godzilla even more...
4 April: That Winton Feeling
That Godzilla would return to the winner's circle when the series regrouped for Round 4 at Winton Motor Raceway had been accepted as a grim inevitability by the touring car circus, and Fred Gibson didn't let them down. His driver Jim Richards proved fastest in qualifying proper with a 1:00.70, three-tenths quicker than the Sierras of Glenn Seton and John Bowe (who set identical times) and the returning Walkinshaw Commodore of Larry Perkins. But it was Mark Skaife who won the Peter Jackson Dash on Sunday morning, and so laid claim to pole position for Heat 1. The hapless Richards was not only beaten off the line, he then fell into a scrap with Seton, which cost him time and left him starting only 3rd.
Andy Raymond: And the domination has started already. It's a Nissan trademark, Skaife?
Mark Skaife: Oh it is, Andy. The four-wheel drive car around here is a big advantage, and even though it was only a three-lap race, it stands us in good stead for the next one.
Raymond: The BMWs you said are going to be even more competitive than the Sierras?
Skaife: I think towards the end of the second race they'll be very very hard to beat. The tyre they chose is a very hard tyre, they'll be good in the second heat for sure.
Richo's misfortune in the Dash, however, was undone the instant the green flag flew. The blue Sierra squirmed and fishtailed off the line, leaving the GT-R free to zip by and assume 2nd place, while up front Skaife opened up a couple of car lengths in a flash and faultlessly led the opening laps. Whatever had been wrong with the Nissan team's engines at Symmons had been cured; they were revving free once again, giving the drivers adequate power to play with.
Or at least, the factory cars did. Whether because they hadn't got the same updates as Gibson's own drivers, or just because he wasn't as comfortable with the GT-R as Richards and Skaife, the GIO Nissan of Mark Gibbs hadn't qualified especially well and spent the early laps trying to claw back some places. He took to the grass to get by the slow starters off the line, and although his move on Peter Brock was as clean as could be, when he tried sticking his nose up the inside of Dick Johnson, he realised too late that he was driving into a disappearing wedge. When he jumped on the brakes to back out of it he locked up and spun, dropping him about four places in a heartbeat.
By lap 9 it got more complicated as the yellow BMWs started making their presence felt. Having worn down Brocky in the early laps, Tony Longhurst tried a banzai move up the inside into Turn 1 and made it stick, with teammate Alan Jones following him through, hanging Brocky out to dry. They were fortunate Brock was a professional – as Allan Moffat had pointed out, the Commodore was a much bigger car than the M3, and if they'd made contact there wouldn't have been much of the little BMW left!
Having dispatched Brock, the BMW twins swiftly caught up to the next car in line, Dick Johnson's Sierra. The lapped Walky of Bob Jones couldn't provide enough of a disruption to give Longhurst an opening, but when Johnson came in slightly too hot in the final corner, that was enough. Longhurst again dived up the inside into the first turn, but this time Alan couldn't follow him through, as Dick expertly read the situation and slotted back into line between them. Jones had to wait until Turn 6 before he got his as well.
Then on lap 18, Neil Crompton returned to the pits with an engine problem. Although the mechanics tried to fix it, ultimately it proved fatal and netted Crompo a DNF.
Andy Raymond: He was in such a battle. Neil, what has gone wrong with the Commodore?
Neil Crompton: No idea really, AJ. That last lap around, all of a sudden the thing just had a giant misfire, and suddenly it was running on five [cylinders], something like that. The boys can't find the problem quickly and easily, so we have to put it away. It's a little disappointing.
At least he was in good company. A lap later, Colin Bond also crawled into pit lane and parked it, an electrical problem having ended his chances.
In the meantime, Richards had caught up to Skaife and swept by to take the lead into Turn 6. This lasted all of three laps, when Skaife put in a move of his own and got the place back, thankfully without undue resistance from Richards. In the commentary box, Mike Raymond speculated they were showboating to keep the crowd from getting bored, and guessed that Gibson Motorsport was already rallying behind Skaife to win this year's championship. Although it's possible the duel was real and Skaife both lost and regained the lead on merit, in the end it was all academic: the Nissans led all 25 laps to clinch an easy victory, Skaife ahead of Richards, with a solid 3rd from Seton and an impressive 4th for Larry Perkins.
Tony Longhurst had put in a solid drive in Heat 1, rising from 8th to 6th at a time when everyone's tyres were still fresh, but in the closing laps he'd finally come upon something he couldn't deal with: the #18 Sierra of John Bowe. Bowe had been quite firm about keeping Tony behind him, and the pressure wasn't likely to fade in the second heat, as the Sierra ate its tyres and Tony got ever more frustrated. 25 more laps would tell the tale.
There was a long hold on the line before the green for Heat 2, and several peoples's nerves couldn't take that. Bowe took to the grass to get around (yet again) a slow-starting Seton, while ahead the peloton piled into the first turn four-wide. Winton was a narrow track, so something had to give, and that something turned out to be Dick Johnson, who ended up on the far side of Turn 1 in a cloud of dust, having been turned around the wrong way. A quick replay revealed he'd been T-boned in the door by an over-eager Peter Brock, and Dick was forced to complete the lap by returning to the pits, taking on fresh tyres to replace those that had been flat-spotted in the incident. "They're the sort of things that happen every now and then," sighed a resigned Johnson.
So with Johnson out of the way it was Bowe in 3rd behind the Nissans, with Seton in 4th and Perkins, 5th. Skaife and Richards continued to swap the lead but they had a huge gap back to the two Sierras, so they could afford to play silly buggers for now. Colin Bond also landed in the dirt early, rounding out a fairly indifferent weekend for him.
So the man on the move in this second heat was, of course, Tony Longhurst. The pressure from Tony was enough to crack even a hardened campaigner like Perkins, who lost the tail heading into Turn 6 and was forced into a massive slide. Spectacular, but it cost him two places as the yellow M3s zipped through, and a lap later Seton too failed to nail Turn 6 properly. The Sierra looked very clumsy once the turbo lag and the race groove were no longer in perfect synch, and he slipped to the outside of the turn and kicked up some dust, rejoining behind the equally chastened Larry Perkins.
That left us with a Nissan 1-2, then Bowe 3rd, and then a BMW 4-5, but of course Tony wasn't going to leave it there. Within a couple more laps it was clear Bowe was holding the BMWs up, the Sierra looking ragged and taily as Bowe flung it through the never-ending twists, in defiance of his dying Dunlops. Frustrated, Tony put a crease in his bonnet by ramming Bowe into Turn 8, prompting Bowe to quickly give him the finger on the following straight!
On the closing lap things finally got out of hand, as Tony gave Bowe a bit of "assistance" through Turn 6 and forcefully ended the Ford driver's race in cloud of dust. A bid for a podium finish, Tony pushed hard through Turn 5 and then simply refused to lift when Bowe got in his way, nerfing the red Sierra out of the way and carrying on to the finish line. Bowe ended the weekend, like Johnson before him, facing backwards in the dirt, and although he limped home to record a 9th-place finish (behind Gibbs and Paul Morris), it was far from glorious. Longhurst was slapped with a $5,000 penalty for the manoeuvre but, crucially, he kept his 3rd place.
So Mark Skaife won the heat, and therefore the round, with teammate Richards 2nd on both counts. On the rostrum, the man with the microphone Mark Oastler pointed out that the GT-Rs had done it easily this weekend, but Skaife refused to be drawn. "Well, they're a very good car and this sort of circuit suits them," was all he would say, which was true as far as it went. But with the GT-Rs looking like regaining their old form, there was already talk of things happening in the back offices of CAMS.
19 April: Production Values
In the month-long break between Winton and Lakeside came the second running of the James Hardie 12 Hour, the new production car enduro at Mount
Panorama. This was the one where Allan Grice famously entered a VP Holden Ute (it wasn't called a Commodore yet), with co-driving from Thunderdome hero Brad Jones and his own "search for a star" winner, John Spencer.
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According to Gricey, the project was cooked up (where else?) at the pub, with finance by his good friends at Akubra Felt Hats.
I always wore a hat by choice and at some stage I started wearing an Akubra, which was particularly appropriate when I was racing overseas. I used to drive through Kempsey [in northern NSW], which is where Akubras are made, and one day I decided to stop in and put the hard word on them. I got to see the guy who looked after their advertising and marketing, and he recognised me. He said, "Oh, yeah, I've seen photos of you all over the place wearing one of our hats – how many would you like?" That was the beginning of it all. And then some dollars became involved... – Allan Grice, Auto Action #1795
The ute itself was an SS provided by Holden, and with its impressive power-to-weight ratio and reliable V8 engine, on paper it should've been a real contender.
That was a lot of fun. The ute was a really quick thing and with some more development could have done some real damage. It was light. Understeered like a pig, but you just adapted your style to compensate. You'd push it into the corner and hit the curb to get the tail out, and off you'd go. You'd think it would have been taily because of the lack of weight over the rear, but it was like a lead-tipped arrow. It only had little tyres on the front holding up a bloody big V8 and nothing down the back. – Allan Grice, Auto Action #1795
He wasn't the only touring car star taking part. Sydney prestige car dealer Ken Mathews had entered a turbocharged Saab 9000 CSS, and had roped in his former teammate Colin Bond to share the driving. When asked who the third driver should be, Bondy recommended the man who'd given him a ride in the Eastern Creek 500 two years earlier – Glenn Seton. Garry Rogers had also cooked up a deal to run a Subaru Liberty RS, with help from WA businessman Alf Barbagallo, and rally legend Possum Bourne. And no-one less than Peter Brock had teamed up with protégé Neil Crompton and journalist Paul Gover to drive, of all things, a Peugeot 405 Mi16, entered by the local Peugeot franchise!
Dick Johnson had joined brothers Brett and Kent Youlden in a Ford Laser TX3 Turbo, a rebadged Mazda 323 with turbo power and 4WD. The more basic Laser was being assembled at Ford's Homebush plant in Sydney, only a stone's throw from the future site of the Year 2000 Olympics, as a budget hatchback aimed at the cost-conscious urban motorist. Ford's version of the car had always sold better than Mazda's own, but the operation only had a couple of years left to run, as the plant would close for good in 1994. The more tricked-out TX3 model was fully imported, and although only 117 kW from its turbocharged 1.8-litre engine sounded rather feeble, with only 1,180kg to haul around performance was actually pretty sprightly, especially once pit strategy became a factor. Johnson had probably been lured by the fact the Youldens had finished 2nd outright in this car the year before.
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| The car in 1991. (source) |
In addition, BMW works pedallers Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones were pairing up in a new BMW M5 – and by "new", I mean new: the car had been driven down to the track from its home in Queensland as part of the factory's recommended 5,000km running-in period. The choice of M5 had been a surprise to many, but the smaller M3 was not sold in Australia, and the M5 gave BMW Australia a chance to flex their corporate muscle in defiance of the Falcodore-centric rules by which Production Car racing was now run. Said BMW Australia managing director Ron Meatchem, in the 12 Hour's official programme:
In the past we've been frustrated by production car rules which prevent us running against the Holdens and Fords. But suddenly the rules have opened up and you can put performance cars in. With this race we can certainly show what the M5 can do.
That they could: the E34 model was end of a dynasty, the last BMW to benefit from the 3.5-litre DOHC straight-six originally developed for the M1 supercar. This was the same engine that had powered Jim Richards' BMW 635 CSi back when it was winning championships, and it also underpinned the four-cylinder unit in the B&H M3s Jones and Longhurst drove for their day job, so it was no surprise that the factory claimed 230 kW at 6,900rpm (and a nice 360 Nm plateau of torque around 4,700). For perspective, that was only 10 kW less than Ford's original XR6 Turbo would go on to produce a decade later, but from 500cc less engine, and with no turbo!
On paper then, this Kavalier's express tuned for the autobahns of Bavaria was capable of winning outright. But although one of the most powerful cars in the field, it was also one of the heaviest, saddled with a whopping 1,670kg kerb weight, so Meatchem wasn't quite popping the champagne yet. It was also the most expensive car on the grid by a mile, with a list price of $155,000, bumped up by lingering industry protection taxes and tariffs. That worked out as nearly $306,000 in 2021 money, but things change: in 1992, that sum would've bought you a house...
So it might've been unproven, heavy and ludicrously expensive, but this "ultimate driving machine" had the benefit of racing in Class C, for cars of 2.5 to 4.0 litres, where its only competition would come from locally-built six-cylinder Falcons and Commodores. The only thing that didn't quite fit the image was the sponsor: at some point Frank Gardner had agreed to Nibble Nobby's Nuts...
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| As usual, Mark Oastler has a great article over on Shannons Club. Go check it out. |
Unfortunately for all of them, the car to be in this year was Mazda's new FD-model RX-7 Turbo, which had only just started to arrive in showrooms around the country (yours for only $73,000 – that's $144,000 today). This was a works effort done on behalf of Mazda Motorsport Australia, and it was masterminded by former Moffat team manager Allan Horsley, a man who'd learned the RX-7 and its foibles the hard way. But where the Moffat Mazdas had always struggled for torque on the steep climbs of the Mountain, the new model solved that problem via sequential twin turbos. So although the 13B-REW Wankel rotary under the bonnet developed only 176 kW, it was sitting in a body that was light, balanced and aerodynamic, meaning it was capable of trap speeds far above what its power figures would suggest. The team had also managed to secure some serious driving talent, putting former Moffat sidekick Gregg Hansford in the #7 alongside the man who'd taken his job at DJR, John Bowe. In the #17, on the other hand, it was to be GIO Nissan driver Mark Gibbs, Queensland wild card Charlie O'Brien, and – crucially – Mazda's 1988 Group E production car champion, Garry Waldon. Zoom zoom, indeed.
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Qualifying saw Gricey had complete his lap with a fibreglass blue heeler in the tray (as you do), but these kinds of publicity-stunt entries swiftly fell by the wayside once the real times started coming in. Longhurst clocked the eighth-fastest time to secure a fourth-row start, his 2:45.44 (some reports said 45.22) streets ahead of his nearest class rival, a VP Commodore S with a 2:51.7. The harsh reality, however, was that even the Bavarian beast was a long way behind the polesitting Mazda of Bowe & Hansford, who'd clocked an astonishing 2:36.28, putting them a substantial margin ahead of the John Bourke/John Smith Toyota Supra Turbo that had won the race last year, and a VN Commodore SS Group A driven by Wayne Park (Holden's current homologation car in its roadgoing guise).
In the pre-dawn darkness of Easter Sunday, the blazing headlights of 55 cars were flagged away into the morning mist to begin their 12-hour, 1,500-kilometre odyssey. While the Mazdas led the field away and dominated the early running, the Mathews Saab was an early visitor to the pits, coming in after just a single lap. Glenn Seton had started the race at the wheel and came back complaining that he could hear a "ticking" noise sound coming from the car: it was found that a brake line had been rubbing, so it was just as well he came in. The problem was quickly rectified and the car sent back out, but at the tail of the field, a long way behind.
At the end of the first lap Longhurst was already clear of his closest Class C pursuer. After just 29 laps, he was more than a lap in front, and by 7am, he was 3rd outright behind the two Mazdas. That meant he was in prime position when, later in the morning, both the works Mazdas struck trouble. The O'Brien/Waldon/Gibbs car dropped out of the top twenty before rejoining, while the leading Bowe/Hansford car had a brake calliper jam on before a turbo come off, relegating them to 52nd on the road.
With these pacesetters making unscheduled pit stops, the Longhurst/Jones BMW, the Smith/Bourke Supra and the Wayne Park Holden all took turns in the lead, while the Saab was slowly making its way back up the field. Gricey's ute meanwhile once again proved quick, with Grice noting, "BMW flew a 5 M Series out from Germany at that stage and I really enjoyed passing it down the straight." The whole project had been done late and in a hurry, however, so they ran into unexpected problems with the provided fuel.
What brought it undone was dirty fuel out of the tank at the track – it was contaminated. It only got used twice a year and the fuel would just lie there and be full of crap when the level got low. – Allan Grice, Auto Action #1795
On Speedcafe, he added: "The people who built the fuel tank didn't clean the foam out properly and we continually picked up bits of black foam in the injection system and had to keep stopping."
After five hours, now with a two-lap class lead, the BMW team started to consider their chances of a genuine outright victory. Sadly, the German sedan was soon having brake troubles of its own, demonstrating an insatiable appetite for brake pads: with its tremendous 250km/h top speed, it was hard work to bring such a heavy car to a halt again at the bottom of Conrod, which necessitated time-consuming pad replacements at each stop and, on at least one occasion, replacing the disc rotors as well. "If only we'd had a pad that lasted a bit longer – that was our downfall," lamented Longhurst to Chevron Publishing after the race. "The car had the same terminal speed as the Mazda and you've got to pull it up somehow."
Later still, the BMW also suffered an exhaust problem when one bolt securing the exhaust extractors worked loose. It left the car sounding awful, but made little difference to its lap times, so they carried on. While it was in the pits for yet more brake pads, the Park Holden assumed the lead and held it until he lost a wheel, before one of Park's co-drivers finally buried the car in a sand trap, putting the car out of contention. The Smith/Bourke Toyota then led the race before the #17 Mazda charged back through the field and swooped into a lead that it would never lose. The Supra later went out when it too lost a wheel.
As the race entered its final hours the little Ford Laser TX3 Turbo started to come into contention. The Laser wasn't the fastest car on track, but on average it spent the least time in the pits being refuelled and repaired, and once the Mazdas hit trouble it was suddenly in with a shout of winning. After 11 hours and 230 laps, the Laser was only a lap down on the class leader, and looking good for a strong finish. But then with one hour to go, cruel luck played its hand and a CV joint broke, leaving them non-finishers. No doubt Dick Johnson scowled at the darkening heavens as he padded back to the motorhome.
Over at the Mazda team, however, it was all smiles. Waldon, Gibbs & O'Brien ran out the clock with 254 laps on the scoreboard, three more than the Longhurst/Jones BMW in 2nd, who in turn was a lap clear of the Bond/Seton/Mathews Saab. Bowe & Hansford were 5th, nine laps behind their victorious teammates. After all those years of humiliation at the hands of their V8 Commodore rivals, Mazda had their revenge at Mount Panorama. It was the start of a glorious run of success for Japanese rotary pioneers in the production car epic, but arguably the BMW was the moral winner. Where Mazda had finished only four laps ahead of their nearest class rival, the mighty M5 had finished thirty laps – a distance of 186km! – ahead of the next Class C finisher, the six-cylinder VN Commodore S of Bob Griffin, Trevor Hodge and Peter Taffa. While the rest had been busy with mishaps and mechanical failures, the big 5-Series had barely missed a beat, finishing with only 4,700km on its odometer... still 300km short of the recommended running-in period!
3 May: Lake Superior
Despite all the handicaps CAMS had sent their way, the two Nissan drivers were firmly first and second on the championship ladder after Winton, so from Round 5 they once again found their minimum weights had been lifted – this time, by a whopping 100kg! The Sierras had also copped a 50kg increase, but since that took them only to 1,200 or so they remained in familiar territory. The GT-Rs on the other hand were now up to a beefy 1,500kg, which became more like 1,600 once the drivers and all fluids were on board. Fred Gibson claimed at this point things were actually getting dangerous, as those hollow Castalloy wheels were beginning to crack under the strain, and he advised the Bob Forbes GIO team to leave the GT-R at home and bring their VN Commodore to Lakeside instead.
As a result of these developments neither of the Gibson drivers could break into the top ten in qualifying, pushing the accusations of sandbagging to fever pitch. Dick Johnson took taking provisional pole with a 52.90-second lap. John Bowe (52.97) and Tony Longhurst (53.29) were next-fastest, unsurprising when these were the two teams that used Lakeside for all their testing, but fourth-fastest was Larry Perkins in the VL Walkinshaw with a 53.37, ahead of the Caltex Sierra of Colin Bond (53.58). Sixth-fastest, and therefore making the Dash on Sunday, was a man who hadn't raced since Sandown, Tomas Mezera in the factory HRT Commodore.
Mezera's 53.67-second qualy lap had been very impressive for man so out of practice, but on Sunday morning it all went wrong. Bowe anticipated the rolling start brilliantly and howled into the Kink well in the lead, but behind Mezera came roaring in not realising he was now three-wide with Johnson and Perkins. The road wasn't big enough for all of them, and Johnson's nose gave the Commodore's tail a slight shove and unsettled it. From there it was all over, and Mezera spun into the sand.
Without him, the remaining five continued to lap as if they were tied together, and although Longhurst looked at both sides of Bond on the approach to Hungry Corner, he didn't have the pace to force a move at that stage. So the sharp end of the grid was settled with John Bowe to start from pole, Colin Bond making it an all-Sierra front row, Longhurst and Perkins making an all-atmospheric second row, and then Dick Johnson and the hapless Mezera making up the third.
At the green for Heat 1, Bowe made a good start and Perkins lunged across to cover Tony Longhurst before he could get any ideas; the one slow away was Colin Bond, who was swallowed up by Johnson and Brock before the Karrussell. Mark Gibbs got it wrong in the Kink just as Mezera had earlier in the day, and ended up with his GIO Commodore spinning to a halt on the grass. So through the first lap it was Bowe leading, with Perkins hot on his heels and Tony Longhurst 3rd, then Johnson and Seton, Bond and Brock, and only then the first of the Nissans, Mark Skaife pedalling the obese GT-R for all it was worth.
Johnson hadn't done especially well either in the Dash or off the start, and the opening heat was no gentler, as he was forced head for the pits on lap 2 – flat tyre. He dropped to 23rd, no doubt amid a cloud of expletives no non-Queenslander could understand, and it couldn't have improved his mood when he snapped an axle only eight laps later. Johnson returned to the pits, undid his belts and got out the car with the air of a defeated man.
It's obviously not my day. Yesterday probably was. First of all we had a flat tyre on the warm-up lap, which really screwed things up. And then I get back out there and the thing's going alright and then I broke a halfshaft on the rear.
At least Bowe was still out there flying the flag. The third lap saw Perkins get a nose inside Bowe the Eastern Loop, taking the lead, but it was anyone's guess how long he'd be able to hold it. The trio of Perkins, Bowe and Longhurst were as good as tied together for the next 10 laps, but everybody knew it was far too early for this kind of speed: Larry's tyres had almost two full races ahead of them, and their chances of going the distance at this sort of speed were absolutely nil.
Sure enough, ten laps into the 28-lap heat, Larry's driving started looking ragged as the rear tyres started to give up the ghost. Bowe had wisely elected to wait it out, but behind he had Tony Longhurst working patiently but doggedly on the back of his Sierra, steadily ramping up the pressure as Bowe's tyres wilted. Finally, Longhurst pulled alongside and got a surer launch coming out of the Karrussell, and as they approached the fast right-hander under the Dunlop bridge he didn't let up. On lap 15 the pair zoomed side-by-side under the bridge but, having stepped out of the Sierra's shadow, Tony held his nerve and kept the inside line; it was now his corner to lose, and nothing on the track could out-brake an M3. Done and done: Tony Longhurst emerged from the corner ahead of John Bowe, having taken 2nd place with driving that was brave and determined but, above all, clean.
Two laps later Longhurst had caught up to Perkins, and the Commodore wasn't anything like the challenge Bowe's Sierra had been: calmly, almost casually, Tony out-braked Perkins on the entry to Hungry Corner and assumed the lead. That five-grand fine had sent the right message – Tony had made both passes without so much as nicking the paint.
After that, Longhurst's rivals were only needed to worry about each other. Perkins steadily fell into the clutches of Bowe, and both found gradually found themselves under attack from Mark Skaife in the Nissan, who'd cleared Peter Brock and was making that 4WD tyre life work for him.
With Skaife to think about Bowe got frustrated at being stuck behind Larry, and chose to give the big Commodore a bit of a nudge. It backfired in a big way, as not only did it slow him enough to let Skaife through for the place, it deformed the left-front wheel arch such that the tyre was now rubbing on the rim.
The smoke was thick and embarrassing, but Bowe elected to power through it and hope the tyre wasn't about to burst, which turned out to be the right call: the tyre held together, and two laps later he tried a repeat of the move on Larry and made it stick.
After that it was virtually open season on Perkins, as Alan Jones, Jim Richards and plenty of others took turns making a meal of him – those Dunlops were well and truly dead, and he still had a whole heat to go. But arguably, he'd made his point – Larry kept the lights on building Commodores for customer teams, and he'd just demonstrated to all and sundry exactly that his cars were the ones you wanted. So what if he wasn't a winner in Group A? It was next year's all-V8 formula that he had his eye on...
In the meantime, Longhurst rounded out the laps to clinch the win, with Mark Skaife 2nd, a smoky Bowe 3rd, Alan Jones 4th and Richards 5th. It had been an expert performance, but the work was only half done. Said a hot and sweaty Tony Longhurst to the TV cameras: "I'm not looking forward to racing the Nissan off the line..."
He wasn't wrong. At the start of Heat 2, Richards zoomed off the line into an immediate lead, followed by John Bowe and only then the three BMW drivers, 3rd, 4th and 5th. The good news was, Richo was the only Nissan here at the sharp end, as Skaife started right at the back. After the first heat, Skaife, Perkins, Terry Finnigan and Bob Jones had all gone to CAMs, hat in hand, to ask if they could replace their ruined tyres from the first heat. CAMS had allowed it, but in the process they were required to start from the back of the grid, plus a ten-second penalty. So there would be two starts to this heat: the first when the green flag flew, and then the second ten seconds later, when the cars in pit lane were released. And once freed, Skaife shot off like a mad dog and rose from 22nd to 16th in just three laps. Another handful of laps and it was 12th, then 11th...
In truth, though, Heat 2 was mostly a replay of Heat 1, except there were fewer cars between Tony Longhurst and his goal. The first third was spent, yet again, stuck behind John Bowe, or following John Bowe at any rate: he wasn't being held up in any obvious way, but he was looking for a way past nevertheless. He needed to clear Bowe at the very least before he could seriously think about clinching the round – Richards was probably too far ahead to catch, but he'd finished only 4th in the first heat, so a victory in the second wouldn't add up to a round win for him.
Approaching half-distance Bowe's tyres started to go off, and Longhurst started looking keen. Tony looked this way and that, but the crucial moment came when they caught up to lapped traffic. Both cars weaved through the Corollas just fine but Bowe – for some reason – committed himself to the inside line into the Karrussell, which snookered him behind Garry Willmington's slow-moving Supra Turbo. One look at that and Tony said, "Thankyou very much!", braked on the outside line, zipped around them both and emerged on the other side suddenly in 2nd place! Brave and clever, Tony, and once again, clean.
Longhurst had earned 2nd place the hard way, but 1st came like a gift from heaven. Just after half-distance, Jim Richards unexpectedly messed up at the Kink and couldn't stop his rampaging, out-of-control GT-R until the sand lying outside the Karrusell! Said Richo later:
We take the Kink flat out now, [and] with the extra weight it just bounced the car too far off the circuit, and I ended up on the grass. I had to put the brakes on on the grass, which wasn't too good.
"Wasn't too good" was a classic racing driver's understatement. The replay revealed he'd simply got it wrong on a particularly vicious bump, and thanks to some supreme car control he'd managed to keep it off the walls and out of the sand trap. But even so, a mistake is a mistake: by the time he rejoined the race, Tony was through into the race lead and long gone.
A couple of laps later, Alan Jones made the mistake of trying to out-brake Bowe into Hungry Corner. Longhurst had backed out of a similar move earlier in the heat but Jonesy kept coming, with the inevitable result: the BMW tagged the Sierra's rear passenger-side door and tipped it into a spin. Bowe finished his race on the grass wondering what the hell had just happened, while Jones himself almost went for a sympathy spin but gathered it up and carried on, leaving Bowe to curse BMW and all BMW drivers. Bowe rejoined but his race was ruined, with precious little hope of taking serious points from the round now.
Indeed, by then it was the penultimate lap and Dick Johnson was having to fend off Mark Skaife, who was tearing through the field like an angry samurai through a paper house. Johnson was skating, his rear tyres completely used up, but there were very few passing opportunities as long experience taught him exactly where to place the car, and the Shell Sierra proved the cork in the bottle right up to the last minute. When the chequered flag came out, Tony diced through one last bit of traffic to chalk up a well-deserved win, with 2nd going to a dust-stained Richards, 3rd to Jonesy, 4th to Paul Morris and 5th to a fuming John Bowe. Skaifey ended up only 7th, kept out of 6th by the wily Johnson. Said Tony on the rostrum:
I was pretty pleased when my mate that doesn't make too many mistakes slipped off. I think he would've been a hard guy to pass. I believe the rules are very close now, and I'm just so pleased to be up there again. … Getting past John Bowe is no easy task, and Jimmy would've been just as difficult.
Tony had a quick glance to someone in the crowd at that word "slipped" though – maybe that bet with Frank Gardner was still on?
Either way, after five rounds the championship table showed Mark Skaife sitting pretty on 133 points, with Jim Richards on 126 – with two 2nd's he'd added the most to his score, but it wasn't enough to unseat his teammate. Glenn Seton was third on 104, but with the post-Winton rebalance it wasn't likely he'd stay there for very long. Tony Longhurst meanwhile had improved his position the most, jumping from eighth up to fourth overall, with on 90 points. Bowe and Johnson sat fifth and sixth, with 81 and 78 points resecptive, both having jumped Mark Gibbs, whose 76-point total took a hit with the GT-R back in the workshop.
Lakeside had been the hardest-fought ATCC round yet, the fine margins on the track suggesting that CAMS' latest round of performance equalisers were doing their job, but the price was starting to get too high. If Richards' off-track excursion in Heat 2 had ended with him clouting the wall and injuring himself, would that extra 100kg of ballast have been justified? The extra fifty kilos on the Sierras had also had the effect of slowing down Seton but not Johnson or Bowe, which led to speculation the Shell cars had been running overweight the entire time (although given Lakeside was the team's home circuit, where they did all their testing, it was hard to be certain). It was all a bit troubling, and worse, any further weight penalties were already out of the question. Four of the drivers had voluntarily taken penalties to gain access to fresh rubber rather than carry on with what they had, circumventing the point of the rules. Any further ballast was only going to make this route more attractive. What was a governing body to do?
