Back to Business: Lakeside, Winton & Amaroo

Normal service resumed when the scene returned to the Australian Touring Car Championship proper. Rounds 4 and 5 at Lakeside and Winton respectively fell to Jim Richards and his Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R – but famously, not Round 6 at Amaroo Park.

One thing I haven't really done this year is discuss chassis numbers, detail exactly which cars each driver was sitting in for each race they entered. I apologise. To remedy that, ahead of this entry I set myself the challenge of getting chassis numbers for every single car in these middle three ATCC races and... to be honest, I failed. There are still a handful of privateer Commodores and especially Corollas in the tiddler class that never seem to get identified, falling through the gap where, "Really Obscure Car" fails to overlap with, "Punters who Care Enough to Find Out". There's only so much I can do given a subscription to V8 Sleuth costs omigod $440 a year, a price that tells me it's aimed at the socially-secure older gentlemen who own and race the actual cars rather than bloggers who needed a cheap hobby back in the GFC. As a Millennial, most of my money is of course tied up in massive stockpiles of avocado toast, so as tantalising as a day in the Sleuth's vaults would be it looks like I'll be locked out for a while yet.

That said, chassis numbers for most of the big-name drivers are fairly well established at this point, so here's the list so far:

• Cars #1 and #2, the GT-Rs of Richards and Skaife, chassis GMS GT-R 3 and GMS GT-R 2, respectively. GT-R 1 was written off after that crash in Adelaide, so GT-R 3 was built to replace it while GT-R 2 did the spadework of that epic off-season test programme. So I'm guessing that GMS GT-R 2 would've been Skaife's car and GT-R 3 was Richo's, because why wouldn't you give your newer, better car to your championship contender?
  
• Car #3, the Dulux-sponsored VN Commodore of the Lansvale Smash Repairs team, was probably chassis LRT1.
• Car #05, Peter Brock's Mobil Commodore, was of course Perkins Engineering chassis PE 012.
• Car #6, Tim Grant's Sizzler Skyline. Haven't nailed a proper chassis number for it yet, but the commentary from Bathurst 1990 led us to believe it had been Mark Skaife's '89 car.
• Car #8, Colin Bond's trusty Caltex Sierra, chassis CXT1. Debuted back at the Oran Park enduro in 1988, raced by Bondy more or less ever since.
  
• Car #11, the other Mobil Commodore of Larry Perkins, built by the man himself as chassis PE 013.
• Car #13, Bob Holden's long-suffering Toyota Corolla. Would actually end up with more Bathurst starts than any car in history, but no actual chassis number that I know of.
• Car #14, Warren Jonsson's VL Walkinshaw. Was actually chassis TWR 022, the purple Herbie Clips car driven by Tom himself over in Europe in 1988. It had been sent back to Australia for that planned '89 ATCC that never happened, and since been Perkins-ised and used by the Holden Racing Team before being sold off to the privateers. Today, that was Jonsson.
  
• Car #16, Win Percy's VN Commodore, chassis HRT 026. Built new for 1991.
• Car #17, Dick Johnson's Shell Sierra. Chassis DJR5, originally built for the 1989 endurance season and used by Dick to take his final ATCC wins (at Symmons Plains and Phillip Island 1990). It was also the car Radisich & Allam had driven to 2nd place at Bathurst 1990.
  
• Car #18, John Bowe's other Shell Sierra. Chassis DJR6, the final Dick Johnson Sierra, built for the 1990 enduros. This was the car that failed at Bathurst that year, and then exploded so close to the finish at the Eastern Creek 500.
  
• Car #20, Alan Jones' BMW M3 Sport Evo. Forum-searching reveals this car was originally built by someone called Matter for the works Schnitzer BMW team for the 1990 DTM season. I haven't been able to find anything definite, but it feels like "Matter" was the equivalent of Dencar for Commodore teams, an outsource for caged bodyshells utilised by several teams. As such, both Longhurst Racing machines have rather confusing chassis numbers, with Jones' recorded as M3 1-166 3/90. Unfortunately the information doesn't get more specific than that: I'd love to know who drove it in which races of the 1990 DTM, but further Googling had so far revealed nothing. As with Japan, the information is probably out there but not recorded in English, and the sheer number of cars built by Schnitzer would make it a tough slog. Which sucks for me, because I want to know and mein Deutsche ist Scheisse.
• Car #21, Mark Gibbs' GIO Commodore. Chassis RF04, also known as Dencar 01. Built new for 1991, and due to have a very short career.
  
• Car #25, Tony Longhurst's Benson & Hedges M3 Evo. Chassis M3 1-161 3/90 (see above). We do apparently know this was the car that won the 1990 Wellington 500, but that's based on the TV commentator mentioning it when (spoiler alert) Tony crashed it during the '91 event. Again, I'd love to know who drove it in the DTM, but nothing concrete seems to be out there.
  
• Car #27, Terry Finnigan's Foodtown Commodore. Listed on V8 Sleuth by a VIN rather than a chassis number, AVN914652, suggesting it started as a road car rather than as a Holden Motorsport shell. Would still be around into the upcoming 5.0-litre era, but more than that unknown.
• Car #28, Kevin Waldock's Playscape Sierra. Chassis MM6, the customer Sierra built by Andrew Miedecke for Waldock back in 1989.
  
• Car #30, Glenn Seton's Peter Jackson Sierra. Chassis numbers are a bit cloudy here, as both GSR1 and GSR2 were built for the start of the 1989 season; one of them was crashed and badly damaged at Lakeside, but then later in the year the team were back to two cars. So, was the crashed car rebuilt, or was it scrapped and a new one built? I don't know, and the recent Seton book is likewise beyond my pocket for now. So we'll toss the coin and guess it's GSR2.
  
• Car #33, Bob Pearson's Pro-Duct Commodore. As mentioned in the last entry, chassis PE 011.
  
• Car #43, Brian Bolwell's Sierra. Chassis TLR5, the last Tony Longhurst Sierra built for Bathurst 1990, the one with a yellow cage that set a new lap record in practice.
  
• Car #44, Mike Twigden's Sierra. As Bolwell's teammate, also an ex-Longhurst car, either TLR3 or 4 (the usual confusion applies here, as these Wolf-built cars from Germany are almost indistinguishable).
  
• Car #48, Peter Verheyen's Toyota Corolla. Nothing known, though a rummage through my photo collection made me realise I had a good shot of it coming over Bitupave Hill at Amaroo (still with Eastern Creek co-driver John Vernon's name on the window), so I made it my page image above. The little guys deserve more exposure.
• Car #52, Peter Doulman's BMW M3 vanilla. Probably the second of the three JPS cars built in 1987, as the first one (which started as a 325i with the build interrupted halfway through) probably wouldn't have been worth much to customers. Would've had much in common with...
  
• Car #53, John Cotter's BMW M3. The third and last of the JPS team's hardware from 1987, which is easier to identify because of its unique radio antenna layout. Both non-Evo M3s were now being run by M3 Motorsports, an outfit established by Cotter and Doulman to run their ex-JPS BMWs. As such, they were prepared at Doulman Automotive in Auburn, Sydney, and together they'd won their class at Bathurst in 1989.
  

At the very bottom of the list we have cars #74 and #76, 1.6-litre Corollas entered by Bob Holden Motors so Bob could blood his Bathurst co-drivers (Frank Binding and Mike Conway, since you're wondering). I wouldn't be surprised if they were ex-factory cars from Toyota Team Australia, but I don't know that for a fact. And as for Kevin Heffernan's PACE Racing VL Commodore, I couldn't find anything at all – not a chassis number, not a racing number, not even a good period photo so I'd know whether it was a VL SS or a Walky. Kev, mate, if you're reading this, get in touch.

Round 4 – Lakeside, 28 April
Now that we've scared off of the lightweights, let's get into some actual racing.

At Lakeside (unusually, the first of two rounds to be held at Lakeside this year), Gentleman Jim was very nearly as dominant as any mortal driver could be. Thanks to a brilliant 53.43-second qualifying lap he had the luxury of starting from pole, giving him an open track to make the most of the GT-R's awesome starting capability. From there he inevitably won the race, eking 54 laps out of the allotted 50 minutes and leading every single one of them. The only scratch on this perfect performance was that fastest-lap honours went to his teammate Mark Skaife, who posted a 53.78 at some point during proceedings. Skaife had qualified only 3rd but sprang off the line to make it an immediate Nissan 1-2, which was naturally how they finished.

From there was a yawning 9-second gap to Tony Longhurst in the M3 Sport Evo, while the other local boy and crowd favourite, Dick Johnson, had made a brilliant start of his own to rise from 12th to 6th by the end of the first lap. Having virtually rebuilt the car overnight, with new suspension and a new engine, such a turn of speed was heartening for the de facto Queensland national team, but it all came to nought in the end. To make the distance Johnson had to pit for new tyres, and rejoined almost clouting the Nissans as they roared past the pit exit – meaning he'd gone a whole lap down in only half a race. He finished only 9th, while John Bowe, after a spirited early battle with Longhurst, could only manage 10th.

Of the lesser runners? Glenn Seton took a hit from Win Percy in the Karussell on lap 1 and slid off into the dust, rejoining having lost some places; the right half of his rear bumper hung loose for the rest of the race. For his part, Percy was eventually pressured into a mistake by Longhurst, the Dorset farmer's son locking a brake on the entry to Hungry Corner (so named because it was waiting to swallow you if you got too hungry with the brake pedal). Percy had to abandon the corner to pull up the HRT Commodore, letting Tony skittle through – though only just. He too was pushing like crazy.

In the end though, there was no covering up that this was another overwhelming victory for the R32 Skyline: Richards and Skaife lapped the whole field up to 5th. That doesn't mean Skaife was acting as Richo's tail-gunner, however: "Mark's a hard guy to have behind you, I can tell you!" was the old master's wry comment on the podium, and, a proven winner these days, Skaife half-jokingly agreed: "We tortured each other for the whole distance."

Round 5 – Winton, 5 May
Winton likewise went Richo's way, again after starting from pole. What was his secret? "It's simple," he explained. "You just go as fast as you can without slipping off the track." Skaife would've done well to listen to him, as he ran out of road and landed in the dirt several times in an attempt to go faster. He ended up only 5th on the grid, a fact that would be key to his race the next day.

At the start, finding himself boxed in behind Win Percy, Skaife elected to expand his definition of the track to include the grass between the tarmac and the pit wall, taking the 4WD Nissan four-wheel-driving in an attempt to leapfrog the Commodore. When the flag waved, Skaife turned hard right and roared around the HRT Commodore as it bogged down with wheelspin, out-dragging the Holden V8 even with his Yokohamas biting on slippery grass rather than nice grippy tarmac! He made the pass and rejoined 3rd behind Glenn Seton, but in scrambling back onto the track he supposedly gave Win Percy a tap. So whether it was for that, or just for leaving the circuit and gaining an advantage, he was eventually given a stop-and-go penalty – one not handed down until after he'd fought a hard but clean battle to get past Glenn Seton for 2nd. With a third of the race gone, Skaifey's work was utterly undone and he was forced to start all over again.

Fred Gibson wasn't happy of course, firing off the usual team boss lines about how the infraction wasn't that bad ("It was only two wheels off the track..."; no, Freddo, it was four), the stewards were being overly-cautious (they weren't), and anyway, wasn't it a bit late to enact a penalty? On that one he kind of had a point – while it was true that race control had waited twelve minutes to announce their decision, which makes one wonder what the hell they could've been arguing about, there wasn't exactly a statute of limitations for this stuff... and the argument was predicated on the wrongdoing being immediately obvious, which rather undermined his other points!

Regardless, Skaife got his elbows out and worked his way back up through the field, and when the chequered flag came out after 47 laps he was back where he belonged – in 2nd place, behind his team leader. This time he had to share fastest-lap honours with Richards, however, who’d clocked an identical 1:01.86 laptime.

With the season half over, the stats were incredible: out of five rounds, Gibson Motorsport had taken a perfect five victories, all of them slam-dunk 1-2s. I'll say that again: in five attempts, their cars had finished 1st and 2nd five times. On four occasions they’d also started from pole and taken the fastest lap (with only the Dick Johnson team’s efforts at Wanneroo preventing a complete whitewash on that front as well). With 95 and 80 points respectively, it was clear either Richards or Skaife would be crowned champion within the next couple of races; best-of-the-rest Tony Longhurst was struggling with just 46.

It would be wrong to say this was getting monotonous, however; this had started monotonous, and now it was just getting silly. The GT-R was simply too great a leap forward for anyone to entertain hopes of beating it, and it was beginning to look like it would take nothing less than a miracle for another car to win.

The miracle occurred.

Round 6 – Amaroo, 2 June
From the beginning, the sixth round of the championship at Sydney's Amaroo Park was against the run of play. For the first time all year, no GT-R was starting from the front row: the Dick Johnson cars had both qualified on experimental new Dunlop tyres (and indeed, the head of development from Dunlop in Japan had flown in to watch), resulting in a front-row lockout for the Shell Sierras. Dick himself had earned himself P2 with a time of 51.02 seconds, while Bowe had creased the tarmac on the way to pole with a time of 50.58.

The ongoing tyre war had also thrown the Perkins team a bone, as Bridgestone coughed up a new compound for Larry and their golden boy Peter Brock. Brock's 5th place on the grid with a lap of 50.38 told the whole story – it was an identical time to the one set by Alan Jones in the M3, a heroic effort given the Commodore's obesity and primitive suspension. Unfortunately, like Bridgestones since time immemorial, they would prove great over a single lap but fade quickly, a toxic combination in the current ATCC.

So where were the GT-Rs? Skaife had managed to pull out a 51.06 to qualify 3rd for the race, a disappointment that traced to fitting a set of super-hard Yokohamas in an attempt to balance the car – the 4WD Nissan's tendency to understeer into corners and oversteer out again was going to make for a long day at Amaroo. By contrast, Richards had punched a hole in his engine block when a conrod bolt failed, leaving him without a qualifying time and forcing him to start from last place on the grid. The imperturbable one remained unperturbed, however, no doubt remembering that he’d also started dead last for this race in 1987, and still gone on to win: "It will be fun," he said. The catch was, in '87 he'd been driving a BMW...

At the start, both DJR Sierras got away to good starts running side-by-side – which is how they stayed, appropriately, until Dunlop corner. Happily, the wall of Shell cars prevented Skaife from getting an early break, with John Bowe acting as tail-gunner and keeping Skaife behind him for a good four laps while Johnson pulled out a handy 2-second lead. It was a doomed effort, of course, and everyone knew it – Skaife inevitably used his superior traction to nip past Bowe coming out of Stop corner – but the DJR boys had at least kept Skaife from making a gap off the line and then driving to the flag at his leisure. Now, it would be a tyre war to the finish. Game on.

Richards, on the other hand, had passed eight cars on the opening lap to rise from 22nd to 14th place in just 1.94km, quite an effort on such a narrow track, even if it was mainly against Corollas and privateer Commodores! By lap 6 Richards was up to 8th place and carving through the field fast, while Johnson's advantage over Skaife had been shaved back to just one second. Two laps later Skaife was right on his bumper, and on lap 10, going over the top of Bitupave Hill, Skaife was finally able to out-drag Johnson and assume the lead. Those trick new Dunlops simply hadn't lasted.

Crucially, however, following Skaife through on that move was Tony Longhurst in his BMW M3 Sport Evo, rear wing set resolutely to Nürburgring and setting blistering lap after blistering lap. Longhurst gnawed on Skaife like a dog on a bone for the next eighteen laps, forcing him to keep the pace up as the Nissan’s tyres got sicker and sicker, its handling more and more wayward. Eventually, on lap 28, Skaife's shortage of grip saw him run gently wide through Dunlop Corner and, his BMW still running like it was on rails, Longhurst didn't hesitate for a second: Tony was through and gone, the B&H team leading their second AMSCAR race in a row and, significantly, their first ATCC race for the year.

Richards meanwhile criss-crossed Brock out of the Hairpin to move up another place, then moved on to Seton, and then Bowe whose tyres had also expired. Taking the hint, Johnson pitted for fresh rubber, thus removing himself from the equation altogether. His tyres likewise completely shot, Skaife had a huge powerslide late in the race, and that was enough for Richards to pounce, promoting the man who'd started dead last to 2nd place. With five minutes remaining Richo set off to catch the leading BMW, and got within 1.6 seconds... but then the chequered flag flew, and Longhurst greeted it first, becoming the first car other than a GT-R to win a round of the 1991 ATCC.

It was a shock result, and one that proved what the Gibson team had been saying all along – the GT-R was not invincible and, an aspect of the programme that doesn't get much mention, a lot of their success was down to just doing a very good job. In particular, Richards' mastery in keeping some meat on his tyres for the whole race was thrown into sharp relief by Skaife's inability to do the same, and the canny old Kiwi was still the one they feared when he had a good car under him. As Tony later confessed: "The last ten laps went on forever and when I realised it was Jim and not Mark in my mirrors, I shit myself!"

AMSCAR Interlude: the M3 Sport Evo

For some teams the next event on the calendar was the first Lakeside round, held a fortnight after Skaifey's maiden win at Wanneroo. For others – namely, those based in Sydney – it was the first round of the AMSCAR series held only one week later at Amaroo Park. In such a sparse season there's time to branch out and take in these lesser events, and in this case it might do to have a closer look at the car Tony Longhurst was driving as well. After all, it was about to start winning...

Hidden Talent Counts For Nothing: the BMW M3 Sport Evolution
It's important to realise the new Benson & Hedges cars were not the ones Jim Richards had taken to the championship back in 1987. This was not just another M3: this was the BMW M3 Sport Evolution, sometimes known as the Evo 3, and comparing it to the old one it was like putting your morning espresso down next to a crack pipe.

BMW hadn’t exactly left the M3 alone through the long years of Sierra domination. In 1988 they’d released the Evo 1, with engine tweaks to give the race teams a tad more power. The Evo 2 that followed in 1989 had ditched the catalytic converter, swapped out the window glass for something thinner and lighter, and fitted a deeper chin spoiler for better aero. With the demise of the European championship, however, BMW had simply turned their attention inwards to the domestic series, and in the process they'd only got even more intense.

The Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft, or DTM, was nothing less than a war for supremacy between the West German manufacturers, where no quarter was ever asked or given. Key to the new-look DTM was a ban on turbocharging for 1990: in this post-Sierra landscape, Mercedes-Benz had coughed up the 190E Evo 2, with more power and a cartoonishly huge rear wing to give it proper downforce. Audi had also given the pot a stir with a new Quattro powered by a V8 made by welding two Golf GTi engines together, and even Opel had pitched in with the Omega A2.

The opposition: *deep breath* the Mercedes-Benz 190E Cosworth 2.3-16v Evo 2.

The Sport Evo was BMW’s big stick in this contest, built to homologate a body able to take the 18-inch wheels needed to win, as well as an engine taken up to the new 2.5-litre limit. Only 600 of these cars were made, all of them in 1990, and BMW Motorsport (as the M Division was then known) took the opportunity to really push the boat out.

The Sport Evo sat 10mm lower than the previous M3s, hitting the road on sizeable 16-inch wheels (albeit with wheel arches enlarged to take the 18s of the racecars). The storied four-cylinder S14 engine was upgraded to the new S14B25: by boring out from 84 to 95mm and fitting a longer-stroke crankshaft, the engine’s swept volume increased to 2,467cc, just nicely below the category limit. The engine also got slide throttles, eight injectors, larger inlet valves and sodium-filled exhaust valves, with a larger exhaust manifold and chrome-tipped exhaust to help the whole thing breathe. A more aggressive camshaft was fitted, and extra oil nozzles sprayed oil at the underside of the pistons to help keep them cool. BMW used 8mm red spark plug cables to make sure deine Freunde noticed if you lifted the bonnet.

The result was 177 kW at 7,000 rpm, with only a slight decrease in torque compared with the standard M3 – some 240 Nm at 4,750rpm. 0-100km/h was done in 6.1 seconds, with the standing 400m covered in 14.8 or so, depending on the slickness of your gear changes. The U.S. and Japan only got a normal H-pattern gearbox, but European cars got the the dogleg variant of Getrag’s 265 5-speed, meaning first gear was to the left and down rather than left and up – a trap for young players maybe, but a tactile link to the racecars, and very cool.

Source.

Luxuries like a thirteen-button trip computer, air conditioning, leather sport seats, central locking, electric windows, electric sunroof, premium stereo, map light mirrors, active check control and seat heaters were all deleted in order to keep weight down, though they could be put back as options. Since 1988, Euro-spec M3s had also been available with Electronic Damper Control by Boge. This offered three shock stiffness settings, Komfort (K), Normal (N) and Sport (S) in order of increasing firmness, adjusted via a dial on the centre console.

Body-wise, the Sport Evo had thinner glass, extra cooling ducts that took the place of the fog lights, and reprofiled radiator grille slats for better air penetration. It was available in only two colours, Jet Black (sometimes listed as Glossy Black), or Brilliant Red. But the real standout feature was the adjustable rear wing, which gave you three options to tailor the car to the tarmac – choose between Monza, Normal or Nürburgring, then put your foot down!

Low-drag setting called "Monza" because Hockenheim was the Mercedes test track, I guess?

As you can probably tell, this was a car never intended for shopping or school runs. But on the other hand, pairing the 2.5-litre engine, aggressive aerodynamics and huge 18-inch wheels with slick racing tyres made for one hell of a racecar, much quicker than a proper Group A car: CAMS only allowed it into the country because they’d realised something had to be done about Dick Johnson’s Sierras, and the Sport Evo was BMW’s slice of the pie. That the Nissan GT-R had since become even more dominant than the Sierra was an unforeseen headache.

Still, Tony Longhurst’s yellow machine was hitting the track with some 274 kW under the bonnet, at a screaming 8,750rpm, and in a car that weighed only 900kg – plus a touch of real downforce. A brave driver could really fling such a machine around, and even expect to bring home results if the circuit that week didn’t have too many long straights...

Enter Amaroo Park, stage right.

24 April – AMSCAR Round 1
A reminder for those who came in late: AMSCAR, or "Amaroo Super Cars", was a single-track championship run solely at Sydney's Amaroo Park. A track running its own championship was nothing new, especially in the crowd-pleasing "multi sprint race" format, but AMSCAR was different for a couple of reasons. Firstly, thanks to generous sponsors, there'd always been serious money up for grabs, which made the series an important earner that regularly attracted Sydney-based pros like Colin Bond. Secondly (and not unrelatedly), the series had a lucrative TV deal with Channel Seven, foreshadowing the coming age when watching races live from your living room would be de rigeur.

This being 1991, however, the recession was hitting AMSCAR as well, and the series was down to another anaemic three-round schedule with grids getting awfully close to the ten-car barrier. Those ten included Bob Holden in his #13 Toyota Corolla, Colin Bond in his #8 Caltex Sierra, Garry Willmington in his Toyota Supra Turbo, and of course Tony Longhurst in the #25 BMW M3 Evo. Sadly for everyone else, however, Gibson Motorsport had entered one GT-R for Mark Skaife.

Mark Gibbs in the new GIO Commodore (photo taken at Lakeside)

All these had been competing since the start of the year, so the new cars on the grid were a quartet of Holdens, as Trevor Ashby (in the #3 Lansvale Smash Repairs entry), Bob Forbes' driver Mark Gibbs (#21 GIO car), and privateers Terry Finnigan (Foodtown #27) and Bob Pearson (Pro-Duct #33) all upgraded to the new VN Commodore to replace their outdated Walkies. Of these Pearson's was probably the most notable – chassis PE 011 was actually the first VN ever built by Perkins Engineering, anteceding even the Mobil cars Peter Brock and Larry himself were driving (indeed, it was probably Pearson's order that had funded Larry's entry in last year's Eastern Creek 500...). Unlike Win Percy's factory car, however, none of these had the means to develop the new engines allowed in the rules, so they had to improvise with what they had: all four simply acquired a VN bodyshell (plus a Group A bodykit, available through Holden Motorsport), then fitted it out with their existing fuel-injected Walkinshaw V8.

As with last year, the AMSCAR format was a pair of sprint races of 10 laps each, a very different beast to the 50-minute ATCC rounds – no preserving the tyres, just maximum attack! That approach suited the GT-R just fine, as despite struggling with understeer, Skaife still claimed pole position having got around Amaroo Park faster than any Group A car had gone before.

The speed of the GT-R was an old story by this point, but it was still sobering to watch it happen in real time. At the start, Skaife blasted away from the line and simply left the rest behind, setting a blistering pace around the tight Sydney autodrome. By the second lap he was 2 seconds clear of the next car (Tony Longhurst in the M3), so we may be grateful that Bond, Finnigan and Gibbs made the first heat worth watching with a brilliant little dice for 3rd. All the same, Skaife took the flag with a 16.3-second gap back to Longhurst, having pulled out better than 1.5 seconds per lap (and reduced the lap record to 51.16 seconds along the way).

Heat 2 looked like being a case of second verse, same as the first. Skaife once again had, "A lead of three seconds in the first five seconds!" in Neil Crompton's words, but this time he was unable to extend it any futher. Longhurst drove his heart out to stay within 1.7 seconds of Skaife, in 2nd, while Gibbs and Finnigan resumed their proto-V8 duel. The point of difference was that Heat 2 didn’t really feature Bondy, who received a love tap from Gibbs off the line that ruined his start. In his recovery drive, Bond had to fight his way past Bob Pearson in his #33 Pro-Duct Commodore, and by a stroke of luck, Channel Seven were taking feed from Bond's exterior RaceCam when he was exiting Stop Corner and caught Pearson lighting it up, getting sideways and tapping the wall!

Skaife, however, lost the race when his Nissan sickened with a misfire on lap 4, leaving Longhurst free to win as he pleased. "I could have got out and run alongside, it was going so slow," Skaife moaned, and he wasn't wrong. The car made it back to the pits and retired, a surprising development when the GT-R was supposed to be reliable by now. My guess? The race was only intended as a money-maker for the Gibson team, so the car had been put together with spare parts left lying around the workshop. If that was the case, it would not be something the Longhurst team could count on when they returned for the shared ATCC round in June...

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.