One thing I've not really seen mentioned much is that Ford and Holden arrived at Bathurst 1990 with their win counts deadlocked at 13 apiece, thanks to the Sierra evening up a tally that for years had been stuck in Holden's favour. An extraordinary nine of those thirteen had been won by the same driver – his majesty Peter Brock, first of his name, the King of the Mountain – who very much had eyes on making it ten this afternoon.
Working very hard on Ten. We've been working very hard this year. We've done a lot of behind-the-scenes work. To a large degree, we haven't been making a lot of noise about it. The guys have got a real sense of urgency this year. We're staying in a different place, we're very much a team together away from the other teams to try and get that focus on the race. Last year I thought we just sorta made a couple of mistakes. We had pole position, and were looking pretty good but then in the race... [shakes head] Sorry, we made errors. This year, we're not aiming to make any of those errors, and if we don't make any errors, we can win.
I find that coming here is a great boost. You can come up that highway and come around the corner and look down the pits here on a Monday, or Tuesday or whenever you arrive for the weekend, and honestly, the pits are always better, the people are there, there's a certain excitement that Bathurst has. And it's a lot like a big grand final or the Melbourne Cup, to us. And I think that's the special thing that Bathurst has: it's dangerous, difficult, and a track that a lot of people find is a huge challenge.
Play That Funky Music, Drum Major
You only had to scratch the surface to find traces of Australia's colonial past, and on the morning of Sunday, 30 September 1990, that trace came from the marching band. Deployed to keep the early arrivals in the grandstands from getting bored, the band represented Australia's 2nd Military District, which turns out to mean all of NSW down to the Murrumbidgee, but minus Broken Hill (which of course answered to Adelaide). They did their thing in their dress uniforms, meaning redcoats and pith helmets like Michael Caine in Zulu. Being Australian and therefore incapable of taking things too seriously, however, a medley that began with Colonel Bogey continued with John Williams' Imperial March; James Brown's I Feel Good; the theme from the 1960s version of Batman; its opposite number from Get Smart, which has probably never been off the air in this country; and finished up with Wipeout, which I always assumed was by the Beach Boys but turns out to be someone called the Surfaris. There you go, the day wasn't wasted if you Learned Something.
Trouble in Paradise
The car everyone was scared of was still the new Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R. Hitherto the Gibson team had been calling it The Weapon, but by now everyone was starting to refer to it by its enduring nickname – Godzilla, a moniker coined by then-Wheels editor Phil Scott. In truth, though, Godzilla was looking more dangerous to its own team than it was to the opposition. Despite only planning to race a single car, Gibson Motorsport had arrived at Bathurst with two complete GT-Rs, four spare engines, four differentials (two front, two rear), spare gearboxes, 30 wheels, 150 tyres, and 20 crew on hand, with another ten remaining at their Melbourne base in case of emergency! And all of it availed them not a damn thing: the shock of qualifying had been that the GT-R hadn't even made the Tooheys Top Guns, Jim Richards pedalling around in a pedestrian 2:15.66 to claim only 11th on the grid.
How was such a thing possible? Well, the intended race car was brand-new, just a bodyshell when the first GT-R had sealed the championship at Oran Park. This first GT-R – GTR1 – had been brought along purely for practice, to keep wear and tear on the new car to a minimum. Defying that plan, however, GTR2 had absolutely refused to behave: the team just couldn't get the brake balance sorted, experimenting with different wheel and master cylinders and forcing the drivers to brake earlier than they otherwise might have. Skaife suffered multiple spins and off-track excursions as the ever-changing (and sub-optimal) balance caught him out. But even if they found something that worked, it seemed clear the car would be carrying the handicap of its sheer weight, which over a punishing thousand kays would almost certainly mean burning up its brakes as well as putting extra strain on the suspension, wheels and gearbox. Remember that only Japan had given the GT-R any real endurance testing so far; locally it was still very much an unknown quantity. Frustratingly, John Harvey (these days the marketing manager for HSV but here moonlighting as a pitlane commentator) mentioned the Nissan team had some powerful water-cooled brakes homologated, but they wouldn't be legal until 1 October – the day after the race!
Then, just to rub in salt, at some point the ATTESA four-wheel drive system went on the blink as well, forcing Richo to set his time in two-wheel drive mode, resulting in that lacklustre qualifying time. So that had been the Gibson team's weekend so far, when John Brady took a moment to interview Richo on the grid on race morning:
John Brady: Jim, how is Godzilla today?
Jim Richards: Alive and well!
Brady: Been a lot of talk about the brakes, there was talk overnight of you guys having gone to a different set of discs and a different set of pads, has it made a difference?
Richards: No, what we've done... we're just trying to get the balance of the car right, and we've settled on what we've got and it's absolutely perfect. We've got no problem at all with brakes.
Brady: Is it different to what you were running?
Richards: Uh, no, we were just having trouble getting the balance front-to-rear right. But, uh, we have tried a couple of different combinations, which we always were going to do, and we've settled on the right one.
Brady: I suppose. How disappointed were you by the fact you couldn't get into the Top Guns, just missing out and then seeing that your times wouldn't have been that far off the paces that were being run?
Richards: I s'pose initially I thought, "Gee, that's a blow," but I think it's a bonus. It's given the boys that little bit extra opportunity to get the car absolutely perfect, which it is.
Brady: Now, there's a lot of people saying this car's a risk over a thousand kays. I s'pose, there's got to be an element of that, but then again there was that in the last round of the touring championships too?
Richards: I can't think of a single thing that's going to give us trouble. I mean, in this race, silly little things can happen, but this car is as strong... I'd say stronger than any car out there and, uh, I can't see it failing. But having said that, but you know what happens at Bathurst sometimes. It's very very strong.
Brady: I was talking to Johnny Harvey, it must be frustrating to hear that the homologation on the water cooling for the brakes comes through the day after?
Richards: It's not, because the brakes are absolutely brilliant. I mean I, we've got no problem at all!
Brady: Okay. I suppose everyone else has been making something of it. You're happy with that, I suppose the weight on the car, even if everything else goes well, obviously it does put extra wear on them no matter what the setup is, though, doesn't it?
Richards: Oh, sure. I mean, this car is the heaviest car in the race, and it's the most powerful. So it's going to work the brakes harder. But the combination we've got, really, brakes are the last thing I'm thinking about.
Top marks to Richo for maintaining his poker face, because there was no way he could let on what the team had really done – illegally switch the cars! On Saturday night, Fred Gibson threw in the towel and decided the only thing to do was swap the doors – that is, swap their race numbers and run them the other way around. The hassle was that the new car was the one that carried the onboard RaceCam, a serious piece of kit in those days, which Channel Seven were a bit irritated at having to shift. The TV technicians were already fast asleep ahead of an early Sunday start, but the crew needed to make the swap was awoken and selflessly did the job. The next day, nobody noticed the deception...
Cold Comfort in the Warm-Up
Rather more prosaic was the hand dealt to Alan Jones in the morning warm-up. After that stunning turn of speed on Thursday, Jonesy's #20 B&H Sierra came back to the pits on Sunday morning needing a replacement radiator hose, meaning by the rules it wouldn't be allowed to take its grid spot and would be forced to start from pit lane instead. Jonesy wasn't happy.
John Harvey: Alan, you've had a great week, the field is on the warm-up lap and you're in pit lane. What happened?
Alan Jones: We discovered a leak in the water hose at the eleventh hour and the mechanics were changing it. [Chief marshal] Tim Schencken in his wisdom has decided not to let me out because apparently I was ten seconds late leaving the pit lane, so I have to start from here.
Harvey: Alan, will this make you more determined?
Jones: Well it'll make it a lot sweeter when I'm up on that rostrum, I can tell you!
The only consolation for Australia's other Formula 1 World Champion was that he wasn't planning on being married to this car for the whole race. He and Tony Longhurst were cross-entered in both cars, so the plan was they'd both start the race, then move over to whichever car emerged ahead as the race developed. Co-drivers Denny Hulme and Mark McLaughlin would find themselves shuffled to the lower car with only a coin toss whether their names would be on the roll-call of Bathurst winners, but such is the life of the hired gun. Incidentally, Glenn Seton's team had the exact same game plan – Seton and Fury would both take the start in different cars, then they'd join forces later in the race, leaving David Sears and Drew Price to pick up the scraps... with the slight advantage that they'd both get to start from their rightful grid spots.
Also starting from pit lane after a water hose let go was the green #2 Sizzler Skyline, which was seen being rushed back to its garage during Advance Australia Fair (2nd Military District Band gave us that as well).
That the only pre-race entertainment had been a marching band and a Group E race, however, said a lot about how much money wasn't around this year. Where was the airshow, the display from the RAAF Roulettes, the burnout from the Top Alcohol dragster? Seems the early 90's recession was already biting. If Peter Perfect really could make it a perfect ten, it wouldn't be in a year of huge celebration; hand-to-mouth scrambling seemed more the thing.
Nevertheless: one last sighting lap and the drivers pulled up in their pit boxes, Niedzwiedz on pole, Johnson alongside him. Brock and Seton occupied the second row, with Longhurst and Percy making up the third. Behind them were Larry Perkins and Gregg Hansford, then Gianfranco Brancatelli all on his own, as Alan Jones had been forced to start from pit lane, meaning dead last. In the 11th-place box but 10th overall was Godzilla, Jim Richards starting the Nisssan GT-R first of the non-shootout cars. These were the cars that could win today; everyone else was just a speedbump.
And So It Begins
At last the cars gridded up, the thirty-seconds-to-go board was shown, then ten seconds. Above the start/finish line, the man in the suit raised the Australian flag and held it for a deliberate pause. Engines were revved, breaths were held, eternities passed between adrenaline-soaked heartbeats as they waited, watching. At last he flung the flag downwards, and around 20,000 horsepower were all sent to the hot mix at once to turn hot rear tyres into billowing white smoke. The Great Race of 1990 was on.
And at the very off, we lost one of the hot favourites. Straining at the leash, Klaus Niedzwiedz had a bit of a creep in the #10 ANZ Sierra before the flag came down, drawing suspicion that he'd jumped the start. It would take quite some time for the Powers That Be to make up their minds whether his half-hearted stop-and-go really warranted disciplinary action, but with all the inevitability of a tax demand, it would come eventually. Having effectively shot himself in the foot before the race even began, the Moffat-Eggenberger effort was doomed from the start.
Not that you'd have deduced that from Klaus' driving, however: while Dick Johnson lit up his rear Dunlops and went nowhere, leaving Brock and Seton to blast by like he was standing still, Klaus was a tad clumsy off the line (still on the brake pedal when they went to green?) and found himself under threat from the cars behind. While Johnson struggled against Longhurst and Gregg Hansford in the other ANZ car, Brocky went door-to-door with Niedzwiedz into Hell Corner in a startling declaration of intent.
Of course, it was not to last. Having taken the outside line into the first turn, Brock had to fall into line on the charge up Mountain Straight, with Seton following in 3rd, Longhurst in 4th and Hansford 5th. But in truth, all had to fall into line behind Niedzwiedz today: this was a master at the peak of his powers with unfinished business at Bathurst. Right from the start, the pace was frantic, and nobody was caning his car harder than the little German. Across the Mountain's brow Niedzwiedz pulled out a substantial lead over Brock – almost a second on the opening lap, and roughly two seconds by lap five – an awesome performance at Brock's favourite track. Circulating at 2:18 or so in the early laps, Niedwiedz was on a mission not only to lead the charge, but to break everyone's hearts and spirits before the real grind began. That's what he'd done in 1988, however, and that's what Johnson had done to him in '89.
It takes nothing away from Klaus' efforts that Jim Richards was already putting the massive squirt of Godzilla to work climbing up through the field, either. First Andrew Miedecke in the second of the two Mobil team Sierras was dispatched, then Gianfranco Brancatelli in the #40 Peanut Slab Sierra within the length of pit straight, leaving Richo free to chase down Hansford in the #9 ANZ Sierra. This he cleaned up before the end of Mountain Straight – Godzilla was taking no prisoners today. Down Conrod on lap 2 Richards even managed to outpace the B&H car of Longhurst, a record-setter only three days ago, taking another place – but so did Johnson in the Shell car directly ahead of him, so the man he really had his sights on remained in his sights. Along pit straight he threatened again, but Johnson was wise and kept to the inside line, forcing Richards to go the long way around into Hell Corner. Richards fell in behind, but with 4WD grip he was able to take a tighter line through the turn and still get hard on the power on the way out – meaning on the run up Mountain Straight he edged up the inside of the world's fastest Sierra, grabbed another gear, and then simply zoomed past. “Has it got any horsepower?!” gasped Mike Raymond in the commentary box. “Six-hundred brake, they claim...”
From 11th on the grid, Jim Richards was now up to 4th place, with only Seton, Brock and Niedzwiedz between himself and the race lead. Only Seton offered hints of what might loosely be called resistance, refusing to fold on the run down Conrod and staying ahead through the Chase, only losing the place when they got to Murray's Corner at the bottom of the hill. Richo was 3rd, and the Rising Sun was still rising.
Alan Jones however was back in the pits after just 3 laps, and it didn't look much like a proper pit stop. The cameras didn't show the mechanics actually swapping wheels, just tightening the centre nuts while the fuel man stood at the ready. Was this a problem or tactics? John Brady took a microphone over to Old Stoneface himself, team boss Frank Gardner, to find out.
John Brady: Frank, an early pit stop, what was the problem?
Frank Gardner: It's the price to pay for leaving the pit lane at the back of the field. Got tangled up with one of the slower cars and flatted up all the tyres.
Brady: It's time you couldn't spare twice in a row in the one race, is it?
Gardner: Not really. It starts off not to be your day with that car, but it's early in the day. It's good to have the problems nice and early and we've got a chance of winding it in as the day goes by. But it's not looking good so early.
Brady: A bit worrying with the Nissan showed so much power early with Dick Johnson's car?
Gardner: Well, if the Nissan's out there in another three hours they can pat themselves on the back, and they've done a terrific job. But I'll watch it run for the next hour or so.
So having started from pit lane, Jonesy had got as high as 40th outright before this hiccough, rejoining back in 49th. But even Jonesy wasn't getting the worst of it. Garry Rogers had already become the first DNF of the day when his #26 Valvoline Walkinshaw suffered a clutch failure (surely while getting off the line?) and made it only as far as Griffin's Bend, leaving him without a single lap to his credit. He was kept out of the place of ignominy only by the Alexander Rotary Engines Corolla, which didn't even make the start after a rare Toyota engine failure. Sneaky marketing aiming to sow doubt about pistons and push more buyers toward rotaries? One hopes so.
Either way, by the time the interview with Gardner was over, Richo had got his GT-R past Peter Brock and had nothing but Niedzwiedz between himself and 1st place. Although it was early days, the signs were that the brake issues on the Skyline really had been resolved. Pre-race speculation that they'd have to change pads and rotors at every pit stop had been dialled back to changing pads twice during the race – worse than everyone else's once, but much better than at every stop. Especially when the pace of your rivals was currently in the 2:18 bracket and you had a car capable of running consecutive 2:15s: the gap from Niedzwiedz to Richards at the start/finish line was 2.7 seconds. By the Chase, despite interference from some lapped cars, it was only 1.3; by the braking zone for Murray's a lap later, Richards was on the German's bumper and they headed onto pit straight with pistols drawn.
When Richo zigged to make an attempt, Klaus zagged and shut the door, leaving a very narrow gap between the white Sierra and one of the backmarker Corollas – dicey! Richards backed out of it, but stayed as good as tied to the ANZ car as they headed back through Hell Corner. Up Mountain Straight Klaus used the traffic to his advantage, almost getting too keen as he went door-to-door with the #32 Hesonne Labour Hire Commodore (not a Walkinshaw) through Griffin's. On lap 7, Klaus very bravely used his own car as a mobile roadblock to hold off a charging Richards down Conrod Straight. Given the speed differential at that point it could easily have ended in tears – both were clocked at 283km/h that lap – but that's how they drove in Europe, with no quarter asked and absolutely none given.
Finally, on the run up Mountain Straight on lap 8, with no backmarkers to spoil the party, Richards put the boot in and drove past Niedzwiedz in a shocking display of raw horsepower, waving as he went. Still, from 11th place on the grid (really 10th with Jones starting from pit lane), he'd risen to the race lead in just eight laps. Proof, as if we still needed it, that this was a different kind of racecar altogether, an evolutionary leap over everything that had come along before now. The only question was whether it could last another 153 laps today.
Seeking hints, Channel Seven stuck a camera in Fred Gibson's face and asked whether this was pukka race pace, or was he just showboating for the sponsors? Freddo gave them the usual mix of bullish confidence and grounded pragmatism.
Steve Titmus: Fred, a fabulous start for you?
Fred Gibson: Oh, it's only the start of a thousand-kay race, there's a long way to go yet. That's what we wanted to do, wanted to break the Sierras up and get to the front so we could run at our own pace. I still say we can run 17-18s, I don't think many Sierras'll be able to do that all day. Whether we can or not we don't know yet. But Jimmy's gone to game plan so far, it's a matter of settling in now and seeing if we can keep the car going for the whole race.
Titmus: Are you planning to run these sort of times, though, for the greater part of the race?
Gibson: Yes, we were planning to run 17-18s, we're going to schedule [garbled]. Whether the Sierras can keep that time we don't know, but we know we can for quite a while yet. So towards the finish we'll just have to cut it back.
Chaos in Motion
The first mention of long-term race strategy was prescient, because it was then, stunningly, that the pit stops started. Far too soon for strategy, Peter Brock's #05 was back in the pits and up on the jacks, the stop having been made necessary by a blistered tyre. He'd got fewer than fifteen laps from his first set of Bridgestones, a terrible omen when the team had planned to come in on lap 33! Worse, the right-rear presented some trouble getting the wheel off, drawing groans from the commentary box: “Surely not two years running...” But it turned out the air pressure in the gun had simply been set wrong: the wheel soon separated and Brock was patched up and sent on his way. But it had still been a long pit stop, the King of the Mountain rejoining 22nd, meaning he'd lost nineteen places.
Rubbing it in, Miedecke came in only two laps later, and his stop was a carbon copy of Brock's: another blistered tyre, and another long stop thanks to the right-rear wheel gun. Miedecke dropped from 9th down to omigod 46th! It was shockingly bad news for the Brock team, because they hadn't expected to run into any tyre problems at all: Bridgestone had done a tyre test at Bathurst earlier in the year and come up with some new compounds just for this race. Brock and his team had an exclusive contract with Bridgestone for 1990, but as things stood, it didn't look like the other teams would be climbing over each other to get a deal for themselves in 1991.
Now, with the race more than half an hour old, the question was how long until the turbo cars turned down the boost and settled in for the long run to the end. This was still an endurance race, and so far theyd been running it like an AMSCAR sprint round: it couldn't last. Neil Lowe, team manager for Dick Johnson Racing, had let it be known that they intended to get 38 laps out of a tank with their lead car, and as many as 41 with the backup car – figures that seemed a trifle optimistic, especially when the #18 with Radisich at the wheel had been clocked at 285km/h down Conrod, beaten only by the Nissan GT-R.
And indeed, all those pre-race pontifications were shot to hell when we learned DJR were expecting a pit stop for Johnson, and maybe even a driver change, at the end of lap 17 – twenty short of his intended first stint. Sure enough, Johnson pitted and fuel, four tyres and a John Bowe were put in the car, and it was dropped off the jacks after just 23 seconds stationary, leaving Bowe to rejoin 12th. It turned out there'd been a puncture, and the team decided if they had to come in anyway, they might as well get in a full stop. That triggered speculation that Dick might commandeer the #18 instead, which had been on the move since the start of the race – 13th to 4th since the drop of the flag. John Brady took the chance to interview Johnson, still wearing his Texas-cop racing sunnies.
John Brady: Well Dick, you didn't expect to be back here this quickly, what's the reason?
Dick Johnson: No, it appears as though we might've picked up a bit of a bait [?] in one of the front tyres. Felt a bit funny. So rather than risk doing another epic trip down the main straight at 160 mile'n hour I thought I'd call in.
Brady: Yeah, discretion's the better part of valour. Most of the teams here were going to have their top driver doing a double shift first up, why the driver change?
Johnson: Oh, I think that's fairly tough work because if you want to maintain the pace out there, forty laps is enough I think.
Brady: So you thought you'd just get it out of the way on the spot?
Johnson: Yeah, well this'll put us in a fair sort of shape for the end of the race because that means we won't make any extra pit stops or anything. The 18 laps we've just done has brought us back right on schedule.
Brady: You need that Nissan to break down? It did power past you pretty well...
Johnson: It's a long way to go yet, isn't it? We've only scratched the surface, now we're starting to get into some serious racing.
Yep, they were still counting on the Nissan to blow up: bad news was, it was still pulling away from Niedzwiedz at a second a lap!
Another waiting for that to happen was Win Percy in the #16 HRT Walkinshaw – and like Richards, he was driving absolutely flat out. Engineering chief Wally Storey told Mark Oastler (another in the commentary box) that they expected to run 2:18s or 19s all day long with this car, which was good news for Percy (and quietly sobering news for Fred Gibson). So was the fact that Seton, Hansford and Radisich were running as a train and fighting over 5th, 6th and 7th places, which could only slow them down. By lap 20, Percy had made his way past Glenn Seton to be 6th outright, and only just ahead of him was Gregg Hansford in the #9 ANZ Sierra: that wasn't supposed to happen! A Commodore wasn't supposed to be in the hunt like this until the latter stages, not in the first stint before the first pit stop windows had even arrived. Something was happening here, but exactly what wasn't altogether clear yet.
For his part, Seton had some fading tyres, but for the moment the team had decided to leave him out there; they'd lose more with a pit stop than they would from finishing the stint. Or at least that was the theory – moments later, belying those predictions, Seton came in anyway, his tyres having died a lot faster than the team ever expected. After an off-camera confab with GSR, the commentators revealed Glenn had started feeling a vibration, which they'd first interpreted as a deflating tyre, then as a piece of the cooling apparatus on the rear brakes, before finally realising it was the compound of the tyre itself starting to come loose. That's why they'd left him out there, as they'd had to dig up a new compound to throw on the car when he came in. It was a slow 37-second stop, thanks to the right-front refusing the cooperate and the team taking the opportunity to top up the water tank for the brake cooling, so he rejoined 17th.
Another lap and even more Sierras headed for the pits. The New Zealand-based #38 of Andrew Bagnall came in for some service, including a change of plugs and a driver change over to Robbie Francevic. Then even Klaus Niedzwiedz came in for service, at last giving in to the demands of his dying tyres. Although it looked for a moment like he too was going to hand over the car, instead he shooed Frank Biela away and stayed strapped into the driver's seat (on the left-hand side of this Euro-built car); the team changed all four tyres, of course, and also topped up the oil for the engine. It was a lengthy 42-second stop, so he rejoined back in 10th.
So with the race now an hour old, virtually all the really fast Sierras had already made unscheduled pit stops, throwing most pre-race predictions completely out the window. While Richards continued to lead comfortably in the GT-R, all the pit stops meant 2nd place now belonged to Tony Longhurst in the #25 B&H Sierra, followed by Radisich in the #18 Shell car. 4th was Win Percy in the HRT entry, then Hansford in 5th, Colin Bond 6th, Larry Perkins 7th, Bowe 8th and Niedzwiedz 9th, having already made up another place by overtaking the hapless George Fury.
Richo's gap was out to an impressive 32.5 seconds, so this would've been the perfect time to drop the revs, choose some earlier braking points and shave half a G off his max cornering loads, slipping into cruise-n-collect mode for the remainder of the day. The problem was, as he explained to Mike Raymond on lap 26, that wasn't an option for the GT-R.
Mike Raymond: Jimmy Richards, you're not hogging this race are you?
Jim Richards: Well Mike, we've got to do a few brake stops so we've got to make a little bit of a buffer so that when we come in, we can keep the time on the track.
Raymond: You must have a lot of Sierra owners very very worried, the way you've attacked this race, taken the lead and done it so easily. Does the car feel good, Jim?
Richards: This little car feels unbelievable, it's a shame there's not more of them in the race.
Raymond: Everyone thought that just starting one car in the race would probably work against you. At the moment it's working for you?
Richards: It was the only decision to make, and Fred always makes the right decisions, whatever he says is right.
Raymond: So are you going to do stint-about, Jim? Will Mark take over when you do your pit stop, or you stay in for two?
Richards: No, Mark'll take over. He's roughly as good as I am, so he can have a drive and I'll have a rest.
On lap 29, Percy pitted and took full service from the Holden Racing Team (including taping up a scrape to the right-front corner – black tape, if you want to know what stage in the race your photos were taken) and handed over to Grice, who rejoined 11th. The interview with Percy immediately after was hard to follow, muffled by the roar of race engines, the helmet he was still busy taking off, and his broad Somerset accent... but from the sound of it, he'd made a mistake on the start line and now the cluch pedal went all the way to the floor, and they'll have to drive it like that for the rest of the race.
Win Percy: I'm happy with everything, of all the stupid things I must have pressed a little bit too hard and [garbled] something on the floor, and at the start line the clutch stayed on the floor. So Allan's got to drive the race by pressing it enough to clear it, and not [something] the floor.
John Brady: That's causing a little bit of trouble out there then?
Percy: It's not easy but to be honest it's not that difficult. It's not busy at all, it's just embarrassing at the start.
Brady: Was that the reason for this stop? Like, you were scheduled in about four laps anyway?
Percy: No, the clutch just wouldn't release the floor.
Brady: Win, the Commodore's certainly going pretty well at the moment.
Percy: Yeah. Meanwhile we've got a fuel pick-up problem, so we're a little bit concerned, it's a bit early for that but we'll see.
So – say it with me – they were having a lot of problems with ze car, and it was very difficult. In truth they were fortunate the glitch was so minor, either a hydraulic clutch leak or a snapped clutch cable (given the era, more likely the cable; he just stomped on it too hard and broke it). Not a crippling problem, just a matter of how happy the starter motor would be getting the thing going in first gear every stop (as engines were still required to be stopped during refuelling). It's not often memories of this race mention problems for HRT, but it's important to remember it wasn't quite a perfect run. I'm sure a HRT tragic will be able to tell us what really happened in the comment box; please feel free!
Anyway, on lap 32 Radisich brought the #18 Shell car in, pretty much exactly on schedule; it got tyres, fuel and a driver change. Jeff Allam, who'd spent most of 1990 worrying the BMW works team in the BTCC, climbed in for his first stint back aboard a DJR Sierra. A lap later Longhurst also pitted, but stayed in the car while the mechanics polished it. The plan was to run a double stint and then have Alan Jones take over after he got out of the #20, but plans are only ideas until the actual race starts. And Niedzwiedz meanwhile had climbed from 10th place back up to 5th, but there was now a question mark over this car as the stewards started debating whether or not he'd jumped the start, and whether he should therefore cop a penalty. Richards' lead in the meantime was now out to 40.2 seconds. Gulp.
Of course, he needed all of that and more, because on lap 34 the Skyline made its first scheduled pit stop. Mark Skaife took over and waited out a long stop while the team changed the brake pads, which even for the Gibson crew wasn't the brisk process it would be in later days. All in all the car stood still for about a minute and a half, an awful lot more than the forty-second gap Richards had built up, and when Skaife finally got moving again he found himself back in 10th.
Lap 34 turned out to be a busy one, as it also saw Peter Brock come in for – surprise, surprise – new tyres, the second set having lasted only 12 laps. Giving up, Peter got out and put Andy Rouse behind the wheel instead, who was a bit hesitant getting away and kangaroo-hopped little bit, like an L-plater on their first lesson. As he left the pits, Perkins came in to hand over to Tomas Mezera, the #11 Walky having briefly led the race. George Fury pitted the #30 Peter Jackson Sierra, handing over to Drew Price, but the stop went horribly wrong when the car stalled as it was dropped off the air jacks, and it took a lot of goes before the damn thing fired up again. And Moffat's backup #9 car pitted as well, Gregg Hansford handing over to Pierre Dieudonné. Just for good measure, Alan Jones then pitted to hand over to Denny Hulme. Glenn Seton came in a lap later as well, but since he was double-stinting he just had a quick drink while they fitted new tyres and refuelled, then smoothly rejoined.
All the pit stops had rather reshuffled the pack: early-stopper Niedzwiedz was back in the race lead, Bowe had moved up to 2nd, 3rd now belong to Longhurst, with 4th Tomas Mezera and 5th Jeff Allam. Skaife was running 6th, but likely didn't intend to stay there long; just behind in 7th was Gricey; 8th was Drew Price after that stall in the changeover; 9th was Dieudonné, and moving up to 10th – not having made a stop yet – was the GIO Walkinshaw of Mark Gibbs and Rohan Onslow. That car wouldn't pit until lap 40 or so – extra range gained at the expense, unfortunately, of speed.
Engage Pace Maker
Before they got there, however, we had the first proper shunt of the race. A replay showed the Finnigan/Leeds Walkinshaw came roaring into the Dipper too fast, lost the rear and spun, putting the rear corner of the car into the wall. Whatever happened in that contact must have caused some proper damage, because moments later the car was seen parked halfway across the track, just over the hump on Conrod, staved in on the left-rear with the front splitter hanging off. That narrowed the track to a single lane at its fastest point so, wisely, that brought out the first Pace Car of Bathurst 1990.
We hadn't seen one last year, so this was really the first Pace Car intervention since the one that killed Moffat's hopes and dreams at this race in 1988. This year, the cars themselves were a pair of white Nissan 300 ZXs, the ARDC adopting FISA's innovation of having two of them to cope with the length of the circuit, one emerging from pit lane, the other from a spot at the top of the Mountain. The rescue crews took the opportunity to remove the Garry Rogers Walky from the Cutting while they were at it, which probably wasn't a bad idea. The commentators, meanwhile, took the opportunity to talk to John Bowe.
Mike Raymond: Good morning, John.
John Bowe: How you going, Michael?
Raymond: Fit as a fiddle. How is it, heavy work out there?
Bowe: Well, we've got a bit of an oversteery problem, Mike. It's, uh... the rear tyres seem to have overheated so all I'm doing is trying to persevere as best I can so that when we make the next stop we can overcome it.
Raymond: Now you've been past the accident, the Geoff Leeds-Finnigan Commodore. Good move to bring the yellow flags out and also the Pace Car?
Bowe: Well I think so, Mike, because you couldn't leave it there for the whole race. It was blocking half the track, and y'know, if somebody had got a bit out of shape or something they could have a real momentous accident. So I think it's the best thing to do under the circumstances.
Raymond: Does it give the driver, now, a chance for a bit of a breather, John?
Bowe: Well what I'm hoping is that it gives the whole car a bit of a chance for a breather.
Raymond: Well, you must be fairly happy and so must Dick, with a couple of cars there in the top ten?
Bowe: Where's the other car running?
Raymond: We're just looking down through the field for the 18 car, and it is running in 4th position.
Bowe: Yeah, they're doing a great job, eh?
Raymond: Two and four, that's not too bad, son?
Bowe: Nah, it's pretty good. We've just got to get to the next stop without any mishaps and try and overcome these couple of slight problems. But the car's as strong as an ox in engine, transmission, things like that it's great. But, uh, just the balance is not quite right. So I couldn't keep Klaus behind me before, he was just a bit quick over the top of the Mountain. But anyway... it's a long way to go yet, mate, isn't it?
Raymond: It certainly is, son. You know what the winning feeling's like, it'd be nice second time around wouldn't it?
Bowe: It would be wonderful, but I'm not even thinking about it yet!
Sadly, when they tried to do the same with Allan Grice to ask how the hell he was running as high as he was, they picked up a proper oldschool CB radio whistle. Mike Raymond joked that maybe they should call Telecom Mobiles to fix it, but by the time the brains trust got it sorted Grice was busy talking strategy with Wally Storey, so Channel Seven was out of luck.
Now, the Ford Sierra RS500 had a natural enemy, and it wasn't the Nissan GT-R, but the humble Pace Car. A Pace Car intervention had killed off Gregg Hansford's run in 1988, as the under-bonnet heat of a big-boost turbo abruptly lost its cooling slipstream. When the flow through the radiator suddenly dropped from 280km/h to 50 in only a few seconds all that heat suddenly had nowhere to go and then things would go wrong in a hurry. For Hansford it had been vapour lock, but head gaskets and other bits and pieces were all vulnerable too. One of the victims was arguably John Bowe, as the #17 Sierra started encountering turbo problems behind the Pace Car on lap 40. But the more immediate victim was poor Colin Bond.
Bondy'd had a difficult week, detonating his engine on Wednesday experimenting with his management system, then blowing a turbo almost as soon as they hit the track for the first session on Friday, which had disrupted his preparations enough to miss out Saturday's Top Guns. From 15th on the grid, though, he'd been making up time hand-over-fist. Canny old Colin; he'd been concentrating on his race setup, leaving qualifying to the hungry young wolves. All well and good, but on lap 44 he was then seen pitting for service under the Pace Car, including a dash of cold water to top up the Caltex Sierra's reservoir. Unfortunately it needed a bit more than a top-up, because with just over a quarter of the race done, it had blown a head gasket.
Colin Bond: Well, it looks like we're losing a bit of water out of the head gasket and it was just getting a bit hot when Croz was in the car then, and we decided to stop and try and add some water. Which we did send him out again, but the temperature got up. And I think that, you know, we can't... the car still runs of course, but it'd be terminal, you wouldn't be able to fix it in time to be competitive for the rest of the day, so it looks like we have to put it away.
John Brady: A heartbreaking way to finish a year, but it has been a good one for you and the car?
Bond: Well it has, actually. I mean, the car's been running very reliable all year and, y'know, this is the first race that we haven't finished.
Brady: Bad luck, mate. The Pace Car, did that have any effect on it? I know it got the Sierras once here a couple of years ago?
Bond: I don't think so, I think we were having a slight problem prior to that. We used the Pace Car to lose as little time as possible. It meant we could come into the pits maybe for two minutes and only lose half a lap so, uh... we thought that might work, but it didn't.
Utimately the race ran under yellow from laps 39 to 46. As usual though, the restart was controversial. Longhurst made a quick move on Rouse down Conrod – a dirty trick by today's standards, where you have to wait for the start/finish line, but apparently legit in those days – the footage showed the flaggies were holding up the green. Not that it was for position, of course as the #05 was running a lap down in 13th.
More of a concern was that Race Control had released the Pace Car behind Klaus Niedzwiedz rather than in front of him, letting him run uninterrupted up to the top of the Mountain to catch the second Pace Car – effectively giving him half a lap for free. Asked about it, Race Control sniffed and stuck to the line that catching the leader was, “desirable but not essential.” That said, after racing resumed Bowe was reportedly only 1.46 seconds behind Niedzwiedz, so DJR had played the situation like a harp as well – exactly how, I don't know. By Murray's, however, that gap was back out to 7.3 seconds, so that dodgy turbo was already costing the team dearly.
Either way, the first Pace Car of the day was a watershed, because it was then the real casualties started. First the #2 Sizzler Skyline was seen going slowly up the hill after The Cutting, apparently driving on a knackered clutch – the car would be listed as "DNF (clutch)" on lap 65. Then on lap 54, a big one: Tony Longhurst pitted the #25 with a wrecked engine. He knew the score – the footage showed him slowly dismounting, no frantic paramedic action, just the solemnity of a funeral. He'd been running 8th at the time.
Steve Titmus: Tony, what's gone wrong?
Tony Longhurst: Uh, looks like it's blown a head gasket. After following the Pace Car, the water temperature dropped right down to about fifty degrees and I'd say it's similar to what happened to Allan Moffat's car in 1988.
Titmus: Well Tony, a lot of people said before the start of this race that you might've had reliability problems. It hasn't been a good year for you in that sense. Come here to Bathurst and something's gone wrong again?
Longhurst: No, well actually it's been a great year as far as engines go. This is the second failure we've had with engines this year, so, uh... I'm not disappointed with that. It's just one of those things. The car was shuffling along nicely, we've got some good Yokohama tyres now, and I thought we were running 3rd for such a long time we were in for a good result by the end of the day. What we've got to do now is get back in the other car and really give it a go.
It had taken the ARDC two hours to reach a decision, but reach a decision they did: Klaus Niedzwiedz was judged to have jumped the start and issued a one-minute penalty. The scowls in the Moffat pits were understandable; it wasn't unfair, just really harsh. Unfortunately it came just as Rudi and Allan's race started going to hell. Shortly after the penalty was passed down, the #10 returned to its pit box – not to serve a penalty, but with a flat tyre. The black doughnuts on the right-rear fender, combined with the loose rear bumper that the team got busy taping up, pointed to an encounter with another car. The team took the opportunity to top up the car's fluids and generally get it in shape before they handed it over to Frank Biela, but it had been a bit of a blow to their chances all the same. Klaus' scintillating performance in the opening stints had been all but wiped out. After 59 seconds, Biela was released and rejoined 9th.
John Brady: Allan, bad luck about the stop there. Obviously the tyre's gone, what was the problem? How bad is the damage at the back?
Allan Moffat: Klaus had a puncture on that occasion, a slow puncture that got turned into a damn fast one. But in terms of our scheduling it was just one lap away from where we wanted to come in anyway, so we're not too worried about that.
Brady: Allan, obviously the big talking point – and Klaus, you've been pinged for having jumped the start, how do you feel about that?
Klaus Niedzwiedz: I can say nothing about it. I can't understand the decision because it is... probably I have the wrong passport right now. [And he walked away, disgusted.]
Brady: Allan, you've been around a very long time, it seemed very hard because it wasn't moving, the car?
Moffat: I think it was a harsh decision but it is the decision of the Clerk of the Course and the judge in fact, we can't argue about it. Klaus moved initially a little bit under the red, then he stopped, and then he went. I think what made it look bad from an optical illusion point of view – bear in mind everybody's excited up there, even the judge in fact – that Dick didn't get a very good start, so it appeared as if ours was moving a little bit out of synch. He definitely did creep under the red but he stopped and the he re-went. I think on bias, maybe they could have put their sunglasses on for us.
Brady: Well mate, I'm a bit the same. I think the car had stopped. Tell me, the damage in the back fender, you've got it taped up there, is that going to be a problem?
Moffat: Cosmetic. We don't like to see our lovely little cars in the prime paint, but that bumper bar just has a plastic undercoating. I took quite a deal of delight pulling it off myself!
All that left the #16 Commodore chasing the #1 Nissan chasing the #17 Sierra, although the DJR Sierra wasn't far off a pit stop, as Dick himself had his helmet on and was waiting for it in pit lane. And indeed, immediately after the Moffat interview Bowe pitted from the lead, and Johnson climbed back in for his next stint. The stop was unfussed, unflustered; Dick's face was grimly determined, focused on the job. The car rejoined gently, without histrionics, in 5th place – just behind the #11 Mezera Commodore, the #18 of Allam, the #16 of Grice, and the #1 of Skaife. It was now lap 60.
For that matter, it was beginning to dawn on people that for all its prodigious speed, the R32 Skyline wasn't actually any faster over a full stint than any of its rivals: whatever it gained on the track was lost again as soon as it headed to the pits. This fact was underlined by what was now happening on track, something amazing: Skaife in the GT-R was being hounded by Grice in the HRT Commodore! Despite Fred Gibson's humblebrag, Grice was only a couple of seconds behind the GT-R at this stage, and he closed right up across the top of the Mountain as Skaife got stuck behind the lapped Sierra of Matt Wacker. Both cars were wounded, Grice working without a clutch, Skaife forced to bear in mind fading front brakes, but on balance the situation favoured Gricey. Over the top of the Mountain Grice would close right up, then fall back a little along the straights. The gaps on lap 61? One second from Skaife to Grice, 4.9 seconds from Grice back to Jeff Allam, and then another second from Allam to the boss, Dick Johnson himself, who'd managed to pass the #11 Commodore of Mezera.
Then on lap 62, events took a turn from the amazing to the impossible. Skaife got wide into Forrest's Elbow and Grice, not waiting to be asked again, quickly nipped through on the inside to steal the race lead! Skaife tried to use the horsepower of the Nissan to zoom back past on the long run down Conrod Straight, but Grice held firm and by Pit Straight it was official – he'd actually put a move on the shiny new Nissan GT-R! For the first time in a long time, a Holden led the Great Race!
