14 April: Skaife's First Win

Jimmy and I had come out of the blocks fast in 1991. All the work on the GT-R in the back end of 1990 and over summer had given us a car that was reliable enough for us to drive hard. Jim was the reigning Champion, and I was keen to make my mark. At the time I had never to this date run a full Australian Touring Car Championship, and I was finally getting my chance. – Mark Skaife, Mark Skaife: The Autobiography

It's a pleasure to witness the first flowering of a new talent, and that's exactly what we got to see as the championship took its traditional swing west. At Wanneroo Park, Mark Skaife took the first of what would one day be a record number of victories, a cause for celebration at Nissan and anyone else interested in the sport... and yet, there was no getting away from the fact that he didn't have a lot of competition on the day, as the grid behind him was mostly empty air.

Young Skaifey, not pictured at Wanneroo '91.

 

The Heart Grows Fonder
If grids had been anaemic at Sandown and Symmons, they were downright anorexic by the time of Wanneroo. None of the local Western Australian drivers were able to join in the fun this year, leaving Local Colour like Tim Slako and Alf Barbagallo conspicuous by their absence, while the GIO-backed Bob Forbes team elected to stay home, shaving Mark Gibbs from the entry list as well. That left just eleven cars to take starter's orders for this round, and that, gentle readers, just might be the record for an officially-sanctioned touring car race in Australia.

That's all of them.

Because the first third of this year has been so hectic for me personally, I can't remember if I only just learned this or if I was saving it for now, but either way: the reasons why bit deep into the state of motorsport in early 1991. What with one thing and another, governing body CAMS had been in financial trouble even before the recession; once downturn set in, however, the jitters turned to outright panic. To stave off bankruptcy the Confederation resorted to steep hikes in their fees, to the tune of $10,000 for any track that wanted to host a round of the ATCC, and $6,000 per car for the teams (double those figures if you want to know what that's worth today). That was far too rich for the weekend warriors, who vanished from the series overnight.

So by the time the circus arrived in Perth, only the hardcore pro teams were still in the game: the Dick Johnson Racing pair of Dick himself and sidekick John Bowe; the Mobil twins of Peter Brock and Larry Perkins; the Benson & Hedges M3s of Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones; Win Percy for the Holden Racing Team; Colin Bond's red Caltex Sierra, and the blue Peter Jackson equivalent of Glenn Seton; and the mutual admiration society over at Gibson Motorsport, Gentleman Jim and young Skaifey. That was it, the whole 11.

Testing Times
After the spanking they'd received in Rounds 1 and 2, most of the teams had spent the month between Symmons and Wanneroo doing some much-needed homework, seeking to get their cars up to the searing pace now required in Group A. Most of the focus had been on reducing weight, which would've reduced lap times even as it eased the burden on their overworked tyres, so there must've been some swearing when CAMS introduced a 2.5 percent increase in homologation weights for all cars across the board. The idea was to encourage privateers back into the game by sparing them the expense of parts made from exotic materials, but with zero privateers on the grid in WA, we've already seen how successful that was. The road to Hell really is paved with good intentions...

The times being what they were, of course, all the testing had been done with no money, which would have consequences for the Wanneroo weekend. John Bowe went through two engines on Saturday before catastrophically blowing a turbo in the Sunday morning warm-up, leaving him to start the race second-last (with only Larry Perkins behind). Win Percy meanwhile had fronted with HRT's first '91-spec engine, built to capitalise on the intake and exhaust freedoms introduced at the start of the year, with Rob Benson having reportedly expended five engines and 3,000 litres of fuel on the dyno putting it together. Unfortunately, all the effort (and expense!) was voided when Percy blew it up in Friday practice, leaving him to qualify and run the race with, effectively, the engine with which he'd won Bathurst.

It was rather impressive, then, that he still managed to qualify 2nd with a lap time of 59.26 seconds, beaten only by Dick Johnson's 59.10! In a season dominated by the Nissans, seeing the works Holden and de facto works Ford starting at the front was an unexpected delight for the fans. Jim Richards was in fact only third-fastest with a 59.38, which inevitably led to accusations of sandbagging by the Gibson team – but no, the time was genuine, a fact traceable to violent understeer in the GT-R.

“There are lots of high speed changes in direction here,” Richards explained, “and with a full load of fuel the car has inherent understeer characteristics.” He made it sound boring enough, but on the road it was substantially more heart-in-mouth: in one of the practice sessions Richards had gone straight ahead entering Turn 1, and only just managed to pull it up before the sand trap. Skaife had it even worse, unable to complete the latter half of the turn and landing in the sand proper, almost rolling another priceless GT-R.

He was able to drive it out again thanks to the four-wheel drive system, but it left him to start 6th with a time of 59.65 seconds, behind even Tony Longhurst (59.54) and Glenn Seton (59.60). Wanneroo Park was still king of the tyre-shredders, and with its enormous kerb weight and more than 600 horses under the bonnet, 4WD was an advantage the GT-Rs would sorely need. Both Richo and Skaifey would need to introduce some reticence to their driving if they wanted to see the chequered flag.

Jim won the first two rounds of the 1991 Championship at Sandown and Symmons Plains, and then we went to Perth for the round at the track we now know as Barbagallo. It's a great track – I'd driven the GT-R there the previous year and it was, and still is, a real car-control track that I liked right from that first visit. It's a low-grip track and the cars slide around, which damages the tyres. It still has that tendency today and is the hardest place on tyres per kilometre in Australia. So often it feels like driving in the rain, but if you were able to make the tyres last while still going fast enough, there were big gains later in the races. – Mark Skaife, Mark Skaife: The Autobiography

We Few, We Happy Few...
So the incorrigible eleven lined up on the grid before the Wanneroo control tower and waited for the off. It wasn't long coming: the starter raised the green flag, held it for a brief pause, and then gave it a mighty heave, signalling the beginning of Round 3.

From pole position, Dick launched his Sierra perfectly, forcing Percy to tuck in behind him. Once again both GT-Rs made demon starts, but Richards got stuck behind Percy, whereas Skaife pointed his nose at the outside line and found wide open space for his horses to gallop, so it was Skaife who followed Dick into the first turn, with Percy relegated to 3rd and Richards 4th.

It quickly emerged that Johnson's surprise turn of speed in qualifying had been strategic – he'd bet everything on a Moffat-style strategy of running flat-out with a light fuel load and soft Dunlops, hoping to build a gap before a planned mid-race stop. In the early laps it seemed to be paying off, as Johnson's advantage over Skaife stretched from 2.2 seconds by the end of lap 1, out to 3.4 seconds by lap 4. But was that going to be enough? The answer, as we found out on lap 5, was no, as the gap shrank back to 2.7 seconds and remained there or thereabouts ever after. He'd needed to pull out a second per lap to even have a hope against the Nissans, and with the race less than ten minutes old that was already out the window, as his pace fell away far too quickly. Tyre-hungry Wanneroo had already eaten his Dunlops.

So what about Win Percy in the Commodore? Well, by lap 11 Richards was finally close enough to make a move on him, diving up the inside into Turn 6 and holding his breath as Percy decided whether or not to slam into him in reprisal. Ever the professional, Percy decided against it, and the Kiwi held the place as they exited the turn, the Nissans now running 2-3 behind Johnson's distant – but not distant enough! – Shell Sierra.

Having lost a place to the Nissans, Percy then had to fend off the buzzing irritant of Tony Longhurst in the BMW. Wherever the track climbed or held straight the little Bavarian car struggled, but as soon as the road turned it came into is own. Only a lap after Richards had shown the way through, Longhurst tried it at Turn 6 as well, and only the fact that he couldn't match the Commodore on power stopped him taking the place there and then. Up the back straight the Holden pulled away, but when they arrived in the hard braking zone at the bottom of the hill he was all over Percy once more. For the second time in two corners, Percy kept the place only because of engine power, but even so the sheer speed of this new-fangled M3 was deeply worrying. The ace up the M3's sleeve had always been tyre life, so there was every chance Tony would be able to do this all day and spring a surprise late in the race.

On lap 15 they came back from an ad break and had the bright idea to talk to Dick Johnson in the lead, which was now back out to 3.5 seconds. Unfortunately Dick was already in trouble and, well...

Neil Crompton: Dick you're working pretty hard at the wheel there as we take Dunlop RaceCam. Is the strategy going to work?

Dick Johnson: Oh, God only knows, mate. It's got more pops than a lollypop shop at the moment. It's just a gamble, mate, we've gotta see how it pans out in the end.

Mike Raymond: What did you hope to have over the two Nissans when you pulled in for your pit stop?

Johnson: Well, the way this thing's going at the moment I don't think that'll happen.

Raymond: You have got to do a pit stop, Dick? There's no way you can go all the way?

Johnson: No mate, she's just sorta...

At that very moment the vacuum-cleaner howl of the Cosworth engine plummeted, signalling the #17 was a dead car rolling. “You do this to me, Mike. I don't know how you do it!” said Johnson with a despairing laugh. “I haven't...” said Raymond in shock. “Oh mate, I've given you the kiss of death again!”

By the time they hung up Dick was already in his pit box, taking service from a crowd of smartly-dressed DJR mechanics, but now it didn't matter. Even a healthy car would've struggled to win the race from there, and the #17 wasn't one of those. He lost more than a lap in the subsequent stop and even when he did rejoin, he was catastrophically slow. Johnson gave up and simply toured back to the pits to park it, the head gasket having once again proved the weak link in the RS500.

So the top four now were Skaife, Richards, Win Percy and Tony Longhurst: another Nissan 1-2, with the marginal interest that it was more like a 2-1, according to the numbers on their doors. The remarkable thing was that neither Longhurst nor Percy were falling behind, even though there were no team orders at Nissan and both Skaife and Richards were free to try and win it. The reality was neither of them dared push too hard lest their tyres die and leave them stranded, so the race was effectively sewn up. Team orders or not, there were no more lead changes to come.

So what about everyone else? Bond and Seton kept their Sierras running, but the price of reliability was speed, which they never really found and so never made an impression. Peter Brock's pace was limited by the fact the engine would misfire any time he accelerated too hard, hinting at a fuel pump problem that would keep him from making a dent either. His teammate Perkins never featured in the race at all, so why he had no pace today (or for that matter, why he'd started dead last) were never really explained. So the entertainment in the middle of the race had to come from Longhurst, who was still hounding Win Percy for all he was worth.

Feeling the pressure, Winny ran wide at Turn 7 and clambered over the kerb, leaving the door open to Tony, who dashed through without a second thought. It was now Nissans 1-2, Longhurst 3rd, but Neil Crompton swiftly noticed that Win had a problem. Rather than getting back on the pace, the Commodore was now in limp-home mode as he returned to Turn 1 – not crawling and spewing smoke, just no longer running at race pace. Crompo speculated he had a flat tyre, but no, it turned out the Commodore was simply overheating. Longhurst had pushed him so hard he'd melted the mighty Holden V8 trying to stay ahead.

Win headed to the pits and, when he got there, removed his helmet while the mechanics ambled around the machine with absolutely no urgency. This one couldn't be fixed, so it was game over for the Holden Racing Team. Mark Oastler was Channel Seven's man in the pits that day, and asked Percy what had gone wrong.

Win Percy: Oh, about three laps ago I flicked a fan belt and the generator light came on. I assume the engine's cooked. I watched the water temperature go up. Going onto the straight here I went over my own water and nearly lost the car. I'm afraid the engine's finished. Probably an alternator belt for all I know.

Oastler: Were you happy with the performance of the car up 'til then? It looked like you were going very strongly in 3rd place.

Percy: Yeah. I guess the Nissans are gonna be the problem, and the Bee Em, and that wasn't far out. But yeah, I was enjoying it. I think I was giving the Nissan a pretty hard time, in fact a very hard time. I think now we might soon close on the Nissans a little bit.

Percy's demise promoted Longhurst to 3rd, where he'd remain for the rest of the day. Shortly thereafter Brocky also elected to park it, the misfire apparently worsening to the point that he couldn't continue. With Larry Perkins also pitting that same lap (most likely for tyres), it was a bad day to be a Holden fan. Perkins would be the sole Holden to see the finish, and he would be a lap down.

Not that it was an awful lot better being a Ford fan – John Bowe made a tyre stop halfway through the race, just as the boss had intended to do, but a halfshaft failure shortly thereafter crippled the car in mid-flight. After a visit to the pits to see if it was fixable (if wasn't), Bowe pointed its nose back at the track and kept circulating anyway. With championship points paid back to 10th place and fewer cars than that left in the race, he was guaranteed to score if he could just hold out to the chequered. He would eventually limp home 8th place, five laps behind Mark Skaife.

So although it wasn't quite as straightforward as it might look in the history books, Wanneroo once again slid inexorably into yet another Nissan 1-2. The GT-R was fast, but that didn't mean the drivers could relax: talking to Richards over RaceCam, Mike Raymond extracted this.

Mike Raymond: No understeer problems as such today?

Jim Richards: Yes if you push it real hard, but we're driving it so that it doesn't have any.

Raymond: Well I think the both of you have about a twelve-second break on Tony Longhurst, and the rest of them I think have probably parked.

Richards: Well, y'know, you can't afford to let up. Our cars aren't doing it easy around here, I can tell, you and it's bloody hot. And Tony at any time can keep attacking, but we're getting a bit slower...

Raymond: The next round is a fortnight from today at Lakeside, and I guess like everyone else you've heard the rumours that Tony's been very quick around there with the BMW. Is that a track that you think you're going to have some difficulty with the Bee Ems?

Richards: For sure. We know he's quicker than us around there so it'll be very very interesting...

More interesting than this race, for sure, which had degenerated to the point of speculating about others!

This one looks like it was taken at Mallala, but you get the idea.

Eventually the “last lap” sign was shown, and Richo had one last look at overtaking his teammate, but it was never on. The two Nissans had run out the clock and now, at last, crossed the finish line to chalk up another Nissan 1-2 finish – this time, with young Skaife taking the honours. A summer blockbuster it might not have been, but it was official, and it had been against genuine opposition. Richards hadn't been hanging around, but he just didn't have an edge against his young teammate – an ominous sign for the rest of the grid. Young Skaife was already as good as any driver alive.

Neil Crompton: He got you by a couple of car lengths, but it was a great drive?

Jim Richards: Oh listen, Mark's driving as good as anybody out there. He got the start, and I wasn't about to do anything silly; no team orders, he won fair and square. Good stuff.

Crompton: Another great performance again from the Nissan team. You've done your homework, and things still look good for you in the championship?

Richards: Yes, yes. It wasn't that good in practice, but we thought we had a good race package and we're still gathering some points, so it's good.

Crompo then turned to Skaife, but Skaifey was all business:

Mark Skaife: Yeah it was very good. I'd just like to thank Nissan for their efforts, because the car doesn't suit the circuit overly well, and the boys worked very very hard to make it a good package, and the car was fantastic.

Crompton: What was going through your mind? I know it's an old cliché question, but you must've thought, “Can I get this thing? Can I actually get up and win a round of the touring car championship?”

Skaife: Yeah I suppose the first two rounds, our obligation, meaning Jim and I, was to do the best for Nissan. And again, that's what we've tried to do today. Off the start I got a great start, and Jimmy was sort of boxed in, so it was just the advantage of this run.

That was Skaife when he was still driving, all work and no play. After 30 years to let it sink in and get some perspective, however, he was able to wax a bit more lyrical.

On this weekend, I was driving no better than Jim, but the cards fell right and I had my first ever round win – even though I'd run fewer than 20 rounds in my career to that date. I think in all Australian motorsport history up to that point, only around 20 people had actually won a round of the Championship. So that was pretty big in a 24-year-old's life. – Mark Skaife, Mark Skaife: The Autobiography

3rd place went to Longhurst, a warning shot if ever there was one. The upcoming run of Lakeside, Amaroo, Winton, Lakeside again and finally Oran Park were sure to smile on the BMWs far more than the Nissans, so if anyone was going to reel them in for the championship, it was going to be Tony.

Crompton: The coming tracks are going to be curious, to say the least, for the Nissan team. We know you've tested in a few spots, and you're not that happy with the balance of the car on this tight stuff. This bloke over here in yellow's going to give you a bad time?

Skaife: I think for sure. And I think Win Percy in the Commodore again showed today how competitive he is. So it's going to be very tight racing, it'll be fantastic.

17 March: It's Carnivale!

Thankfully, for the race fan bored with Nissan's domination of the ATCC, there was at least one alternative in early 1991: IndyCar racing was coming to the Gold Coast.

(Source)

The CART before the Horse
One question I haven't heard lately (but which I used to get all the time), is: "F1 versus IndyCar – what's the diff?" It's a question that's mostly gone away since 2008, when IndyCar held its final race at Surfers Paradise, but was fairly frequent around the 2005-'07 era when Surfers was still on the calendar (and confusingly, the U.S. Grand Prix was being held at Indianapolis). Those were the days when people would be surprised when I told them F1 cars didn't run on methanol, or that the Grand Prix in Melbourne wasn't IndyCar race. A thorough investigation of the differences would get lost in the tech weeds pretty quickly, and only be interesting to those who already know, so to sidestep all that let's just say, "F1 is European, IndyCar is American." That pretty much covers it, because all the other differences stem from there.

The CamelCase term "IndyCar" itself is surprisingly recent, dating back only to the 1980s. The "Indy" part refers to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the iconic 2.5-mile oval that remains the fountainhead of the whole sport – you worked that much out all on your own, right? It would be like calling V8 Supercars "BatCar", which would just be stupi... actually, never mind. Point is, there was no such word as "IndyCar" before the 1980s, because until then American insularity meant the term "National Championship" had sufficed. To the wider world, the Indy 500 itself might occasionally make the news, but the rest of the series never did – never televised, only making the papers Stateside, and even then only filling in gaps in the sports page. IndyCar didn't get big enough to need branding until the early 1980s, when CART took over.

The start of CART: the 1979 Jimmy Bryan 150 at Phoenix.

CART – or "Championship Auto Racing Teams" – was the strangler fig of IndyCar, a series that built itself on the history and traditions of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway before snuffing out its rival almost completely. USAC (the United States Auto Club) had failed to cook up a commercial package that took advantage of television, so with the costs heading through the stratosphere the team owners had banded together as CART to do the job themselves. The fans voted with their feet and the rival USAC series had withered on the vine, leaving CART supreme, but the barons thus created for themselves a serious conflict of interest – working as a sanctioning body to determine the rules under which they, as team owners, would compete. This was the first grievance against CART.

The second was their preference for road courses and street tracks. USAC's National Championship had been an all-oval series, but the decline of Formula 5000 in the U.S. had created an opportunity the CART barons didn't want to miss. Riverside, Mid-Ohio, Elkhart Lake – F5000 basically donated their whole schedule to the burgeoning CART series – while F1 did their part by cutting the Long Beach Grand Prix, giving CART a blue-ribbon event second only to Indy itself. Even now, think of palm trees lining the concrete walls of a street track, and you're thinking of CART.

Mario Andretti leads CART's first Long Beach Grand Prix, 1984.

Traditionalists might've grumbled, arguing the shift to the streets took the sport ever-further from its roots on the dirt speedways of the Midwest. But the low overheads of the temporary circuits made financial sense, and despite what some might tell you, these events were popular: fans packed the grandstands and tuned in to watch on TV, and as a result these races made money. There can be little doubt CART's management brought IndyCar to the pinnacle of its commercial success, and as their bank accounts had grown, so had their ambitions. By the early 1990s, they had plans to expand the series internationally, into Australia, Japan and South America – all traditionally F1 turf – and one day perhaps even continental Europe itself, the Formula 1 heartland. Australia would be the guinea pig, the lab test to determine whether it was possible to hold a flyaway race for the benefit of a TV audience Stateside.

Australia wasn't the obvious choice for the first CART race outside North America. The logistics of getting the cars, equipment and teams across the vastness of the Pacific were formidable (indeed, the plane carrying it all nearly ran out of fuel and crashed – yes, really), especially when Japan wasn't yet on the schedule to help amortise the costs. The key was that those costs (to the tune of some $12 million) were being covered by the Queensland government, who wanted to promote their state for international tourism. That meant the race would not be profitable in its early years, and so would be a political football for the two major parties, but that's another story entirely.

The circuit chosen was yet another street track, this one laid around the high-rise hotels of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. With the pits located on Macintosh Island, the cars would race south down the Gold Coast Highway (interrupted by a couple of chicanes), turn sharply left onto Palm Avenue, then left again and scream back up Main Beach Parade (again, interrupted by a couple of chicanes and one brutal left-right kink). From there they ducked through Breaker Street and Hill Parade before negotiating a tight left-hander to rejoin the Highway – a corner sure to be a challenge for these cars, as their turbocharged engines struggled to get the power down. One practice session was all the drivers needed to realise that, with several savage braking zones, this place was going to be hard on brakes, a fact that would be decisive in how the race turned out...

Not only did it show off Queensland as a tourist destination beautifully, Surfers also had the advantage of a built-in motorsport culture, having lost the long-serving Surfers Paradise International Raceway only a few years prior. It was also totally on-brand for CART: the marriage (well, more of a hook-up...) of the sun 'n' sand of Queensland with the Vegas sleaze of the visiting Americans was a match made in heaven, and although it started small, the Gold Coast Indy Carnival would soon become nothing less than a week-long, citywide party. The Miss Indy swimsuit competition was not the sort of thing that could've come from South Australia, a state colonised by Lutherans, and in time the debauchery in the nightclubs (and sometimes trackside...) would become a horrorshow for moral guardians. But in 1991 all that was in the future, and for the maiden IndyCar race the people of Queensland were mostly well-behaved. Mostly...

There was also some actual racing, wasn't there?
Yes, although that wasn't without controversy either. CART moving into an F1 market generated some political unease, as CAMS – the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, the sanctioning body that ran most racing in Australia – was a member club of the FIA, the sanctioning body behind F1. Seeing a power move by their bitterest rival, CAMS threatened life bans for anyone who raced or officiated at the Gold Coast Indy, so flag marshals, timekeepers and other officials had to come from the great outlaw of Australian racing – Bob Jane’s Thunderdome. That explained the main support act of this all-American extravaganza, NASCAR, as the touring cars wouldn't go within cooee of it.

Similarly, the ATCC's broadcast partner, Channel Seven, couldn't touch the event without losing their rights to the big dance at Bathurst. So as with last year's Eastern Creek enduro, this event was broadcast on Kerry Packer's Nine network, meaning our lead commentator was Darrel Eastlake. He was joined by American expert Tom Sneva, aka. "the Gas Man", who was not only a two-time series champion and a one-time Indianapolis winner back in the USAC days, but also the first driver to officially lap Indianapolis at more than 200mph – a lap time of forty-five seconds flat. Mediating between them was our own Alan Jones, who actually wasn't a bad choice of commentator, and not just because he was a former World Champion. Although he didn't mention it, Jonesy had driven in this series as recently as 1985, when he'd subbed for an injured Mario Andretti in the Provimi Veal 200 at Elkhart Lake. Managed a podium finish with 3rd, too, not bad for his first time driving that car in anger.

Race-day Sunday in fact opened with a 5-lap Celebrity Race to help warm up the crowd, but the only two names I recognised were NRL star Wally Lewis, and Olympic swimmer Grant Kenny (and I only know Kenny's name because of Dick Johnson...). The cars were ordinary production Ford Lasers (i.e. rebadged Mazda 323s), with tiny 1.6-litre engines... which still wasn't small enough to keep the celebs out of trouble!

The AUSCAR race that followed doesn't seem to be on YouTube, but the NASCAR race that followed that certainly is, and frankly it was a shitshow – not mincing words here. It's not that it lacked for entertainment – it had it in spades – but the safety protocols in place proved woefully inadequate for 1,600-kilo cars with up to 560 kW under the bonnet crammed into a narrow street circuit on the Gold Coast. Leaving Walter Giles' #91 Buick Regal in the sand trap at the first chicane rather than towing it to safety was the kind of decision that didn't cut much ice even in 1991, let alone today. The folly of it was confirmed three laps later when Steve Cosson's #77 Oldsmobile Delta 88 had a coming-together with the #71 Pontiac Grand Prix Aerocoupe on approach to that chicane, and hurled himself over Giles' bonnet and into the fence! A couple of inches in the wrong direction and the impact could've been catastrophic.

The Main Course – à la CART
But with the preliminaries over, the IndyCars themselves headed to the grid and started off on the first of several formation laps.

Source

So what exactly were we looking at here? What were these machines, and who were the men driving them? Well the basics are well-known: open-wheel single-seater racecars, powered by 2.65-litre methanol-burning V8s boosted by a single turbo running at a limited 45 inHg (about 1.5 bar, or 22psi). In this generation of engine, that meant around 720hp at 11,000rpm, maybe 11,500 if you wanted to push the envelope. What might surprise you is that CART was not a spec series, as it is sometimes unfairly remembered, but an open formula like F1. If you wanted to build your own car and engine there wasn't really anything stopping you, and two of the big teams of the 1980s – Jim Trueman's Truesports, and Roger Penske's Team Penske – had chosen to do just that. But this didn't automatically mean they won. For most of the 1980s, the best cars had been made by specialist constructor March, and in 1984 Penske had found his home-brew PC-12 to be less than competitive at Indy, so he'd thrown in the towel and bought a fleet of Marches like everyone else – and, thanks to some stellar driving from Rick Mears, he'd won.

So most teams were better off just buying a car rather than trying to build one. By 1991 March had faded, so pretty much everyone was running a Lola, either their latest '91-spec car (the T91/00) or, if they were short on cash, a secondhand one that was a year or two out of date. These older cars (such as the '89-spec T89/00) were identifiable by their tubbier, more porpoise-like outlines compared to the sleek, needle-like silhouettes of the latest models. They weren't ideal, because the extra drag slowed them down, but if they were all you could afford you didn't have much choice – like little brothers, midfield and backmarker teams got hand-me-downs.

It was the same situation when it came to powerplants. The engine to have was the "Chevy Indy V8", to be retroactively dubbed the Chevy/A once the B-version came out in 1992. This engine had been derided as a knock-off of the venerable Cosworth DFX (the legendary DFV rekerjiggered for Indy rules), but it was a brilliant little engine, which despite the name was built by a relatively young firm called Ilmor, itself a knock-off of Cosworth. These engines had debuted in 1986 with Penske, as Roger had co-financed the project in return for exclusivity. This had rankled the grid a bit but, as a small business just starting out, Ilmor could only turn out so many engines per year, and naturally they only wanted to supply winning teams. So if you wanted one, you had to prove you were the best – without the equipment the best were using. It was the familiar Catch-22 of motorsport, but the cycle was especially vicious here in CART, creating distinct tiers of haves and have-nots. It was driven by nothing more malicious than market forces, but as we Millennials know, there is nothing more malicious than market forces, and it led not a few bitter fans to complain that "CART" actually stood for "Chevy And Rich Team-owners".

The DFS was a stopgap; the next Cozza would be better.

Admittedly, by 1991 the situation was a little better, as Ilmor's contract with Penske had expired and the company had grown enough to make the Chevy/A more widely available... but there were still plenty of teams left scrounging without one. Since the Chevy had forced Cosworth to react, the best alternative was probably Cosworth's latest, the DFS – like the Chevy/A, a DFX where every part was a little bit better. Failing that, the DFX itself was still viable, although its best days were now firmly behind it. For those of a more independent bent, there was also the Judd AV, based on a Honda F1 engine that never happened, which was known to be down on power but often did well in the 500-milers thanks to its ability to sip the fuel and stretch out long stints. And there was also an Alfa Romeo engine on the grid, but its presence was kind of incidental: the project had imploded late last year and the engine would be gone by the time the heartland races rolled around, so its presence in Australia suggested the Patrick team had made the trip with leftover machinery. So for this, the opening race of the 1991 CART PPG IndyCar World Series, the winning ticket was a Lola T91/00 chassis with a Chevy/A engine, and this was the combination all the top teams were running.

The thing was, all these names – March, Lola, Cosworth, Ilmor – they were all a tad British. Most of them were based in the same Midlands valley where most of the world's F1 teams could be found: Marches were made in Bicester, Lolas in Huntington. Ilmor's factory was in Brixworth, and although Cosworth did have a factory rebuilding engines in Indianapolis, the company's main facility was just down the road from Ilmor, in Northampton. Even Penske's cars were built in Poole, Dorset. The harsh fact was the last American-made car to win the Indy 500 had been Gordon Johncock's Wildcat back in 1982, and that was a source of quiet but growing embarrassment to the proud American fanbase. The CART barons didn't seem to care – they needed the best, and if the best was British, what of it? – but it was yet another grievance against CART.

So in an effort to promote “Made in U.S.A.” technology, USAC had also opened up the rules to allow "stock-block" engines, balancing their less-than-cutting-edge technology with that most American of solutions, more cubes. Originally this had meant a limit of 5.8 litres, as USAC tried to tempt some of the NASCAR teams to bring their tuning skills to the Brickyard, but it came too late as an engine big enough to match the DFX in power was now too wide to fit into the narrow fuselage of an IndyCar. Instead, USAC had re-allowed the turbo but dialled back the displacement, meaning if you were willing to forego double overhead cams and limit yourself to two valves per cylinder, you could have 3.3 litres instead of 2.65.

Only one engine had stepped up to the challenge, the Buick 3800 V6 – yes, the same engine that was now under the bonnet of our own VN Commodore. Reduced to 3,300cc as per the rules, its pushrods limited it to around 9,000rpm, which gave it a very flat torque curve that made it both powerful and fragile. Neither of these two characteristics were as important as the third, however: it was cheap. You could pick one up for as little as $30,000, making it a godsend to all the small teams with big hopes.

So in summary, at one end of the grid you had power teams like Marlboro Team Penske and Newman/Haas Racing, both with Chevy/A engines and both with the latest '91-spec chassis (Lola T91/00s for Newman/Haas, Penske PC-20s for Roger). Drivers with this combination, such as Mario Andretti or Al Unser Jr, were in with a chance of winning the race. At the other end of the grid you had guys like Mark Dismal Disney Dismore, who was sitting in an outdated Penske PC-17 chassis fitted with a Buick engine it was never designed to carry. The difference between the haves and the have-nots was startling, as fastest-qualifier Michael Andretti (son of, and now teammate to, the great Mario) had taken pole with a lap of 1:40.047, just 0.043 seconds faster than America's former F1 star, Eddie Cheever. One of the slowest was future 500 winner Buddy Lazier, who had only an '88-spec Lola and a DFX engine and so managed only 1:49.930 – nearly ten seconds slower than Michael in just a single lap! That sort of performance gap would never fly today, but look at it this way: Lazier was on the grid and getting that most precious of commodities for a young racing driver, seat time, and at a fraction of the cost of a REC or a fully-fledged Dallara-Honda. Meanwhile, the frontrunning teams had managed to square the circle of having racing that was on the cutting edge of technology and still close, heart-stopping wheel-to-wheel action. So CART's way of doing things wasn't perfect, and it certainly wasn't what you'd call fair, but it wasn't without its benefits.

Gold Coast Indy Grand Prix
Anyway, the race itself, which came in two halves. The first half was charitably described as "intense", rather than "exciting", as scions of the Andretti and Unser clans battled it out for the race lead. But those who had the patience to stick it out were rewarded, because the second half burst forth into a kaleidoscope of reversals and shifts of fortune, and at the end gave us a wonderfully unexpected race winner.

In a nutshell, Little Al passed Michael for the lead on lap 1 and never looked back, the two of them leaving the rest of the field behind as they rushed off on their own private duel. This duel didn't last very long as it emerged Al had a very slight car advantage – Michael was unbelievably fast diving into the corners but a touch taily coming out of them again, whereas Al's was beautifully hooked up and never misbehaved, making him faster overall. Given they were both driving identical Lola-Chevs, it was illustratrative of how tiny differences in setup and driving style mattered. But before that could really develop into anything, Scott Goodyear crashed at the back kink and brought out an early caution, which was even less interesting to watch than Unser slowly pulling away from Andretti.

Stay with me though, it did get better. Although Unser had an advantage of 4.44 seconds by lap 13, Michael was finding his mirrors filling up with Eddie Cheever, who was only 0.3 seconds behind. Early on lap 17 Cheever made a move at the first chicane and wrestled 2nd place off Michael – only to lose it again when Hiro Matsushita put his car into the wall on lap 19, bringing out yet another yellow-flag period. The leaders took advantage by making their first pit stops while the Pace Car was out, and in the process Cheever got shuffled back behind Michael. By lap 21 the order was Little Al, Michael, Cheever, Bobby Rahal, Mario Andretti and then Emerson Fittipaldi.

Little Al backed them right up for the restart on lap 23, and although plodding behind the Pace Car seemed to've done the car some damage, the exhaust giving a slight puff of greasy black smoke in right-hand turns ever after, it never seemed to affect his pace. Unser continued to lead after the green, still leaving the field behind at a steady rate. Despite that, Emerson Fittipaldi was feeling confident: the two-time F1 champ was famous for his work ethic as a test driver (a necessity when driving for Penske), and had reported that he was very comfortable with the car and fully expected to be there at the end when it mattered. Unfortunately, that idea went to hell on lap 28 when he pitted with a mechanical problem. The team removed the engine cowl to check it out and soon discovered they had a gearbox problem (despite my best Googling, I wasn't able to find out who made their gearboxes. Anyone know?). It was inoperable, so after a long and frustrating stop Emmo's Penske was retired on lap 32.

 

By lap 37 Michael was driving like a wild animal and catching back up to Little Al, which was no small concern with the next round of pit stops just around the corner. By lap 40 he'd caught up and was ready to try a very brave move, out-braking Little Al into the first chicane in the front straight – around the outside! Al got held up by backmarker Randy Lewis in last year's Lola-Cosworth, so he was vulnerable, but even so both cars were very marginal on grip, tiptoeing through all crossed up with locked wheels. But both negotiated the corner intact, and poor Michael had to stay where he was, unable to make the pass this time. Nothing daunted, Michael tried again in the final complex of turns and this time took no prisoners, imposing himself on Little Al and forcing his way through, simply taking track position away and leaving Al with no option but to yield. Michael Andretti now led the race.

But then on lap 42 things started to happen in a hurry. At the back chicanes, the leaders caught up with another backmarker with the Andretti name – Michael's brother Jeff, who was driving the black Texaco Lola-Cosworth. Michael had to lean on him pretty hard before he got out of the way, but not even Michael got the treatment Little Al did: either not seeing him coming (or seeing a rival racing dynasty coming through and not willing to lift...), Jeff simply didn't leave Unser enough room to follow Michael through. Realising too late that Jeff was taking the line for himself, Unser slammed on the brakes and so lost the rear. The result was a sudden spin entering the back chicanes, his rear wing brushing the concrete and gently separating from the rest of the car. Game over for Al Unser Jr.

Game over, but not crash over. Finding the road blocked, Eddie Cheever couldn't brake hard enough to stop in time and elected to clip the wall just behind Unser rather than pile into his cockpit. Unsighted behind Cheever, Mario Andretti – Jeff and Michael's father! – was forced into the opposite evasive manoeuvre and drove over Little Al's nose, the odd angle on the right-front wheel coming out of that accident signalling the end of Mario's day as well. Just for good measure, Eddie Cheever ended up in the fracas as well, although exactly how was a bit of a mystery.

With that little pile-up the race needed a breather, so naturally the Pace Car came out and sent everyone to the pits. Michael took service from the Newman/Haas mechanics in 14.4 seconds and came out just in time to catch the Pace Car, lest he go a lap down. The caution flags would remain out for the next six laps while the mess was cleaned up, the order being Michael, Mike Groff (backmarker), Rick Mears (Penske), Danny Sullivan (Lola-Alfa) and then John Andretti in the yellow Pennzoil car run by Jim Hall, the nephew of the great man Mario only now entering the picture.

The long caution lasted until lap 49 and Sullivan pitted late in the yellow flag period, leaving us with a brisk 15-lap shootout to the end between Michael Andretti and the man who'd caused the Andretti clan so much anguish in the past – Rick Mears, driving for Penske. When the Pace Car subsided Michael once again caught the rest napping and took off into an early lead, but it was Mears who was on the move now, throwing his Penske around to close the gap, and succeeding.

A note about Rick Mears is warranted at this point. Seeing Mears so competitive on a street circuit was nothing less than a triumph for the man personally, as he'd suffered what really should've been a career-ending shunt at Sanair Super Speedway in St-Pie, Quebec, way back in 1984. Ignore the name, the track was a tiny tri-oval barely eight-tenths of a mile long: early in the race Mears had stuck his nose where it didn't belong and run into the back of another car, bouncing off it and burying said nose in the guardrail separating the pits from the track. The impact had been so severe it had dissassembled part of the guardrail itself, and more worryingly, the front of the car also: Mears came to rest with the front bulkhead and pedal assembly missing. Both his feet had been badly crushed in the impact, and he literally broke every bone in his right foot, all twenty-seven of them; at the hospital there'd been talk of amputating it to save his life. Not liking the sound of that, Roger Penske had intervened to bring in some highly-recommended medical specialists of his own, and Mears began the slow, painful road to recovery. For many years after, however, he'd had trouble driving because his right foot simply wouldn't do what it was told; he won only two races in the next three years, both of them at Pocono, where experience and strategy meant more than outright pace.

 

So to see a scarred old warhorse like Mears chasing down a hungry tiger like Michael Andretti – on a street circuit, no less – said more than words ever could about his recovery: Rick Mears was back, and he had Michael worried. On lap 55 Michael had a bit of a moment entering the first chicane, over-braking and nearly losing the rear end (some impressive car control was required to get it back in line at all!). It was well done, but it still cost him some time, and that was enough for Mears to close right up for the rest of the lap. Having got into position it was just a matter of time, and at the end of the beach straight he did it, diving into the 90-degree corner and wresting the lead away from Michael in a move that was hard, but fair. Alan Jones opined that Michael had been forced into such a hot pace by Little Al and Eddie Cheever in the early part of the race that he just didn't have enough brakes left here at the business end, which explained why Emmo had been so confident earlier on; at the time of his gearbox problem, he'd been ahead of his teammate Mears...

So Rick Mears now led the race, by 1.53 seconds by the time they crossed the finish line again. A lap later and John Andretti was also ahead of Michael, whose brake problem was apparently becoming critical: John easily outbraked him into the back chicane, and shortly thereafter Michael stuck his Lola-Chev into the tyre barrier in the escape road at the end of the front straight. His brakes had finally given up completely, leaving him no way to stop the car. So the order now had Mears 1st and John Andretti a distant 2nd, with 8 laps to the flag.

John had Bobby Rahal on a late charge behind him, but there was a reasonable cushion between them; the problem was, there was also a reasonable cushion to Rick Mears ahead. It didn't look like the Andrettis were going to get anything much out of this race... until, on lap 63 of 65, it all went wrong for Mears. On the approach to Turn 8, the left-hander after the back straight, Mears managed to dispatch the #19 of Randy Lewis (again!) quite easily, then on the short chute from 8 to Turn 9 he got alongside the #21 of Dean Hall as well, ready to take the line. The problem was, he didn't have enough brakes left to pull off a move like that, and he was forced to point his nose up the escape road. Meanwhile, Lewis had got ideas above his station and decided to follow Mears through his pass of Hall, but too late realised Mears had chosen the wrong braking point and was not going to make the corner. As Lewis pressed the panic pedal he lost the back end and spun, collecting an undeserving Dean Hall in the process. The three cars clattered to a halt on the entrance to the escape road, two of them damaged, and a third (Mears) trying desperately to perform a three-point turn and rejoin. He kept going, but it didn't matter: John Andretti, formerly 2nd, was through and gone, unable to believe his luck.

John Andretti completed the final lap and greeted the chequered flag, clinching his first (and, as it would turn out, only) win in the CART PPG IndyCar World Series. In the process he collected a trophy that was nearly as big as he was (like a lot of racing drivers, he was a tiny, jockey-sized man), as well as a substantial cheque. The Americans had never made any bones about racing for cash, and an Indianapolis winner never needed to work again: lesser races paid less, but even the inaugural Gold Coast IndyCar Grand Prix was worth $126,000 U.S. dollars. Even nicer, some of that would go to car owner Jim Hall, who'd won the championship in the early 1980s but was best known for his Chaparral sports cars in the 1960s. This was Jim's first race back as a team owner, so to win first time out with his new driver was more than either of them had dreamed. When they asked a beaming Jim, "Did you expect that?" he told them straight: "You know I didn't!"

Summing Up
Overall it had been a fine beginning to IndyCar racing on the Gold Coast. Despite the slow start the race had been dramatic and exciting; the winner was likeable and rather wholesome; even the Queensland crowd had mostly behaved themselves. Best of all, pretty much everyone involved went on to have a better year. Rick Mears would recover to win that year's Indianapolis 500 for a record-equalling fourth time, and the tenth for Roger Penske. Although he'd lose that race-ending duel at Indy, Michael Andretti would go on to dominate the championship, winning 8 of the 17 rounds including four of the final five to take his only IndyCar title. That achievement would buy him a ticket to Formula 1, although that would be a very different story. And although he'd never win a CART race again, in 1994 John Andretti would become the first driver to complete "the double" of the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte on the same day. Whether in CART, NASCAR, IMSA or even drag racing, John would be famous for his versatility... right up until his death from colon cancer in January 2020, at the age of 56. He will always be missed.

Vale, John.

 

Kick-Off: Sandown & Symmons

It was amazingly fast. You could tell it had plenty of potential. [But] It was a pretty raw beast. Crude to begin with, lots of things broke and it wasn't very driveable at the start. It all came right in '91, but we had to spend a huge amount of money on it. – Mark Skaife, Auto Action #1787

1991 was the nadir. The evidence of that came with the entry list for Round 1 of the Shell Ultra Australian Touring Car Championship, at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne, where just nineteen cars showed up to attempt the race. That wasn't quite the record, as in the Oil Crisis days of the mid-1970s grids as small as fourteen or fifteen were common – but it was enough to be concerning. The recession plus the new generation of money-hungry Group A cars was proving a toxic combination.

R1 – Sandown
So who were these irrepressible nineteen? Well, obviously there was reigning champ Jim Richards and his sidekick Mark Skaife, riding high in a pair of Nissan Skyline R32 GT-Rs. Both cars looked smart in their shiny new Nissan corporate livery, which recalled the R90CK prototypes that had raced at Le Mans rather than their old HR31s, making it clear their mission this year was to advertise the Nissan Motor Company. Sanctioning body CAMS had made another attempt to rebalance the scales by adding 15 kilos to the GT-R's homolgation weight, but with the boost turned up for qualifying they'd barely even noticed it, claiming the front row of the grid with times of 1:13.91 and 1:13.94, respectively. They were the only drivers to break the 14 barrier.

Next-fastest was John Bowe, first of the Dick Johnson Shell Sierras, with a time of 1:14.59 – a heroic effort here at the Home of Horsepower, where the straight-line speed of the Sierra should've minimised the damage, but still more than six-tenths slower than a GT-R. With last year's 85kg weight penalty gone the Sierra was theoretically back to its winning ways, except that Dick himself was back in 5th, kept off the second row by the startlingly quick #30 Peter Jackson Sierra of Glenn Seton. The younger Ford Hero continued to be a thorn in the side of the older.

In 6th place was Win Percy, fulfilling his brief as the works driver by being the fastest of the Holdens. After the buzz and success of last year the Holden Racing Team were entering 1991 with high hopes – hopes that would soon be brought crashing to earth. Holden's share of the 1991 performance re-balance was a 75kg cut to their homologation weight, dropping from 1,325 to 1,250kg, plus the axeing of all the rules regarding stock inlet and exhaust manifolds. The Group A engine philosophy had always been that you could make them rev, but you couldn't make them breathe: teams were free to heat-treat and modify and generally toughen-up their internals as much as they liked, but they were restricted to breathing through road-car inlet and exhaust manifolds. CAMS did away with that for the naturally-aspirated cars on the theory that it would give the Commodores a boost, which it did, but it also ticked off a lot of people at Holden who'd just seen all the expense and effort put into the VN Group A voided overnight. To take advantage and actually gain the promised power, the teams would have develop new intakes and exhausts for their engines, and that would take time and yet more money.

HRT owner Tom Walkinshaw took the opportunity to sound off to the press, telling Auto Action: "I think the rules are flawed in their conception in several important areas. I am confused to know why a country like Australia is playing with fire in regulations to allow imported cars in, while eliminating any possibility of a home-built motor car being competitive." He'd even placed HRT's season commitment under review, although some couldn't help seeing this as a cynical ploy to squeeze more funding out of Fishermans Bend. Either way, Win Percy was back on the grid for 1991 in a brand-new VN Commodore built by Dennis Watson's Dencar operation, who'd formerly built Sierras for Peter Brock. It came about after a chance meeting following HRT's win at Bathurst the previous year, but it meant Dencar, including Watson's friend and partner-in-crime George Smith, would build most HRT cars for the rest of the decade.

I didn't know Win from a bar of soap. He was in a very good mood having won the race. I'd been working on Brock's pit crew and introduced myself, and he stopped and chatted. I had some business cards and told him we were setting up to do bodyshell and general fabrication work. I think I just caught him at the absolutely right moment. Win put the card in his race suit, then rang two days later. We had a meeting and it was pretty much agreed right there and then that we had all their fabrication work. – George Smith, AMC #97

With an 8,500rpm redline and slippery new aerodynamics, this VN had turned test laps nearly a second faster than last year's Walkinshaw VL, but risk to the engine meant 7,800rpm was a more sensible limit over a race distance. Despite that, Percy had posted a time only slightly behind the leading Sierras, his 1:15.47 even placing him ahead of Colin Bond and Kevin Waldock in their familiar Caltex and Playscape Sierras, respectively... but still nearly one-and-a-half seconds slower than the benchmark GT-Rs. Maybe Tom had a point.

Lining up 9th and 10th were two very familiar names. After winning the Pukekohe 500 at the end of 1990, Peter Brock had put his Sierra inventory up for sale and moved back to the Holden camp via an arrangement with Eastern Creek winner Larry Perkins. Peter Perfect's grand return to Holden was a story in itself, but if it looked like Peter was getting the band back together, that was an illusion: this was a marriage of convenience, not a love match. Perkins Engineering had spent the 1990 season desperately short of sponsorship, kept afloat only by bulding customer cars: Brock meanwhile had finished 1990 in the knowledge that 1991 would see the British scene transition completely to the new Super Touring formula, meaning his benefactor Andy Rouse would no longer be building Sierras and would instead be putting all his time and energy into a 2.0-litre Toyota Carina. The pipeline of parts and technical data Peter depended on was about to be closed off, and finding some other source of hardware was imperative. So on one hand there was Larry, with a fully-stocked workshop turning out customer Holdens, but desperately short of cash; and on the other there was Peter with his lucrative Mobil sponsorship, but no cars...

For 1991, therefore, Brock and Perkins would both run in Mobil-sponsored VN Commodores under the Perkins Engineering banner, Perkins in his #11 and Brocky, of course, in 05. With Brock came a contract for Bridgestone tyres, and although they were less durable than last year's Dunlops, at least they were free, which saved the penny-pinching Perkins yet another unwelcome bill. The downside was, he would claim later, that there was a clause in the contract stating he had to finish behind Brock unless it was unavoidable: the hatchet between these two would not be buried in 1991, it seemed.

11th and 12th on the grid were Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones respectively, once again in Benson & Hedges cars under Frank Gardner management. Those cars were no longer Ford Sierras, however, but new DTM-spec BMW M3 Evos, with bigger 2.5-litre engines and aggressive new aerodynamics. As the only entries in Class 2 they were at least guaranteed a class win, provided they could fend off the handful of privateer Commodores all around them – amateurs with 5.0 litres underfoot had proven roughly as fast in qualifying as professionals with 2.5. Of these amateurs we could count Steve Reed of the Lansvale Smash Repairs team, who'd brought along a new VN, as had Bob Pearson in the #33 Pro-Duct Commodore – chassis PE 011, the first VN ever built by Perkins, preceding even the Mobil cars he and Peter were driving.

AMSCAR stalwart Terry Finnigan meanwhile had fronted with an outdated VL Walkinshaw, as had privateer Wayne Park, and Mark Gibbs driving the GIO #21 for Bob Forbes Racing – although that would not be the car the team finished the year with. And rounding out the field were the tiny Toyotas of Class 3, John Faulkner at the wheel of the well-used #13 AE86 Corolla GT of Bob Holden Motors, while David Sala had brought along his red #72 FX-GT hatchback.

And that was it, the whole nineteen. The upshot of this was brought home by the highlights reel posted below – bluntly, there weren't any.

Oh to be a fly on the wall the day they brought the editing team those dailies and told them to make a highlight reel out of them. It was an impossible task: they show the start of the race, and the finish of the race, but the bits in between are sort of a void, with nothing actually going on. About the only moment of interest was Longhurst audaciously diving under Jim Richards at the hairpin and successfully making a pass, which sounds good until you realise he was actually un-lapping himself, and even then only momentarily, as Richo roared off under power just seconds later. In the event the Skyline twins straight-up dismantled the opposition that day, posting a dominant 1-2 to open their scorecards with 20 points for Richards and 15 for Skaife. Richo's post-race comments to Channel Seven's Neil Crompton summed up the situation perfectly:

Neil Crompton: Richo, congratulations. That was a way to start the new season. Reigning champion, you've done the business?

Jim Richards: Well yeah, it was a matter of getting out in front and trying to hold a gap over the rest of the field. We chose a softer tyre than we probably should've, so we had to work it hard at the start and then drive it nice and easy toward the end. But, it paid off.

Crompton: No problems with the car?

Richards: No, car was perfect. No problem.

R2 – Symmons Plains
The second round was both better and worse than the first – better because there was some genuine on-track action, which generated something that might loosely be called interest, but worse because the Nissans not only finished 1-2 yet again, but this time were the only cars on the lead lap!

It was also worse in that there were only thirteen starters this time around, as the continental privateers found the freight to Tasmania too costly for their wallets, and the contingent of local privateers that had once padded out the grid either found the recession was hitting their bottom line (David "Skippy" Parsons), had moved on to other series (Steve Harrington), or were just too grown up for this stuff nowadays (Garth Wigston).

The grid could've been even shorter had only a little bit more bad luck befallen one of the drivers: in practice, Mark Skaife had an impressive shunt that could easily have resulted in an Adelaide 2.0-style crash, but this time he only kicked up some dust. It was a lucky escape.

Neil Crompton: A difficult time for at least one of the Nissans yesterday. Mark Skaife speared off at the end of the back straight, leapt into the mud, mate, there were bits flying everywhere. What happened?

Mark Skaife: All I did was, I turned into the big fast right-hander down the back straight, and the left-front disc brake exploded! Cut the wheel in half, set the tyre flat and speared off down through the paddock. It was a pretty wild ride.

As a result Skaife failed to set a time in qualfying and had to start from the very back of the grid, but Gibson didn't need to stress too much – Richo had delivered pole anyway. In fact, P2 to P9 had all qualified within a second of each other, Kevin Waldock and Larry Perkins clocking identical 1:01.02 lap times, with Bowe, Brock, Bond, Johnson and Seton just barely ahead of them. Win Percy had impressed with a banzai 1:00.31 lap to abscond with P2. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could live with the GT-R, Richo pulling out a 58-dead without a single visit to the panel-beaters.

That's right, 2.3 seconds in 2.4 kilometres. Let that sink in.

The race brought action aplenty. As they waved the green flag, Dick Johnson dramatically launched himself into 2nd place, chasing and actually managing to stay with Jim Richards all the way through the first lap. Into the hairpin at the start of lap 2 he even made an attempt to wrest away the lead, but it was never on, as Richo forced him to the outside to go the long way around. And Johnson was on borrowed time anyway, as his challenge would last only as long as his tyres did. Once the RWD Sierra burned up its tyres (which the 4WD Skyline wouldn't), the race would be firmly in Richo's grasp. He was left free to win as he pleased, even setting a new lap record of 56.84 seconds – 1.16 seconds faster than his own pole time!

But the real story of the race was Skaife, who picked off most of the field in the opening laps to shadow John Bowe very early on. Feeling the pressure, Bowe made an unwise move around the outside of Seton on the dive into the hairpin, touching the blue car's right-hand door and tipping himself into a spin. Seton's tail had a bit of a wag but as he wasn't on the throttle at that point the damage was minimal, and he took the corner gingerly and then zoomed away. Bowe was left with his nose pointed into the traffic, waiting for the whole world to go by before he could rejoin safely.

Skaife, of course, caught Seton on the following straight, taking him up to 4th place. That put Win Percy in his sights next, but the Pommy bastard was an old hand at this so there were no mistakes from him. The canny Percy left Skaife to the outside lane for the run down to the hairpin, forcing him to go the long way, and against a normal car that would've been enough. But the GT-R was no normal car. From the outside, Skaife turned the wheel a little harder and went for the criss-cross, and the magnificent GT-R responded by biting the tarmac with all four wheels and taking off like it had been shot out of a gun. Down the long backstretch they were once more side-by-side, and although Skaife had the inside line for the upcoming corner, the lighter Commodore could go a lot deeper on the brakes, turning this into the chicken run of all chicken runs.

And Skaife won it. Despite crashing here only yesterday, he held off until the absolute last possible moment and then stomped on that brake pedal without a hint of doubt as to the state of his rotors, landing in the corner ahead of the HRT Commodore. As he turned in smoothly and dashed away, he was up to 3rd, with only Johnson and Richards still ahead of him.

Shortly thereafter Skaife reeled in and passed Dick Johnson in a mirror-image of the move on Percy, the GT-R forced to the outside this time as Dick clung doggedly to the inside line. It didn't matter: even if he could brake later and claim every strategic advantage on the track, Johnson simply couldn't unleash the power of his turbo engine suddenly enough to match the Nissan. Skaife held his nerve and moved up to 2nd place, and as his rear tyres burned up Dick fell into the clutches of Win Percy. Those tortured rear Dunlops finally let go and tipped Johnson into a spin at the hairpin, and a visit to the pits for a new set would see him end a disappointing race only 5th. Teammate Bowe provided some more fireworks in a battle with Peter Brock, but it meant nothing as he made two pit stops in the course of the race, finishing a lowly 11th overall. That was the same as second-last, as Percy then became the race's only DNF when the Holden V8 broke a cam follower, leaving the Englishman with a long walk back to the pits.

He might have started last, but by the time the chequered flag came out Skaife was virtually line astern with Jim Richards – the sort of thing that happened when you forgot to turn the difficulty up, not the stuff of championship-level ATCC races! As the two Nissans hummed around their cooldown lap in formation, side-by-side, the message being broadcast by the TV cameras could not have been clearer: this championship belonged to the Nissan Motor Company. For everyone else, it was a race for 3rd.

So after two rounds Richards led the championship with 40 points, with teammate Skaife trailing on 30, and Dick Johnson putting up something that might generously be described as resistance, with 18. Longhurst, Seton and Bowe were deadlocked on 12 points apiece, thanks partly to the practice of awarding bonus points to class cars having gone the way of the dodo. But even with them, Longhurst would've had the devil's own job interrupting the steady points-hoovering of Gibson Motorsport this year. Two rounds in, and it was already pretty clear who was going to win this championship.

Godzilla Remastered

"We've got a new assignment for you. You're moving to Australia. The R32 GT-R must win Bathurst!"

These were the words with which Alan Heaphy, lately the team manager for Nissan Motorsport Europe, was given his mission for the 1991 season. Living and working in the U.K., he'd been steering Howard Marsden's works Group C sportscar outfit to ever-greater success, including pole at Le Mans in 1990. But Nissan's failure at last year's Bathurst proved the stone that set off an avalanche: in Australia, only one race mattered, and Heaphy was seconded Down Under to turn things around.

Serious Re-Engineering
Since the Great Race had moved to its true home Mount Panorama in 1963, just four marques had ever won it, and two of those only once each: in 1966 the Mini Cooper S had run the bigger and heavier opposition into the ground, mostly by not needing to stop for fuel so often; and in 1985, the Jaguar XJ-S had given Tom Walkinshaw his first Mountain triumph, also by not needing to stop for fuel so often (ahem). But apart from these aberrations, every Bathurst whether Series Production, Big Banger Group C or Eurotrash Group A had been won by either a Ford or a Holden; not once had it been won by a Japanese car.

Nissan were determined to be the first, but it wasn't going to come easily. It was no secret that the Mountain was some of the most demanding tarmac in the world, but last year's shock win for Holden had driven home just what it would take. In the modern era, you needed a car that could be driven flat-out for the entire distance, standing up to all the stresses the Mountain could throw at it – the suspension loading up into Sulman Park, the hard braking at the bottom of the Chase, the hard acceleration again out of Hell Corner, the ever-rising engines temps as bugs and dust encrusted the radiator – all of it and more, for six-and-a-half hours straight.

The problem was, the GT-R as delivered wasn't capable of that.

You have to remember that our touring car category in Australia was very competitive and the thing is, a Japanese-spec racecar wouldn't win here. It wouldn't be quick enough against the the Ford Sierras and Holden Commodores.

So we had to homologate the parts that we wanted on the car with the FIA through CAMS to make the racecar a lot better, and that took a lot of work. We used a lot of Australian suppliers to help us get it right. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787

Added Paul Beranger, manager of Nissan Motorsport Australia: "NISMO in Japan wasn't too impressed when we told them we needed to change their pride and joy."

That process had begun in 1990, but once Heaphy was ensconced as Gibson Motorsport's Lead Team Operations Manager, shortly after the Eastern Creek enduro, it kicked into overdrive.

When I arrived here I think at the end of November, I went straight to New Zealand where the team was racing at the Wellington street race and it was a good opportunity to see some of the problems the car had. The car was suffering badly with brake issues, not so much the handling, and there were other components that were just underdone.

They were running a number of Australian made components at that stage. They had their own front and rear uprights that were locally made, wishbones and a number of other components that were made in-house. They also had the Holinger gearbox that replaced the NISMO gearbox as they found it to be unreliable. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

As the old saying goes, when there's hard work to be done some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. Motor racing tends to weed out the latter two groups pretty quickly, but even by the absurd standards of the business, Fred Gibson had managed to assemble a group of true workaholics. Later Holden Racing Team chief Jeff Grech was one of them, and he remembered the GT-R vividly:

I loved working on them, but they were a mechanic-eater. We were the first to get to the track at six o'clock in the morning and we'd be the last to leave. You had to change both turbos, they were just a nightmare, very complex to service and maintain, but there was a lot of clever stuff. – Jeff Grech, AMC #107

But even for this crew, the off-season of 1990/'91 was remarkably intense. Before the flag fell for the first ATCC round in February, they not only had to sort out the issues in chassis GT-R 002, they also had to build a whole new car – chassis 003 – after Skaife had destroyed 001 in qualifying for the Adelaide Grand Prix support race. Building a new car while simultaneously carrying out a test and development programme ready for the new year was a Herculean task, but fortunately, as the pressure ramped up so did the support from Nissan.

The main problems with the Australian GT-Rs were the brakes, which tended to overheat with hard use; the cylinder blocks, which were cracking; and the turbos, which were failing as they tried to make the immense power required. For 1991 the rules on brakes had been relaxed, so that was the first problem the team tackled. The process was sped up by one of Heaphy's tricks from Europe: real-time telemetry, courtesy of some clever gizmos by PI Data Acquisition, a small company established by a group of Cambridge professors. The team had invested up to $400,000 into this promising new technology, and it paid off almost immediately.

During the Group C Prototype programme I had spent quite a bit of time with the PI data logging system. We had developed this system during the prototype programme and I brought one of those back with me. The engineer at the time was Ross Holder, he and the guys fitted the PI unit and sensors into chassis 002.

With the PI system in the car and the data we got from turbo speeds, brake temperatures and other items, we could basically say, "Change this, check that and do that". We spent almost every day bar Christmas Day modifying bits and pieces in the workshop to get the car up and running to go testing. Then we were out at Calder, I don't know how many days we spent out there, but testing brakes, testing oil coolers and that sort of thing.

The team were running cooling fans on the wheels which was to help with the brake cooling. I was concerned the fans weren't doing what they were supposed to do and believed that they were only covering up the open face of the wheel.

I remember when we fitted the infrared sensor near the disc, you could see the temperature go up and up and with the wheel fan on you could see it come down a little bit, but with the wheel fan off you could see it come down more rapidly. It showed that the brakes ran cooler with no fans and fans were never used again.

The development was just a vertical line, it really was. I mean over the period of late December/early January, the changes to the car and the data information that we got was invaluable. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

Brake cooling was further boosted by some custom rims. Following HRT's lead, Gibson commissioned Kevin Drage of Castalloy in Adelaide to design and manufacture a new kind of 18x11 alloy wheel, lighter and stronger than anything currently on the market.

There were a number of different versions of the wheels because I think we were the first team to run a hollow spoke, a hollow centre as well. The early development wheels were an issue, with some cracking and keeping them tight, we used to have to torque them up to 800 foot-pound of torque to stop them coming undone. Kevin was constantly making changes to try and make them stronger and lighter. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

One idea that popped up during development was a reversible flap located in the brake duct behind the front bumper. When racing on high-speed circuits where engine oil temps would soar, the duct could be bolted in one position to send air to the oil cooler; for tighter tracks that required heavier braking, the air could be ducted to the brakes instead.

The Group A engine was already running a nodular steel crank, beefier rods, titanium valves and retainers, plus Cosworth pistons, but a problem familiar to GT-R tuners was the straight-six layout itself. Under high power the engine could produce enough torque to twist the block until it cracked around the head bolt holes and into a particular water gallery. Up until Pukekohe, Gibson had been using a new block every race because of this. New engine mounts helped, but what was really needed was a redesign of the bracing inside the block itself, something that could only be implemented at the factory in Omori. Five upgraded blocks were made specifically for the team, virtually overnight, but it would be a couple of races before they arrived in Australia.

(Source)

While they were there, the Gibson embassage took the opporunity to talk to their turbo suppliers at Garrett. Quality control had been determined the main cause of their Garrett T25 turbochargers failing in 1990, so the team had invested in a balancing machine so they could assemble their own rather than have to buy complete units from Japan.

The team built their own turbochargers in-house. Myself and two other team guys went to Japan to talk to them about the cylinder block because at that stage we were splitting cylinder blocks which we believed were twisting when torque was applied.

We took one of our turbochargers with us and they had an engineering guy from Garrett at NISMO at the time we were there. He looked at that turbocharger, pulled it apart and reckoned our guys were two years in front of them with development work.

We had a 360 thrust bearing turbo and we had a balancing machine that used to suck the air out of everything and the guys could run and balance them up to about 120-130,000rpm. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

Another bugbear was keeping oil in the sump, which required an intricate solution.

It was very complicated. It had a breather out the top of the engine that went into a separator tank and back into the sump. It even got the point where the final catch tank also had a pump that put the oil back into the sump. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

Having experimented with triple-plate carbon clutches with the old HR31 in Europe, the idea had been transferred across to the R90CK Le Mans cars, before returning to touring cars now with the GT-R. A triple-plate carbon clutch fed the torque of the engine into the familiar Holinger 6-speed gearbox, which was retained because it worked very well. The HS6 became the flagship product for Holinger, adopted by many motorsport categories worldwide including the future V8 Supercars – where it would remain a staple until replaced by the current sequential unit in 2009. The team was soon exporting Holinger gearboxes to NISMO to hand out to Group A teams in Europe and Japan.

The Holinger box was about $18,000 back then and the NISMO box was $33,000. The GT-R produced so much torque that it could destroy the Nissan box with little effort!

The car didn't really need a 6-speed, it had plenty of torque you could have got away with less and it still would have won races. The same 6-speed was a good thing for other teams, particularly those with normally-aspirated engines. Teams like Perkins Engineering, HRT and many others used this gearbox. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

Only a few Nissan parts remained in the Gibson GT-Rs, including the transfer case, front driveshafts, front diff and the rear diff, which initially was a Nissan LSD. It was reliable, but it it too would be replaced later in the year. 

The wheels, the suspension, the gearbox were all local. They [NISMO] made the cylinder blocks, but the Electromotive engine management system was done for us in America.

We had to do so much in-house ourselves – the engines and the whole thing. The only thing we didn't do was the Holinger gearbox. We got new things cast and I still have all the old drawings for that. All those things we got done to make it a better car were done because we had good people. Having the people that engineered the car, designed some of the equipment for the car, was very satisfying. The people made the difference.

We did it all ourselves, which was still very expensive, but not as expensive as getting all the bits from Japan. Our budget wasn't huge. We were very fortunate to have good sponsors as well as Nissan Australia. We were struggling when we first did GT-R because we didn't have enough money to do the job properly. We were lucky to have cigarette money come along [in 1992] because it was a very expensive car to run. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787

 

Nemesis
So the new VN Commdore's big problem heading into 1991 was the Nissan; the Nissan's big problem, by contrast, was the economy. There were a number of factors pushing it downwards at the dawn of the 1990s: Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait creating yet another spike in oil prices; the U.S. treasury deciding the economy needed cooling after the cocaine bender of the 1980s, maintaining high interest rates to ward off inflation; and a downturn in the U.S. housing market caused by nothing more malicious than the Baby Boomers all having their houses now, and the Gen-X buyers that followed them happening to be much fewer in number. But the big factor for Australia was that the Japanese economic bubble of the late-1980s had finally started to burst, leading the country into what they still call "the Lost Decade". It would bring on things like the notorious Fuji banking scandal, which was profoundly shocking at the time but now reads like little more than a preview of basically all financial news post-Enron (F1 fans might remember the pretty blue Leyton House cars of this era; team moneybags Akira Akagi was jailed for his part in the Fuji Bank conspiracy). 

Globally, share prices dropped 25 percent; here in Australia, however, they fell 40 percent. At the time we were Japan's single largest supplier of coal, iron, wool, sugar and beef, so if the Japanese economy tanked ours wouldn't be far behind. And sure enough, by September 1990 the data showed Australia's GDP had dropped 1.8 percent, and on 29 November then-Treasurer Paul Keating delivered the line that would follow him into eternity: "This was the recession we had to have." 

There were business failures, bankruptcies, negative equity, falling investment and mounting unemployed. All the debt-financed business carpetbaggers like Russell Goward, Christopher Skase, Abe Goldberg etc were put out of commission. Australia was as Keating put it "de-spivved". Inflation was exorcised out of the Australian economy. It was a policy-induced recession though it was not meant to be; the econocrats were aiming for a soft landing but it all went terribly wrong.

The double-digit interest rates that were intended to give us that transition went awry, with the economy sent crashing. ...

Keating masterminded the recovery using a modest Keynesian stimulus but he was never to really see a full recovery. Unemployment remained stubbornly high at one point hitting 11.25 per cent of the workforce; they called it "the jobless recovery". – Alex Millmow, "Twenty-five years on from the recession we had to have", The Sydney Morning Herald

For context, my parents bought their first house around this time, and they remembered interest rates were up around 17 percent, compared to around 2 percent at the time of writing. Anyone with serious debt was basically wiped out, a couple of my dad's friends losing their farms, and one of them losing a lot more than that. If interest rates hadn't been so high, he told me darkly, he never would've had to go driving trucks to make ends meet, and so wouldn't have had the truck accident that killed him.

In short, it was the worst banking downturn in a century, and for once the old maxim that motor racing is last into a recession and last out again didn't hold true. For those who held sponsorship contracts with the big banks – like Allan Moffat, who was in bed with ANZ – the pain filtered through almost immediately.

One of my disappointments was in 1990, when I still had ANZ sponsorship. The managing director, Will Bailey, called me into his office to tell me that the bank had suffered its first loss in history and he'd had to dismiss some 3,000 people. Well, of course, they couldn't maintain the race team.

He told me the cars were mine and all the bills would be paid. Then he handed me an envelope with a cheque in it and you how much it was for? How about $250,000? That truly was, aw shit, the nicest thing that ever happened to me. He told me it was a donation to help me get my next sponsor.

From that day onward I spent most Christmas Day celebrations with Will Bailey and his wife. – Allan Moffat, AMC #79

So Gibson Motorsport had the misfortune to be launching the most expensive touring car Australia had ever seen, in the midst of Australia's worst recession from 1929 to 2020.

When people realised the GT-R was going to be the gun car, they knocked on our door and wanted to run GT-Rs – until we told them the budget. Two things killed that [customer cars] – one was the budget required and the second was that they would have to deal through Fred, because NISMO didn't want to deal with independent teams in Australia. They said they were happy to supply through Gibson Motorsport.

And motorsport being what it is, those people always believed they'd get second-rate service because Fred would be the works team and the rest would get hand-me-downs.

Fred was successful, of course, with the GIO car which ran under him, but the rest of the people – and I mean oil company sponsored teams – actually knocked on my door and asked us if they could be part of GT-R and ultimately they walked away from it because of the cost of doing it, even compared with the Sierra Cosworth RS500. – Paul Beranger, Auto Action #1787

So we would not see the ATCC become "Formula GT-R" like in Japan, where 18 NISMO-prepped Skylines duked it out for line honours at Fuji and Suzuka. Only one team in the country could afford that, and the only reason they could afford it was because, ironically, their corporate backers were deep in the red. The Button Car Plan was in full effect at this time but Nissan's cosy tie-up with Holden had meant for the last few years the most important car rolling down their Clayton production line was not the R31 Skyline, but the Pulsar hatchback, which was also being sold as the Holden Astra. When the shared engine contract was abruptly severed, Nissan had instead extended the hand of friendship to Broadmeadows, which resulted in the GQ Patrol becoming available as the Ford Maverick. But Ford's existing relationship with Mazda rather diluted their need for Nissan, and when Nissan presented a plan to build the next front-wheel drive Bluebird locally as both the Nissan Pintara and the Ford Corsair (replacing Ford's imported Telstar), Broadmeadows quietly brushed it off – the last thing they needed was another mid-size sedan creating volume issues for their Falcon. Nissan's days as an Australian manufacturer were rapidly spiralling to a close, so they had no choice but to promote like hell and hope for the best. The $1 million annual budget allocated to Gibson Motorsport was peanuts compared to what they stood to lose if they gave up that visibility.

Actual photo of Nissan Australia c.1991

Godzilla was finally ready to wade ashore and start its rampage, but it was hiding the fact that the company behind it was now sliding beneath the waves...