I remember being gutted that Tony lost his patience and ploughed into Larry. Definitely a JPS race that was thrown away, .... But what a classic! Thanks again DVR8 keep the Amscar rounds coming if you can, you've been brilliant!
Watching the replay and Longhurst had the r/f suspension break as he hit the brakes,, so poor prep. The team lost the race for Larry and Bill,, faffingg around changing tyres so Obrien ended up on cold tyres for his one lap.
After this event, the JPS team ran at the Pepsi 250 at Oran Park, Sandown 500, Bathurst 1000 and then their final event was back at Calder for the 500km WTCC event. The team folded a few weeks later
The team didn't actually fold. What happened was Frank Gardner had gotten pretty sick by Bathurst, so he chucked it in. Brock then took over the running of the M3s with BMW Australia's help for 1988. Frank then went on to run Tony Longhurst's Sierra efforts until 1992 when they went back to running M3s, this time with Benson and Hedges backing in place of JPS.
Almost. The JPS M3's were sold to Advantage Racing to become the Mobil BMW's for 1988 - (these cars eventually ended up with Peter Doulman and John Cotter, who ran them as late as 1993). Longhurst wanted to switch to Ford Sierras with Frank Gardner, but Ford weren't interested, because the protest that DSQ'd the factory Texaco Ford's from Bathurst 1987 was lodged by the JPS/Gardner team. Ford didn't like them. Tomas Mezera - (who was still in the UK at the time) - ghost organised the bits and pieces for the first Longhurst Sierra, on the proviso that he got the Sandown/Bathurst drive with Longhurst. Turned out to be a good move, because they won at Bathurst in 1988, and Ford forgave them. The team switched back to BMW in 1991. Their Sierras were sold to Brian Bolwell, who had previously run non-M3 BMW's...
Many of the big names Johnson, Brock, Moffat, Percy were not there as Moffat and Brock were travelling back from Spa though Harvey was back in time to commentate but Johnson was hoping that the RS500 would be homologated in time for Johnson to take part but the field did not have a single Ford Sierra which meant no Ford teams and drivers which disappointed the European based Ford teams who would have needed the data from the Australian Ford teams on the Calder Roval
such a shame Bill O'Brian drove around like a turtle on that final lap. Was Holden's best chance for a major race win that year with no Sierras around.
Bill O'Brien drove like a turtle because an earlier clash Perkins had with another car stuffed up the steering on the VL. O'Brien was a sitting duck for the Nissan and couldn't do anything about it. Perkins made the mistake of driving all but the last lap of the race. If he'd pitted earlier O'Brien would have been fine, but with shot steering and cold tyres......
