7 June: Wild Wild West

The ATCC's traditional swing west was both business as usual and a complete break from tradition. For the South Australian round at Mallala, the Nissan team exhibited their traditional crushing dominance... only we didn't see it, because it was never televised. Wanneroo, on the other hand, gave us some good telly with hard racing and juicy commentary, but it happened just as the series leader started finding ways to stumble. Mark Skaife had been mighty impressive so far, but he was still young after all, and there were no guarantees in this business – especially if you made a habit of fumbling it.

La Lacuna Mallala
On the shelf behind me, living rent-free, I have the officially-licensed book Dick Johnson Racing: 30 Year Anniversary, which states unambiguously that the Mallala round received no live TV coverage because it overlapped with the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. This is flat-out wrong. Mallala took place on 31 May, whereas the Olympics didn't begin until 25 July, carrying on until the closing ceremony on 9 August. I'd love to make some disparaging remarks about the quality of Scott Publishing & Media's research, except I didn't notice either, until an ad for the upcoming Olympics appeared in the Wanneroo video below! A pity, because I had jokes written about how Barcelona not only took away our touring car broadcast but also made a star of Santiago Calatrava.

So the city fathers of Barcelona might have a lot to answer for, but we can't pin this one on them: Mallala avoided broadcast for some other reason. Channel Seven did send a film crew, and the usual highlight reel appeared on Sportsworld a week later, but this too has failed to appear in my YouTube searches. Thankfully, it sounds like we aren't missing much. Mark Skaife won the event for the second year in a row, apparently without much trouble, as one report noted that Mallala and Godzilla were virtually made for each other:

The venue could have been designed specifically with the GT-R in mind: some long straights preceded and followed by some slow, awkward corners, with plenty of low-speed turns in between.

The only material outcome of the round was, with Richards finishing only 9th, Skaife had a chance to clinch the championship in Western Australia, where he'd taken his first win twelve months earlier.

Kids These Days
1992 was a strange new world for Jim Richards; being overshadowed by a teammate was not a thing that had ever really happened to him before. The only other time he'd had a proper teammate (in the latter days of JPS Team BMW) there'd been a very firm pecking order: Tony Longhurst had been the team's junior driver, the apprentice, and he'd known it to his bones; Frank Gardner would not have tolerated him had it been otherwise. In fact, the only time in Jim's entire career he'd been less than a team's number-one had been while co-driving for Peter Brock, back in the halcyon days of the Holden Dealer Team. Even that was a questionable comparison, as he hadn't been a teammate to Brock so much as a ring-in, a hired gun brought in just for the endurance rounds... and when they reunited in 1988, Richo quietly put him in the shade anyway. Jim had ended that year's ATCC fourth overall with 58 points, despite missing one round at Symmons Plains; Peter, who'd owned the team and entered himself in every single round, finished the series only sixth, with 47.

But Skaife was a different matter. It's not like Jim hadn't realised what he was in for – he'd found out how good this youngster was literally on day one, when he took his first test in a Nissan and realised that, although Mark had only been warming up the car, he actually had to stretch himself to match his times. Jim Richards was was an experienced driver at the peak of his powers, yet here was this Skaife, 21 years of age, with plenty of learning and improving still to do, and already he was this good? Sure, there was an ongoing bromance between them, but don't let that fool you: at their core, these were still two hyper-competitive individuals, and both of them knew the first person they had to beat was their teammate. Just because it lacked the bitterness of Senna-vs-Prost doesn't mean it lacked the intensity.

Complicating things, starting this year Wanneroo Park was no longer Wanneroo Park. Some extra tarmac had been laid down to create a secondary, shorter ciruit for the lesser series, and the whole complex had been renamed Barbagallo Raceway after the doyen of the WA motorsport scene, Alf Barbagallo. Barbagallo's services to local racing barely needed to be spelled out: the man himself was back on the grid, after a gap year in '91, driving a sleek new VN Commodore in the sinister black of his new sponsor, Castrol. This was chassis PE 015, the latest in a fast-growing list of Perkins Commodores, either because Larry had been cut off from Peter Brock's Mobil money and forced to build customer cars to make ends meet, or the growing pile of customer orders (and their deposits) gave Larry the latitude to quit Brock and strike out on his own. PE 015 was destined to become part of the early generation of 5.0-litre V8 touring cars, but it was far from the only Barbagallo car on the track that weekend.

Alf's new car in Adelaide, later in the year.

In truth, both the Barbagallo team's old VL Walkinshaws had been entered in the race. One of them, still in its all-over pink livery, was in the hands of Phil Johnson (no relation to Dick), who seems to've been a Victoria-based Sprintcar racer but who'd also made an appearance in the Bathurst 12 Hour in a V6 Commodore. The other was in the hands of Ian Love, and it stood out thanks to a black chin-piece that distinguished it from its sibling. The black in its colour scheme and the racing #66 suggested it had been Barbagallo's own #96 back in 1990; the former #77 supposedly ended its days in a landfill somewhere, but Phil Johnson's presence suggested that hadn't happened yet. Also, the Channel Seven broadcast listed Love's entry as, "the Coca-Cola Commodore", but they must have misheard: it was actually Coco's Bar & Restaurant, a swanky waterfront eatery on the south bank of the Swan!

Completing the quartet of Westralian entrants was privateer Mike Steele, but he was rather less fortunate than the Barbagallo trio. Steele's mount was an ex-Peter Brock Sierra, chassis BRT S1, the very car that had brought Peter his final Bathurst pole in 1989. Steele had purchased the car when Peter switched back to Holden at the start of 1991, and here in 1992 it was still in its base Mobil livery, which would've been obvious had it only made it to the race proper. Instead, Steele had withdrawn it after the Cosworth engine split a bore in practice, but he would continue to race it in WA events until 1994, and assuming my information is up to date, he still owns the car today.

That was as close as any Brock representation got to this weekend, however, as Peter and his Advantage Racing team stayed home, disappointing a legion of fans who'd come to see him. Again, his outfit was in the depths of financing a new VP Commodore, so they just didn't have the means to make the long trip to Perth to do nothing much.

Qualifying
The inherent understeer of the Nissans was a curse at Wanneroo, so it was no surprise when John Bowe came out swinging to set fastest time in practice, a 57.78 (compared to 59.10 for Johnson last year). Bowe used that as a springboard to victory in the three-lap Dash on Sunday morning, but a surprise second-fastest on both occasions was Seton's hireling Wayne Park, who at long last managed a performance worthy of one of the better seats in the game. Unfortunately for him, it was probably "too little too late", as Seton was already been in talks with someone to replace him. There was a reason Frank Gardner had gone to the trouble of running a third car for Paul Morris, after all...

Heat 1

The first 25-lap heat was the usual story as both Nissans steadily but relentlessly worked their way forward... until it wasn't. Jim fought a stern battle with Seton & Park in the early laps, then Skaife lost two spots to Longhurst & Jones in the latter stages, but the final outcome was that Richards finished further up the field than he'd started, but Skaife? Not so much. 9th to 7th was nothing to write home about, especially when 5th had been on the cards. Worse, his other title rival Bowe ran away and won the heat with ease, fist-pumping as he crossed the line (and rightly so – victory is fleeting and must be enjoyed). Johnson kept it on the island to take a deserving 2nd, but he kept his feet firmly on the ground:

Mike Raymond: What a day, so far? 1-2 pal!

Dick Johnson: Yeah, so far, Mike. So far.

Raymond: How do the tyres feel?

Johnson: Well, they're getting a little bit greasy but I'm trying to look after them enough so I've got enough for the next race too.

Always that concern about tyre life. Lurking in the shadows also was Jim Richards, and although he'd finished a good ten seconds behind Bowe, 3rd place was still 3rd place. With Skaife completing a tough run to bring it home only 7th, the odds abruptly swung away from the central coast wunderkind and towards a last-ditch comeback from either of his main title rivals. As always, Heat 2 would be the crucible.

As Allan Moffat was about to point out, however, the difference between the Winfield Nissans in Heat 1 and Heat 2 was night and day: they'd been mysteriously short on pace in the first heat, but they were about to get it back. The clue was in a comment Fred Gibson made to Australian Muscle Car not too long ago, which I found buried in my research notes. Simply, in the down time between the heats, Freddo had his mechanics pop the bonnets and swap out a couple of EPROM chips.

[The GT-R programme] was the pinnacle of what we've ever done. The pinnacle in terms of the drivers, team, engineers and budget; also the enjoyment we all had.

The car was dominant. It wasn't easy. It was a hard car to build and drive. It was heavy. It had Larry blueing the whole time saying the car should be restricted, but we ran them to the rules we had. I suppose, looking back, I fiddled with things a bit, depending on how the races were going to go. I knew racing was becoming entertainment then. You couldn't have cars blazing off into the distance, so I just adjusted the boost accordingly. – Fred Gibson, AMC: Muscle Racers, Vol.1

The Gibson team had to walk a very fine line. Their job was to win the championship, after all, but if they showed everything the car had to give, CAMS would come roaring back with a mallet to impose yet more parity adjustments – once burned, twice shy. Since the car was already heavy enough to crack its wheel rims, the logical next thing would be to lower those pesky pop-off valves, and since the team had worked feverishly (but very quietly) to re-tune the engine around them, voiding all that hard work at this late stage didn't bear thinking about. Throwing the other drivers a bone occasionally was the only logical choice, but after Heat 1, Gibson decided they'd had their fun: there was a title on the line. It was time to get the cane out of the cupboard.

Heat 2
Everyone knew the Nissans would be off the line like a slingshot, but would that be enough to overthrow the all-DJR front row? As it turned out, almost! When the go code was given, Johnson got bogged down in wheelspin and forced Richards to weave around him, the obese GT-R forced to make two lurching changes of direction in as many seconds. But by the time they hit the braking zone for Turn 1, Richards was up on Bowe and ready to make a fight out of it, so the manoeuvre had worked. With Skaife also starting like a lightning bolt, that made the top four Nissan-Ford, Nissan-Ford.

With the title visibly slipping from his grasp, Skaife was once again beautifully aggressive, throwing that Nissan at the corners just enough to point it in the right direction for the exit. By such means he was able to keep his nose right up to Dick, and dive bomb him into Turn 6 to lay claim to 3rd place, so now the pressure was on for Jim Richards. In front of him was the man he needed to unseat to take a race win; behind, his teammate and main title rival. Passing the one while keeping the other behind would be a huge undertaking, even with 22 laps in hand.

By lap 6 both Nissans were lapping in formation but once again Bowe was off and gone, as neither GT-R had the answer to his speed at this stage. The gap was a heathy 2.91 seconds by lap 7, but as always the question was whether he was asking too much too soon from a finite set of Dunlops. It seemed that question occurred to Bowe as well, as by lap 11 the gap had stabilised at around 3 seconds, as he backed off to preserve his pace.

Indeed, by lap 17 Bowe's lead had been shaved to 2 seconds. Were his Dunlops finally hitting their limits? The clue was to watch the other Shell Sierra of Dick Johnson, which was currently in a battle with Tony Longhurst. Tony had provided the entertainment for this race, boxing with Glenn Seton and drawing plenty of smoke from one of Seto's tyres after a love tap bent the blue Sierra's wheel arch. But even so, Longhurst was only a sideshow... until he caught everyone by surprise by dive-bombing Johnson into Turn 1 to take 4th place.

That made it official: Johnson's tyres were finished, and the body language showed he had to get the car very straight before he could unleash the full 600 available horses. Bowe had a rather more deft touch than Johnson this year, but even so his own tyres couldn't have been far behind: Johnson was now driving on ice.

By lap 19 Bowe's lead was now only 1.5 seconds, and it was about to go back to nothing. In his new VN Commodore, Alf Barbagallo was a lap down and couldn't make that wide-body Holden disappear to let the leaders through. Bowe got held up, and that 1.5-second gap evaporated in an instant as Richards closed right up on his tail. And if Richards got past Bowe, that would throw enough points his way that he'd take the round overall. No pressure...

On lap 22, the eleventh hour, Mark Skaife had a surprise lose on the front straight, just after the pit entry. An awkward three-point turn later and he'd brought the car into pit lane, so something had gone catastrophically wrong – two somethings, actually. Firstly, whatever mechanical issue had sent him to the pits in the first place, and secondly, the late-braking lock-up that had caused him to spin. With a lap to go Skaife was still in the pits with mechanics swarming over his car – one of the GIO lads was even good enough to come running and park a fan in front of the radiator. They focused on changing tyres, so it seems likely he'd just picked up a puncture – a devastating blow to his title hopes at this late hour.  By the time he was released again he was dead last, having been passed by the whole field. Shockingly, it looked like there would be no points today for young Mark!

Lap 23: By lap 23 Dick Johnson was driving a Formula Drift car, and the people stuck behind him (namely Seton, Gibbs and Morris) were getting very fed up. With two laps to go, Seton bit the bullet and went for it, sticking a nose inside Dick under power out of the first turn. But Dick was still wobbling, waiting for his rears to bite, and that was enough for him to swing into the side of Seton and triggering a total loss of control. Dick flew off the circuit and landed backwards in the dust just outside the Esses, while Seton likewise wobbled but caught it and carried on. Gibbs and Morris pulled their heads in and kept driving, accepting this gift at Johnson's expense.

Richards meanwhile was still hunting down Bowe, but he seemed unable to make any headway. He gave a hint of a dive-bomb into Turn 6 but he was too far back; Bowe drifted beautifully out of the turn in response, showing that his even if his tyres were going marshmallowy, his driving was still razor-sharp.

Last lap! Bowe got wide out of Turn 1 and Richards pounced, sticking his nose up the inside in a carbon copy of Seton's move on Johnson. Likewise they touched, but this time the outcome was different. Richo's nose unseated the rear of Bowe's Sierra and sent him across the kerbing, but Bowe gathered it up and carried on; Richards followed him through the dirt and just barely missed a stack of tyres. Up to the spoon-like Turn 6, Richards sent it in deep before he rotated, ready to capitalise on the GT-R's astonishing corner exits. Up and over the hill he was once again nosing alongside Bowe, but Bowe was only being patient, waiting for his car to straighten up before he unleashed the full power of the DJR-tuned Cosworth. Over the crest of the hill Richo had to sit helpless as his prey neatly extricated itself from his trap, leaving only one more corner to get it done.

Richards was a long way back as they entered Turn 7 but Bowe's tyres were dead, and the GT-R was at its finest putting power down. As they stormed up to the line they were door-to-door, but in one last surge of turbo horsepower Bowe's Sierra stretched its legs and carried him across the line to take a thrilling victory!

In the final acounting, Bowe won the round of course, with Richards second and Skaife – to his chagrin – only eighth, thanks to a bruising combination of 7th and 11th on the track. The only saving grace was that it had happened at a race so under-subscribed even last place was dishing out some reasonable points, and those 14 extra points for eighth had now moved Skaife beyond the reach of anyone but his teammate. With 204 points for Skaife to Jim's 188, Longhurst's 165 and Bowe's ignoble 162, that meant, ironically, Bowe's perfect performance had actually eliminated him from the title fight! From here on, it was only a question of which Nissan driver would take the championship, and Skaife had to make the trip home in the knowledge that if he had this sort of weekend at Oran Park, he would lose the 1992 Shell Australian Touring Car Championship. Jim Richards would simply not let him have it without a fight.

24 May: Slash 'n' Burn in Sydney

If Mark Skaife didn't have enough on his plate contesting the Australian Touring Car Championship and Australian Drivers Championship simultaneously, how hectic did things get when Fred Gibson decided to tackle the AMSCAR series as well? Skaife had already won the opening round of the series, shared with the ATCC proper, but 10 May saw the first dedicated AMSCAR meeting for the year, and Skaife was on a mission to make this one his own as well.

Long March: the AMSCAR Side Hustle
Given Gibson Motorsport was a Melbourne- rather than Sydney-based team, one suspects this AMSCAR campaign was once again largely a money-making exercise, the lucrative prize money a necessity to keep their expensive GT-Rs running. Of course, all that money disappearing into Fred Gibson's hungry maw was sure to hasten the series' demise, and the evidence for that was already visible.

With just eight – count 'em, eight – entries for the second round, it was one of the thinnest touring car grids in local history. There were the Nissan drivers, Skaife and Jim Richards; the BMWs of Tony Longhurst and Paul Morris (notably, no Alan Jones); the Caltex Sierra of Colin Bond; and the Lansvale, Pro-Duct and GIO Commodores of Trevor Ashby, Bob Pearson and Mark Gibbs, respectively. The Bob Forbes Racing team had once again left their GT-R at home, as Bob was busy sourcing some wheels strong enough to stand up to the Nissan's latest weight increase without cracking.

Indeed, with the latest round of weight penalties to think about, there was no guarantee the GT-R would still be competitive at Amaroo Park. When the flag dropped, however, Skaife shot off into the lead and by lap 5 (of 10), he was 4.6 seconds up the road. Richards slotted into 2nd, where he acted as tail-gunner for the remainder of the race. Within a few laps Richo found himself passed by Longhurst and then Ashby, but in a red-hot battle he managed to get it back, and from there the foursome of Richards, Ashby, Longhurst and Bond boxed each other's ears all the way to the flag in a fabulous display of controlled aggression. They provided the entertainment, but it all left Skaife free to win at a canter, so Heat 1 was won purely on the strength of the Nissan's 4WD starts.

The second race later in the day started with a reversed grid for the first five cars, meaning Longhurst and Bond shared the front row. It didn't matter. Once again, the Nissans simply flicked on the indicators, pulled out and drove around them, resuming their customary places in 1st and 2nd. Tony did what he could in yet another intense pack race, but this time it was Skaife who held him off to secure 2nd place and leave Richards to secure yet another win for Nissan.

Ostfront: Battleshock at Eastern Creek
Eastern Creek had come a long way in only a few short years. From the opening enduro in 1990, to poaching the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix from Phillip Island (though that would only last a couple of years), to this year's Winfield Triple Crown extravaganza, it was clear the new Sydney venue was out to make waves. It was also out to make money, for as an FIA-compliant venue, they'd also made themselves available for off-season testing, which famously led to Turn 1 breaking Andy Wallace's rib while testing a Toyota TS010 in February.

But the circuit really arrived now, in May, when the Creek finally hosted its first Australian Touring Car Championship round. Everything else was just a fun distraction: it was the ATCC that was a circuit's bread and butter.

There were twenty-two entries: On top of everyone who'd been there for AMSCAR, we got the Shell Sierras of Dick Johnson and John Bowe, and the matching Peter Jackson machines of Wayne Park and Glenn Seton, winner of the Triple Crown back in January. Alan Jones graced the venue with his presence in his familiar Benson & Hedges BMW, while Bob Forbes had finally managed to find some wheels strong enough to stand up to the increased bulk of the Nissan GT-R, so his driver Mark Gibbs had returned to his customary seat in the Skyline. That left the GIO Commodore he'd raced at Lakeside and Amaroo Park free for someone else to drive, so Forbes had given it to Rohan Onslow for the weekend, giving him some seat time as part of the build-up to the all-important enduros later in the year.

It was something of a boom period for the wide-body VN, in fact: Peter Brock was back in his Mobil Commodore, Terry Finnigan had brought along his familiar blue Foodtown machine, and they were both joined by HRT's driver Tomas Mezera, making his third and final appearance in this year's ATCC. In fact, the only VN missing was the second Mobil car of Neil Crompton: according to the commentators, he'd been absent from Lakeside because he was in the U.S. filming some sort of documentary, but the only things on his IMDb page during this era were a few episodes of '90s travel show The Great Outdoors (remember that?). There is a segment on YouTube where Crompo tries out a Sprint Car at Parramatta City Raceway, but the fact he's in GIO overalls indicates it's from 1993, not 1992. Either way, he was present at Eastern Creek but in the red blazer of a Channel Seven commentator rather than his Mobil fire suit, which pointed to the other explanation that was doing the rounds: the Brock team was simply running out of spare parts.

As for the older Walkinshaw Commodore, Larry Perkins had made the trip in his red Castrol-backed machine, and he was joined by a number of other privateers including Bob Jones (the white 2UW-sponsored #12), John English (not to be confused with the smoky-eyed singer of the 1970s, in the black Dru-Truss/Marathon Foods #29), and a South Australian debutante named Stuart McColl, in his own Kart Mania #44. Just for variety, the long-suffering Garry Willmington had also brought along his MA70 Supra Turbo, although why he remained committed to that money pit was anyone's guess.

Motor racing can be a harsh game and the casualties started piling up before battle was even formally joined. Tomas Mezera's prime car for the weekend was chassis HRT 027, a car better known as Elvis for all the hits it took. So far in season '92, Mezera had crashed it during a race, then during the Dash before the race, so to complete the sequence he'd have to crash it during qualifying before even making the Dash. And, sure enough...

We raced at Sandown, Lakeside and Eastern Creek and that was it for the touring car championship. It was hard to get going. Just when you felt you were getting there, you didn't get in the car for a while and everything felt foreign again. You couldn't get comfortable. ...

I'd got a good tow down the front straight from Terry Finnigan in qualifying and I thought, "Jeez, this is going to be a good lap." I put a wheel off the road and didn't back off. On the new tyres I stayed on it and then I ended up at the exit of turn two with a stuffed car in the sand! – Tomas Mezera, Holden Racing Team: 20th Anniversary

Elvis had taken another big hit, this one bad enough that it was forced to sit out the races proper. Mezera was forced to rely on the backup car instead, the team's mechanics doing the hard work of swapping the engine and gearbox over to the spare chassis overnight (presumably HRT 026, given 028 was busy being a test mule for the upcoming V8 formula, but there is some confusion over HRT chassis during this period). Adding insult to injury, the crash had also damaged the marked set of tyres he'd nominated for qualifying and the race, meaning he had to fit a different set on Sunday morning and so incur the 10-second start-line penalty!

But the long front straight still favoured Sierras, so it was John Bowe who set fastest time in qualifying, a 1:35.21, putting him just barely ahead of Mark Skaife with a 1:35.24. Larry Perkins' love affair with Eastern Creek continued, qualifying third-fastest with a 1:35.41, while Tony Longhurst (1:35.51), Dick Johnson (1:35.47) and Glenn Seton (1:35.77) claimed the remaining spots in the Dash. Colin Bond qualified 10th with a 1:36.19, showing that the grid had been closed right up by the latest round of rebalancing.

For once the random draw of the Peter Jackson Dash favoured Dick Johnson, with the two Shell cars shaking out to be first and second for the races proper, with Johnson claiming pole and with it a very welcome cheque. "After Lakeside when we had provisional pole and then drew 6th, I thought it was our turn this weekend," said a satisfied Johnson, although with Mark Skaife shuffled back only one row, to 4th, he knew he'd have a fight on his hands in the not-too-distant future.

Nobody was surprised when his 4WD traction rocketed Skaife off the line and straight between the Shell Sierras at the start, but it was a surprise when he started seeing a counter-attack as early as lap 2. The Nissan might've had a traction advantage, but it still weighed 1,600 kilos, and all that mass had to be braked, rotated and accelerated again at every corner, and Skaife knew he dare not burn up his tyres too soon. So around the first lap Skaife had led, but that was as good as his day got, as down the long straight Bowe got a good slipstream to take 2nd place off Dick Johnson, and it was only a question of how many laps it would take for him to get to grips with the leader. The answer turned out to be "not many", but exactly how many was lost, apparently, to one of Channel Seven's lovely ad breaks!

So Bowe was now the race leader, which was good for the Dick Johnson team, but Dick's cursed season soon came back with a vengeance. Larry Perkins tried to dive-bomb Johnson into Turn 2 and screwed it up, losing the back end of his Walkinshaw in a massive spin. Johnson's in-car camera abruptly swung left to show Larry's rear spoiler right alongside and going backwards! Dick was forced onto the grass to avoid him and even that wasn't enough, the Shell Sierra copping a big hit that shattered its left-side windows! Although Larry kept his Holden out of the kitty litter, he was left sitting on the outside of the turn while the whole world filed past, dropping him back to 14th.

Skaife kept in touch with Bowe into the middle of the race, but it soon emerged Bowe wasn't the only driver on the move today. Tony Longhurst ran Skaife down over successive laps and finally ducked under him at Turn 2, moving him up to 2nd – the weight on that GT-R had reached crisis point. Once clear, Tony pulled a nice gap as well, and a when he finally reeled in John Bowe a handful of laps later, then it would really be on. In the meantime, Brock, Alan Jones, Johnson, Colin Bond, Paul Morris and Wayne Park made a great little pack as they disputed positions 6th through 11th. At least part of that was settled when Morris drove into the back of Bond at Turn 7, putting them both off the track, though neither permanently, and then Johnson had a spin for unknown reasons (possibly just dead Dunlops) and eventually limped home 11th. All of them were still better off than Garry Willmington, however, whose Supra ended its race bathed in fire-fighting foam, having gone up like a summer bushfire in the mountains. The engine had blown up under acceleration on the front straight, but exactly what had gone wrong in that over-stressed engine, we never found out.

At the front, Longhurst once again drove his BMW for all it was worth, poking his nose in here, getting a bonnet alongside there, but it was no good. Bowe held his nerve and drove to the finish to secure the win in Heat 1, while Longhurst showed he'd learned his lesson by driving it home 2nd, cleanly. They hadn't so much as nudged each other this time! The gap at the line was nearly a full second, but that wasn't representative of the real margin as the 600hp Sierra had such incredible acceleration once it got a head of steam; around most of the circuit, they'd been virtually nose-to-tail. In 3rd place, some seven seconds behind, was a very disciplined Mark Skaife, followed by his teammate Jim Richards and then Mark Gibbs – a Nissan 3-4-5, and a bunch of cars that was sure to make trouble once we tried to get off the line for Heat 2...

Indeed, the staggered two-by-two grid meant despite starting from the second row, both Winfield Nissans basically had clear air ahead of them for the start of Heat 2. Understandably, then, they were 1st and 2nd by the time they arrived in the first corner, and only a remarkable start from John Bowe kept Mark Gibbs from making it a 1-2-3.

Dick's miserable weekend continued when a love tap from Tomas Mezera at Turn 4 tipped him into a spin, dropping him back to last place. He made lemonade by taking a pit stop for new tyres (apparently one of them had picked up a nick anyway) and was rising back up through the ranks when a split bore left him to finish only 13th. Some days it was almost better not to try.

Skaife's driving today was beautiful to behold, as he threw that Nissan into every turn just hard enough that it was magically pointing in the right direction when it came time to stomp on the power button. The problem was, he had to be on form, because John Bowe had the bit between his teeth and was right on his tail for the second time today. These two heralds of the new generation – both, incidentally, now Australian open-wheel champions as well – put in a superb display of car control as they left the rest behind. Skaife knew if he could just keep Bowe behind for a few laps, the Sierra would burn up its tyres and then the race would fall into his lap. If Bowe could pass him and gain the clean air, however, it would be all over. The Nissan would never catch the Sierra after that, so the pressure was on.

Case in point, the other standard-bearer of the coming generation, Glenn Seton, had slid into an early 3rd place in his blue Sierra, but the Bridgestones it was riding on were starting to suffer, and the slight drift the Sierra always gave as the turbo spooled up was becoming bigger and bigger. That was all Tony Longhurst needed, and once again the little yellow BMW did its thing and passed a Sierra in the middle of the corner. So it was now Skaife leading, Bowe chasing and Longhurst on the move in 3rd.

A handful of laps in, Skaife finally made a mistake: with the grip running low he got wide exiting onto the front straight and put two wheels through the dust at the side of the track. The sudden loss of grip forced him to lift, and that compromised his entire run down the straight. Bowe didn't need two opportunities like that: he lined up the Nissan and drove by it at his leisure, taking the lead before the start/finish line. Skaife wrung the neck of that GT-R a bit longer but soon most of his attention was in his mirrors as Tony Longhurst once again caught up to one of the bigger cars and started making a nuisance of himself.

Dying tyres meant, incredibly, the BMW David did indeed find its way past the Nissan Goliath before the end, but dealing with Bowe was another matter entirely. For that, Tony had to place his hopes on lapped traffic getting in the way: Larry Perkins pulled his red Walkinshaw out of the way, then John English did the same with his black Walkinshaw, no help there. The blue-and-white Bob Jones Walkinshaw let Skaife by, but trapped Tony behind him for Turn 3; he had to wait until Turn 4 for his chance. It was tense stuff.

At the finish they were virtually line astern, proof if it were needed that the rules were actually very balanced now... at least over the full distance. But in the end, it was Bowe's heat, and therefore Bowe's round as well: he crossed the finish line beneath a flying chequered to score his second round win of the year. He'd set fastest time in qualifying and then swept both heats, so only an unlucky draw for the three-lap Dash had kept the weekend from being a complete redwash.

Neil Crompton: The touring cars putting on a fine show for us – Nissan, BMW, Ford Sierra. The man who finished 3rd today, Tony Longhurst. Congratulations, that was one heck of a drive, it was great entertainment.

Tony Longhurst: She's hard work, I tell ya, I was right on the limit the whole time. I must admit, this Nissan's a remarkable car. You think you've got it, and [it just] inches away.

Crompton: We mentioned quite a number of times in the commentary [that] it must be so frustrating to be constantly baulked by the big cars, because you're fast where they're slow, and it's the opposite in other occasions?

Longhurst: I've never experienced such a thrill as going through that corner at the end of the main straight. The speed difference, we must have twenty or thirty kays in the corner. It really is frustrating, you just feel like going bang and giving the guys a clout, but... I've learned about that!

Crompton: Well done Tony, 3rd today, good luck next week. 2nd place today Mark Skaife, congratulations, another fine drive. I guess a win was the perfect world, but you keep your points championship thing alive?

Mark Skaife: No, that was a good result for us today. Obviously, to keep Tony away, 'cos he's starting to catch us. And to keep Bowey behind was a drama, I can tell you!

Crompton: I bet it was! And the winner today, John Bowe. Congratulations, that was a fabulous performance from your Shell team and of course a great drive from you, you must be pleased?

John Bowe: I am, Neil. It's great for the team, they've worked incredibly hard this year and Dunlop have done an enormous amount of work on the tyres and obviously it showed today.

Bowe's win lifted him back up to 5th place on the championship table, with 111 points for the year. Longhurst was slightly ahead with 114, with Seton still third on 123, but all of them were still firmly behind the two Nissan teammates, Richards on 147 and Skaife leading on 160. He might not have extended his championship lead as much as he would've liked, but young Mark could at least console himself that he'd taken another win in the accompanying Formula Holden race, which took his score for the year to an impressive 70. With nearest rival Mark Larkham on 54 points and a maximum of 20 still available for a win, that set the pair up for a decider in the final round at Oran Park a month hence. The bad news was, the month between then and now would see the Winfield team following the ATCC across the Nullarbor to Adelaide and Perth, leaving precious little time for preparation and testing. Whether he was in a car with fenders or without, Mark Skaife's championship bids were looking like going right down to the wire.

 

3 May: Perfectly Balanced

As the championship reached middle age the talk at the bar was all about the things we least wanted to discuss – words like "parity" and "sandbagging" were flying back and forth. Despite the best efforts of CAMS, the Nissan drivers were still dominating the top of the ladder, and coming up was a round that was sure to favour Godzilla even more...

4 April: That Winton Feeling
That Godzilla would return to the winner's circle when the series regrouped for Round 4 at Winton Motor Raceway had been accepted as a grim inevitability by the touring car circus, and Fred Gibson didn't let them down. His driver Jim Richards proved fastest in qualifying proper with a 1:00.70, three-tenths quicker than the Sierras of Glenn Seton and John Bowe (who set identical times) and the returning Walkinshaw Commodore of Larry Perkins. But it was Mark Skaife who won the Peter Jackson Dash on Sunday morning, and so laid claim to pole position for Heat 1. The hapless Richards was not only beaten off the line, he then fell into a scrap with Seton, which cost him time and left him starting only 3rd.

Andy Raymond: And the domination has started already. It's a Nissan trademark, Skaife?

Mark Skaife: Oh it is, Andy. The four-wheel drive car around here is a big advantage, and even though it was only a three-lap race, it stands us in good stead for the next one.

Raymond: The BMWs you said are going to be even more competitive than the Sierras?

Skaife: I think towards the end of the second race they'll be very very hard to beat. The tyre they chose is a very hard tyre, they'll be good in the second heat for sure.

Richo's misfortune in the Dash, however, was undone the instant the green flag flew. The blue Sierra squirmed and fishtailed off the line, leaving the GT-R free to zip by and assume 2nd place, while up front Skaife opened up a couple of car lengths in a flash and faultlessly led the opening laps. Whatever had been wrong with the Nissan team's engines at Symmons had been cured; they were revving free once again, giving the drivers adequate power to play with.

Or at least, the factory cars did. Whether because they hadn't got the same updates as Gibson's own drivers, or just because he wasn't as comfortable with the GT-R as Richards and Skaife, the GIO Nissan of Mark Gibbs hadn't qualified especially well and spent the early laps trying to claw back some places. He took to the grass to get by the slow starters off the line, and although his move on Peter Brock was as clean as could be, when he tried sticking his nose up the inside of Dick Johnson, he realised too late that he was driving into a disappearing wedge. When he jumped on the brakes to back out of it he locked up and spun, dropping him about four places in a heartbeat.

By lap 9 it got more complicated as the yellow BMWs started making their presence felt. Having worn down Brocky in the early laps, Tony Longhurst tried a banzai move up the inside into Turn 1 and made it stick, with teammate Alan Jones following him through, hanging Brocky out to dry. They were fortunate Brock was a professional – as Allan Moffat had pointed out, the Commodore was a much bigger car than the M3, and if they'd made contact there wouldn't have been much of the little BMW left!

Having dispatched Brock, the BMW twins swiftly caught up to the next car in line, Dick Johnson's Sierra. The lapped Walky of Bob Jones couldn't provide enough of a disruption to give Longhurst an opening, but when Johnson came in slightly too hot in the final corner, that was enough. Longhurst again dived up the inside into the first turn, but this time Alan couldn't follow him through, as Dick expertly read the situation and slotted back into line between them. Jones had to wait until Turn 6 before he got his as well.

Then on lap 18, Neil Crompton returned to the pits with an engine problem. Although the mechanics tried to fix it, ultimately it proved fatal and netted Crompo a DNF.

Andy Raymond: He was in such a battle. Neil, what has gone wrong with the Commodore?

Neil Crompton: No idea really, AJ. That last lap around, all of a sudden the thing just had a giant misfire, and suddenly it was running on five [cylinders], something like that. The boys can't find the problem quickly and easily, so we have to put it away. It's a little disappointing.

At least he was in good company. A lap later, Colin Bond also crawled into pit lane and parked it, an electrical problem having ended his chances.

In the meantime, Richards had caught up to Skaife and swept by to take the lead into Turn 6. This lasted all of three laps, when Skaife put in a move of his own and got the place back, thankfully without undue resistance from Richards. In the commentary box, Mike Raymond speculated they were showboating to keep the crowd from getting bored, and guessed that Gibson Motorsport was already rallying behind Skaife to win this year's championship. Although it's possible the duel was real and Skaife both lost and regained the lead on merit, in the end it was all academic: the Nissans led all 25 laps to clinch an easy victory, Skaife ahead of Richards, with a solid 3rd from Seton and an impressive 4th for Larry Perkins.

Tony Longhurst had put in a solid drive in Heat 1, rising from 8th to 6th at a time when everyone's tyres were still fresh, but in the closing laps he'd finally come upon something he couldn't deal with: the #18 Sierra of John Bowe. Bowe had been quite firm about keeping Tony behind him, and the pressure wasn't likely to fade in the second heat, as the Sierra ate its tyres and Tony got ever more frustrated. 25 more laps would tell the tale.

There was a long hold on the line before the green for Heat 2, and several peoples's nerves couldn't take that. Bowe took to the grass to get around (yet again) a slow-starting Seton, while ahead the peloton piled into the first turn four-wide. Winton was a narrow track, so something had to give, and that something turned out to be Dick Johnson, who ended up on the far side of Turn 1 in a cloud of dust, having been turned around the wrong way. A quick replay revealed he'd been T-boned in the door by an over-eager Peter Brock, and Dick was forced to complete the lap by returning to the pits, taking on fresh tyres to replace those that had been flat-spotted in the incident. "They're the sort of things that happen every now and then," sighed a resigned Johnson.

So with Johnson out of the way it was Bowe in 3rd behind the Nissans, with Seton in 4th and Perkins, 5th. Skaife and Richards continued to swap the lead but they had a huge gap back to the two Sierras, so they could afford to play silly buggers for now. Colin Bond also landed in the dirt early, rounding out a fairly indifferent weekend for him.

So the man on the move in this second heat was, of course, Tony Longhurst. The pressure from Tony was enough to crack even a hardened campaigner like Perkins, who lost the tail heading into Turn 6 and was forced into a massive slide. Spectacular, but it cost him two places as the yellow M3s zipped through, and a lap later Seton too failed to nail Turn 6 properly. The Sierra looked very clumsy once the turbo lag and the race groove were no longer in perfect synch, and he slipped to the outside of the turn and kicked up some dust, rejoining behind the equally chastened Larry Perkins.

That left us with a Nissan 1-2, then Bowe 3rd, and then a BMW 4-5, but of course Tony wasn't going to leave it there. Within a couple more laps it was clear Bowe was holding the BMWs up, the Sierra looking ragged and taily as Bowe flung it through the never-ending twists, in defiance of his dying Dunlops. Frustrated, Tony put a crease in his bonnet by ramming Bowe into Turn 8, prompting Bowe to quickly give him the finger on the following straight!

On the closing lap things finally got out of hand, as Tony gave Bowe a bit of "assistance" through Turn 6 and forcefully ended the Ford driver's race in cloud of dust. A bid for a podium finish, Tony pushed hard through Turn 5 and then simply refused to lift when Bowe got in his way, nerfing the red Sierra out of the way and carrying on to the finish line. Bowe ended the weekend, like Johnson before him, facing backwards in the dirt, and although he limped home to record a 9th-place finish (behind Gibbs and Paul Morris), it was far from glorious. Longhurst was slapped with a $5,000 penalty for the manoeuvre but, crucially, he kept his 3rd place.

So Mark Skaife won the heat, and therefore the round, with teammate Richards 2nd on both counts. On the rostrum, the man with the microphone Mark Oastler pointed out that the GT-Rs had done it easily this weekend, but Skaife refused to be drawn. "Well, they're a very good car and this sort of circuit suits them," was all he would say, which was true as far as it went. But with the GT-Rs looking like regaining their old form, there was already talk of things happening in the back offices of CAMS.

19 April: Production Values
In the month-long break between Winton and Lakeside came the second running of the James Hardie 12 Hour, the new production car enduro at Mount Panorama. This was the one where Allan Grice famously entered a VP Holden Ute (it wasn't called a Commodore yet), with co-driving from Thunderdome hero Brad Jones and his own "search for a star" winner, John Spencer.

Source

According to Gricey, the project was cooked up (where else?) at the pub, with finance by his good friends at Akubra Felt Hats.

I always wore a hat by choice and at some stage I started wearing an Akubra, which was particularly appropriate when I was racing overseas. I used to drive through Kempsey [in northern NSW], which is where Akubras are made, and one day I decided to stop in and put the hard word on them. I got to see the guy who looked after their advertising and marketing, and he recognised me. He said, "Oh, yeah, I've seen photos of you all over the place wearing one of our hats – how many would you like?" That was the beginning of it all. And then some dollars became involved... – Allan Grice, Auto Action #1795

The ute itself was an SS provided by Holden, and with its impressive power-to-weight ratio and reliable V8 engine, on paper it should've been a real contender.

That was a lot of fun. The ute was a really quick thing and with some more development could have done some real damage. It was light. Understeered like a pig, but you just adapted your style to compensate. You'd push it into the corner and hit the curb to get the tail out, and off you'd go. You'd think it would have been taily because of the lack of weight over the rear, but it was like a lead-tipped arrow. It only had little tyres on the front holding up a bloody big V8 and nothing down the back. – Allan Grice, Auto Action #1795

He wasn't the only touring car star taking part. Sydney prestige car dealer Ken Mathews had entered a turbocharged Saab 9000 CSS, and had roped in his former teammate Colin Bond to share the driving. When asked who the third driver should be, Bondy recommended the man who'd given him a ride in the Eastern Creek 500 two years earlier – Glenn Seton. Garry Rogers had also cooked up a deal to run a Subaru Liberty RS, with help from WA businessman Alf Barbagallo, and rally legend Possum Bourne. And no-one less than Peter Brock had teamed up with protégé Neil Crompton and journalist Paul Gover to drive, of all things, a Peugeot 405 Mi16, entered by the local Peugeot franchise!

Dick Johnson had joined brothers Brett and Kent Youlden in a Ford Laser TX3 Turbo, a rebadged Mazda 323 with turbo power and 4WD. The more basic Laser was being assembled at Ford's Homebush plant in Sydney, only a stone's throw from the future site of the Year 2000 Olympics, as a budget hatchback aimed at the cost-conscious urban motorist. Ford's version of the car had always sold better than Mazda's own, but the operation only had a couple of years left to run, as the plant would close for good in 1994. The more tricked-out TX3 model was fully imported, and although only 117 kW from its turbocharged 1.8-litre engine sounded rather feeble, with only 1,180kg to haul around performance was actually pretty sprightly, especially once pit strategy became a factor. Johnson had probably been lured by the fact the Youldens had finished 2nd outright in this car the year before.

The car in 1991. (source)

In addition, BMW works pedallers Tony Longhurst and Alan Jones were pairing up in a new BMW M5 – and by "new", I mean new: the car had been driven down to the track from its home in Queensland as part of the factory's recommended 5,000km running-in period. The choice of M5 had been a surprise to many, but the smaller M3 was not sold in Australia, and the M5 gave BMW Australia a chance to flex their corporate muscle in defiance of the Falcodore-centric rules by which Production Car racing was now run. Said BMW Australia managing director Ron Meatchem, in the 12 Hour's official programme:

In the past we've been frustrated by production car rules which prevent us running against the Holdens and Fords. But suddenly the rules have opened up and you can put performance cars in. With this race we can certainly show what the M5 can do.

That they could: the E34 model was end of a dynasty, the last BMW to benefit from the 3.5-litre DOHC straight-six originally developed for the M1 supercar. This was the same engine that had powered Jim Richards' BMW 635 CSi back when it was winning championships, and it also underpinned the four-cylinder unit in the B&H M3s Jones and Longhurst drove for their day job, so it was no surprise that the factory claimed 230 kW at 6,900rpm (and a nice 360 Nm plateau of torque around 4,700). For perspective, that was only 10 kW less than Ford's original XR6 Turbo would go on to produce a decade later, but from 500cc less engine, and with no turbo!

On paper then, this Kavalier's express tuned for the autobahns of Bavaria was capable of winning outright. But although one of the most powerful cars in the field, it was also one of the heaviest, saddled with a whopping 1,670kg kerb weight, so Meatchem wasn't quite popping the champagne yet. It was also the most expensive car on the grid by a mile, with a list price of $155,000, bumped up by lingering industry protection taxes and tariffs. That worked out as nearly $306,000 in 2021 money, but things change: in 1992, that sum would've bought you a house...

So it might've been unproven, heavy and ludicrously expensive, but this "ultimate driving machine" had the benefit of racing in Class C, for cars of 2.5 to 4.0 litres, where its only competition would come from locally-built six-cylinder Falcons and Commodores. The only thing that didn't quite fit the image was the sponsor: at some point Frank Gardner had agreed to Nibble Nobby's Nuts...

As usual, Mark Oastler has a great article over on Shannons Club. Go check it out.

Unfortunately for all of them, the car to be in this year was Mazda's new FD-model RX-7 Turbo, which had only just started to arrive in showrooms around the country (yours for only $73,000 – that's $144,000 today). This was a works effort done on behalf of Mazda Motorsport Australia, and it was masterminded by former Moffat team manager Allan Horsley, a man who'd learned the RX-7 and its foibles the hard way. But where the Moffat Mazdas had always struggled for torque on the steep climbs of the Mountain, the new model solved that problem via sequential twin turbos. So although the 13B-REW Wankel rotary under the bonnet developed only 176 kW, it was sitting in a body that was light, balanced and aerodynamic, meaning it was capable of trap speeds far above what its power figures would suggest. The team had also managed to secure some serious driving talent, putting former Moffat sidekick Gregg Hansford in the #7 alongside the man who'd taken his job at DJR, John Bowe. In the #17, on the other hand, it was to be GIO Nissan driver Mark Gibbs, Queensland wild card Charlie O'Brien, and – crucially – Mazda's 1988 Group E production car champion, Garry Waldon. Zoom zoom, indeed.

Source

Qualifying saw Gricey had complete his lap with a fibreglass blue heeler in the tray (as you do), but these kinds of publicity-stunt entries swiftly fell by the wayside once the real times started coming in. Longhurst clocked the eighth-fastest time to secure a fourth-row start, his 2:45.44 (some reports said 45.22) streets ahead of his nearest class rival, a VP Commodore S with a 2:51.7. The harsh reality, however, was that even the Bavarian beast was a long way behind the polesitting Mazda of Bowe & Hansford, who'd clocked an astonishing 2:36.28, putting them a substantial margin ahead of the John Bourke/John Smith Toyota Supra Turbo that had won the race last year, and a VN Commodore SS Group A driven by Wayne Park (Holden's current homologation car in its roadgoing guise).

In the pre-dawn darkness of Easter Sunday, the blazing headlights of 55 cars were flagged away into the morning mist to begin their 12-hour, 1,500-kilometre odyssey. While the Mazdas led the field away and dominated the early running, the Mathews Saab was an early visitor to the pits, coming in after just a single lap. Glenn Seton had started the race at the wheel and came back complaining that he could hear a "ticking" noise sound coming from the car: it was found that a brake line had been rubbing, so it was just as well he came in. The problem was quickly rectified and the car sent back out, but at the tail of the field, a long way behind.

At the end of the first lap Longhurst was already clear of his closest Class C pursuer. After just 29 laps, he was more than a lap in front, and by 7am, he was 3rd outright behind the two Mazdas. That meant he was in prime position when, later in the morning, both the works Mazdas struck trouble. The O'Brien/Waldon/Gibbs car dropped out of the top twenty before rejoining, while the leading Bowe/Hansford car had a brake calliper jam on before a turbo come off, relegating them to 52nd on the road.

With these pacesetters making unscheduled pit stops, the Longhurst/Jones BMW, the Smith/Bourke Supra and the Wayne Park Holden all took turns in the lead, while the Saab was slowly making its way back up the field. Gricey's ute meanwhile once again proved quick, with Grice noting, "BMW flew a 5 M Series out from Germany at that stage and I really enjoyed passing it down the straight." The whole project had been done late and in a hurry, however, so they ran into unexpected problems with the provided fuel.

What brought it undone was dirty fuel out of the tank at the track – it was contaminated. It only got used twice a year and the fuel would just lie there and be full of crap when the level got low. – Allan Grice, Auto Action #1795

On Speedcafe, he added: "The people who built the fuel tank didn't clean the foam out properly and we continually picked up bits of black foam in the injection system and had to keep stopping."

After five hours, now with a two-lap class lead, the BMW team started to consider their chances of a genuine outright victory. Sadly, the German sedan was soon having brake troubles of its own, demonstrating an insatiable appetite for brake pads: with its tremendous 250km/h top speed, it was hard work to bring such a heavy car to a halt again at the bottom of Conrod, which necessitated time-consuming pad replacements at each stop and, on at least one occasion, replacing the disc rotors as well. "If only we'd had a pad that lasted a bit longer – that was our downfall," lamented Longhurst to Chevron Publishing after the race. "The car had the same terminal speed as the Mazda and you've got to pull it up somehow."

Later still, the BMW also suffered an exhaust problem when one bolt securing the exhaust extractors worked loose. It left the car sounding awful, but made little difference to its lap times, so they carried on. While it was in the pits for yet more brake pads, the Park Holden assumed the lead and held it until he lost a wheel, before one of Park's co-drivers finally buried the car in a sand trap, putting the car out of contention. The Smith/Bourke Toyota then led the race before the #17 Mazda charged back through the field and swooped into a lead that it would never lose. The Supra later went out when it too lost a wheel.

As the race entered its final hours the little Ford Laser TX3 Turbo started to come into contention. The Laser wasn't the fastest car on track, but on average it spent the least time in the pits being refuelled and repaired, and once the Mazdas hit trouble it was suddenly in with a shout of winning. After 11 hours and 230 laps, the Laser was only a lap down on the class leader, and looking good for a strong finish. But then with one hour to go, cruel luck played its hand and a CV joint broke, leaving them non-finishers. No doubt Dick Johnson scowled at the darkening heavens as he padded back to the motorhome.

Over at the Mazda team, however, it was all smiles. Waldon, Gibbs & O'Brien ran out the clock with 254 laps on the scoreboard, three more than the Longhurst/Jones BMW in 2nd, who in turn was a lap clear of the Bond/Seton/Mathews Saab. Bowe & Hansford were 5th, nine laps behind their victorious teammates. After all those years of humiliation at the hands of their V8 Commodore rivals, Mazda had their revenge at Mount Panorama. It was the start of a glorious run of success for Japanese rotary pioneers in the production car epic, but arguably the BMW was the moral winner. Where Mazda had finished only four laps ahead of their nearest class rival, the mighty M5 had finished thirty laps – a distance of 186km! – ahead of the next Class C finisher, the six-cylinder VN Commodore S of Bob Griffin, Trevor Hodge and Peter Taffa. While the rest had been busy with mishaps and mechanical failures, the big 5-Series had barely missed a beat, finishing with only 4,700km on its odometer... still 300km short of the recommended running-in period!

3 May: Lake Superior
Despite all the handicaps CAMS had sent their way, the two Nissan drivers were firmly first and second on the championship ladder after Winton, so from Round 5 they once again found their minimum weights had been lifted – this time, by a whopping 100kg! The Sierras had also copped a 50kg increase, but since that took them only to 1,200 or so they remained in familiar territory. The GT-Rs on the other hand were now up to a beefy 1,500kg, which became more like 1,600 once the drivers and all fluids were on board. Fred Gibson claimed at this point things were actually getting dangerous, as those hollow Castalloy wheels were beginning to crack under the strain, and he advised the Bob Forbes GIO team to leave the GT-R at home and bring their VN Commodore to Lakeside instead.

As a result of these developments neither of the Gibson drivers could break into the top ten in qualifying, pushing the accusations of sandbagging to fever pitch. Dick Johnson took taking provisional pole with a 52.90-second lap. John Bowe (52.97) and Tony Longhurst (53.29) were next-fastest, unsurprising when these were the two teams that used Lakeside for all their testing, but fourth-fastest was Larry Perkins in the VL Walkinshaw with a 53.37, ahead of the Caltex Sierra of Colin Bond (53.58). Sixth-fastest, and therefore making the Dash on Sunday, was a man who hadn't raced since Sandown, Tomas Mezera in the factory HRT Commodore.

Mezera's 53.67-second qualy lap had been very impressive for man so out of practice, but on Sunday morning it all went wrong. Bowe anticipated the rolling start brilliantly and howled into the Kink well in the lead, but behind Mezera came roaring in not realising he was now three-wide with Johnson and Perkins. The road wasn't big enough for all of them, and Johnson's nose gave the Commodore's tail a slight shove and unsettled it. From there it was all over, and Mezera spun into the sand.

Without him, the remaining five continued to lap as if they were tied together, and although Longhurst looked at both sides of Bond on the approach to Hungry Corner, he didn't have the pace to force a move at that stage. So the sharp end of the grid was settled with John Bowe to start from pole, Colin Bond making it an all-Sierra front row, Longhurst and Perkins making an all-atmospheric second row, and then Dick Johnson and the hapless Mezera making up the third.

At the green for Heat 1, Bowe made a good start and Perkins lunged across to cover Tony Longhurst before he could get any ideas; the one slow away was Colin Bond, who was swallowed up by Johnson and Brock before the Karrussell. Mark Gibbs got it wrong in the Kink just as Mezera had earlier in the day, and ended up with his GIO Commodore spinning to a halt on the grass. So through the first lap it was Bowe leading, with Perkins hot on his heels and Tony Longhurst 3rd, then Johnson and Seton, Bond and Brock, and only then the first of the Nissans, Mark Skaife pedalling the obese GT-R for all it was worth.

Johnson hadn't done especially well either in the Dash or off the start, and the opening heat was no gentler, as he was forced head for the pits on lap 2 – flat tyre. He dropped to 23rd, no doubt amid a cloud of expletives no non-Queenslander could understand, and it couldn't have improved his mood when he snapped an axle only eight laps later. Johnson returned to the pits, undid his belts and got out the car with the air of a defeated man.

It's obviously not my day. Yesterday probably was. First of all we had a flat tyre on the warm-up lap, which really screwed things up. And then I get back out there and the thing's going alright and then I broke a halfshaft on the rear.

At least Bowe was still out there flying the flag. The third lap saw Perkins get a nose inside Bowe the Eastern Loop, taking the lead, but it was anyone's guess how long he'd be able to hold it. The trio of Perkins, Bowe and Longhurst were as good as tied together for the next 10 laps, but everybody knew it was far too early for this kind of speed: Larry's tyres had almost two full races ahead of them, and their chances of going the distance at this sort of speed were absolutely nil.

Sure enough, ten laps into the 28-lap heat, Larry's driving started looking ragged as the rear tyres started to give up the ghost. Bowe had wisely elected to wait it out, but behind he had Tony Longhurst working patiently but doggedly on the back of his Sierra, steadily ramping up the pressure as Bowe's tyres wilted. Finally, Longhurst pulled alongside and got a surer launch coming out of the Karrussell, and as they approached the fast right-hander under the Dunlop bridge he didn't let up. On lap 15 the pair zoomed side-by-side under the bridge but, having stepped out of the Sierra's shadow, Tony held his nerve and kept the inside line; it was now his corner to lose, and nothing on the track could out-brake an M3. Done and done: Tony Longhurst emerged from the corner ahead of John Bowe, having taken 2nd place with driving that was brave and determined but, above all, clean.

Two laps later Longhurst had caught up to Perkins, and the Commodore wasn't anything like the challenge Bowe's Sierra had been: calmly, almost casually, Tony out-braked Perkins on the entry to Hungry Corner and assumed the lead. That five-grand fine had sent the right message – Tony had made both passes without so much as nicking the paint.

After that, Longhurst's rivals were only needed to worry about each other. Perkins steadily fell into the clutches of Bowe, and both found gradually found themselves under attack from Mark Skaife in the Nissan, who'd cleared Peter Brock and was making that 4WD tyre life work for him.

With Skaife to think about Bowe got frustrated at being stuck behind Larry, and chose to give the big Commodore a bit of a nudge. It backfired in a big way, as not only did it slow him enough to let Skaife through for the place, it deformed the left-front wheel arch such that the tyre was now rubbing on the rim. 

The smoke was thick and embarrassing, but Bowe elected to power through it and hope the tyre wasn't about to burst, which turned out to be the right call: the tyre held together, and two laps later he tried a repeat of the move on Larry and made it stick.

After that it was virtually open season on Perkins, as Alan Jones, Jim Richards and plenty of others took turns making a meal of him – those Dunlops were well and truly dead, and he still had a whole heat to go. But arguably, he'd made his point – Larry kept the lights on building Commodores for customer teams, and he'd just demonstrated to all and sundry exactly that his cars were the ones you wanted. So what if he wasn't a winner in Group A? It was next year's all-V8 formula that he had his eye on...

In the meantime, Longhurst rounded out the laps to clinch the win, with Mark Skaife 2nd, a smoky Bowe 3rd, Alan Jones 4th and Richards 5th. It had been an expert performance, but the work was only half done. Said a hot and sweaty Tony Longhurst to the TV cameras: "I'm not looking forward to racing the Nissan off the line..."

He wasn't wrong. At the start of Heat 2, Richards zoomed off the line into an immediate lead, followed by John Bowe and only then the three BMW drivers, 3rd, 4th and 5th. The good news was, Richo was the only Nissan here at the sharp end, as Skaife started right at the back. After the first heat, Skaife, Perkins, Terry Finnigan and Bob Jones had all gone to CAMs, hat in hand, to ask if they could replace their ruined tyres from the first heat. CAMS had allowed it, but in the process they were required to start from the back of the grid, plus a ten-second penalty. So there would be two starts to this heat: the first when the green flag flew, and then the second ten seconds later, when the cars in pit lane were released. And once freed, Skaife shot off like a mad dog and rose from 22nd to 16th in just three laps. Another handful of laps and it was 12th, then 11th...

In truth, though, Heat 2 was mostly a replay of Heat 1, except there were fewer cars between Tony Longhurst and his goal. The first third was spent, yet again, stuck behind John Bowe, or following John Bowe at any rate: he wasn't being held up in any obvious way, but he was looking for a way past nevertheless. He needed to clear Bowe at the very least before he could seriously think about clinching the round – Richards was probably too far ahead to catch, but he'd finished only 4th in the first heat, so a victory in the second wouldn't add up to a round win for him.

Approaching half-distance Bowe's tyres started to go off, and Longhurst started looking keen. Tony looked this way and that, but the crucial moment came when they caught up to lapped traffic. Both cars weaved through the Corollas just fine but Bowe – for some reason – committed himself to the inside line into the Karrussell, which snookered him behind Garry Willmington's slow-moving Supra Turbo. One look at that and Tony said, "Thankyou very much!", braked on the outside line, zipped around them both and emerged on the other side suddenly in 2nd place! Brave and clever, Tony, and once again, clean. 

Longhurst had earned 2nd place the hard way, but 1st came like a gift from heaven. Just after half-distance, Jim Richards unexpectedly messed up at the Kink and couldn't stop his rampaging, out-of-control GT-R until the sand lying outside the Karrusell! Said Richo later:

We take the Kink flat out now, [and] with the extra weight it just bounced the car too far off the circuit, and I ended up on the grass. I had to put the brakes on on the grass, which wasn't too good.

"Wasn't too good" was a classic racing driver's understatement. The replay revealed he'd simply got it wrong on a particularly vicious bump, and thanks to some supreme car control he'd managed to keep it off the walls and out of the sand trap. But even so, a mistake is a mistake: by the time he rejoined the race, Tony was through into the race lead and long gone.

A couple of laps later, Alan Jones made the mistake of trying to out-brake Bowe into Hungry Corner. Longhurst had backed out of a similar move earlier in the heat but Jonesy kept coming, with the inevitable result: the BMW tagged the Sierra's rear passenger-side door and tipped it into a spin. Bowe finished his race on the grass wondering what the hell had just happened, while Jones himself almost went for a sympathy spin but gathered it up and carried on, leaving Bowe to curse BMW and all BMW drivers. Bowe rejoined but his race was ruined, with precious little hope of taking serious points from the round now. 

Indeed, by then it was the penultimate lap and Dick Johnson was having to fend off Mark Skaife, who was tearing through the field like an angry samurai through a paper house. Johnson was skating, his rear tyres completely used up, but there were very few passing opportunities as long experience taught him exactly where to place the car, and the Shell Sierra proved the cork in the bottle right up to the last minute. When the chequered flag came out, Tony diced through one last bit of traffic to chalk up a well-deserved win, with 2nd going to a dust-stained Richards, 3rd to Jonesy, 4th to Paul Morris and 5th to a fuming John Bowe. Skaifey ended up only 7th, kept out of 6th by the wily Johnson. Said Tony on the rostrum:

I was pretty pleased when my mate that doesn't make too many mistakes slipped off. I think he would've been a hard guy to pass. I believe the rules are very close now, and I'm just so pleased to be up there again. … Getting past John Bowe is no easy task, and Jimmy would've been just as difficult.

Tony had a quick glance to someone in the crowd at that word "slipped" though – maybe that bet with Frank Gardner was still on?

Either way, after five rounds the championship table showed Mark Skaife sitting pretty on 133 points, with Jim Richards on 126 – with two 2nd's he'd added the most to his score, but it wasn't enough to unseat his teammate. Glenn Seton was third on 104, but with the post-Winton rebalance it wasn't likely he'd stay there for very long. Tony Longhurst meanwhile had improved his position the most, jumping from eighth up to fourth overall, with on 90 points. Bowe and Johnson sat fifth and sixth, with 81 and 78 points resecptive, both having jumped Mark Gibbs, whose 76-point total took a hit with the GT-R back in the workshop.

Lakeside had been the hardest-fought ATCC round yet, the fine margins on the track suggesting that CAMS' latest round of performance equalisers were doing their job, but the price was starting to get too high. If Richards' off-track excursion in Heat 2 had ended with him clouting the wall and injuring himself, would that extra 100kg of ballast have been justified? The extra fifty kilos on the Sierras had also had the effect of slowing down Seton but not Johnson or Bowe, which led to speculation the Shell cars had been running overweight the entire time (although given Lakeside was the team's home circuit, where they did all their testing, it was hard to be certain). It was all a bit troubling, and worse, any further weight penalties were already out of the question. Four of the drivers had voluntarily taken penalties to gain access to fresh rubber rather than carry on with what they had, circumventing the point of the rules. Any further ballast was only going to make this route more attractive. What was a governing body to do?