Photos: 1985 Wellington Street Race Photos

[Frosty5]

No disrespect to Mark Petch, but I watched every minute of that race, glued to the TV screen and am one of those who believe the Sytner/Morton car won. (Nothing to do with Frank Sytner being from Nottingham either!)

I can't remember the Volvo unlapping itself and it certainly spent a total of more than 90 seconds particularly given pit entry and exit time losses, sorting out the bonnet pins.

It was still the best TV motor race I have ever watched.

Ray, I have watched 2 videos, one which I recorded in total and one supplied by SKF and as a part of the team I was surprised at the win. I figured we were still behind at the fall of the flag however, history records it as a win for the team. But I still have my doubts.
Cheers Dave

[Powder]

Wow, another fantastic photo of that beautiful BMW. I've always loved the colour scheme on this car, even though it was only like this for these two races. What happened to this car after the two 1985 Wellington/Puke races? Did John Morton own the car?

I think this is the 635 that Ken Smith owned for a while and was also driven by Greg Taylor (possibly the same Dr Greg Taylor who has raced at the Nurburgring 24hr race with a bunch of other kiwis in recent years?).

[crunch]

This is moments after the start, as the field sweeps into the tight hairpin for the first time. Johnson is already well in command.

Note the flaggies perched on the concrete wall that separates the two straights here!

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Martin Smith photo

Woohoo! Jeez...I was a skinny bugger back then. Possibly the most exciting flag point I ever worked on. I'm the skinny dude in the grey sweatpants. If we needed to go to the toilet during the race; we had to sprint across the track! Life was so easy back then....

[Powder]

Woohoo! Jeez...I was a skinny bugger back then. Possibly the most exciting flag point I ever worked on. I'm the skinny dude in the grey sweatpants. If we needed to go to the toilet during the race; we had to sprint across the track! Life was so easy back then....

Toilet across the track!!! .... Luxury...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

[stirlingmac]

I would agree with you about Ken Smith having this car. it was also raced by Croz and Lew McKinnon, Graeme Lorimer,Warren McKellar and Richard Gillies and must have been one of the higher mileaged Grp A cars in New Zealand.. I remember being told by Lew it was quite special with a very low chassis number 001.. Greg pedalled a bunch of cars including a quick 1200 coupe and a lease deal of a Tranz Am Ford that he shared with Dick Johnson. My memory is hazy but it sounds plausible he did have a drive of the Beemer as well..

[touringcarfan]

All I know is that the Volvo was an ex works ETCC car. After Wellington the car was shipped to Oz for the 85 ATCC where Francevic finished 5th. For 86 the car was run by the Volvo Dealer Team and this was the year Robbie won the ATCC.

Anthony

[crunch]

I would agree with you about Ken Smith having this car. it was also raced by Croz and Lew McKinnon, Graeme Lorimer,Warren McKellar and Richard Gillies and must have been one of the higher mileaged Grp A cars in New Zealand.. I remember being told by Lew it was quite special with a very low chassis number 001.. Greg pedalled a bunch of cars including a quick 1200 coupe and a lease deal of a Tranz Am Ford that he shared with Dick Johnson. My memory is hazy but it sounds plausible he did have a drive of the Beemer as well..

We are not starting to confuse these 635's with either of the STATE COAL sponsored ones that were there one year? One of those cars is now owned by Geoff Langham the CEO of Taupo Racetrack

[crunch]

I think this is the 635 that Ken Smith owned for a while and was also driven by Greg Taylor (possibly the same Dr Greg Taylor who has raced at the Nurburgring 24hr race with a bunch of other kiwis in recent years?).

Not the same Greg Taylor. The "earlier one" was predominately a rally driver, but also drove one of the DJR Sierras at Bathurst one year as well as a stint in Group A .In fact he had a Group A Lancia Intergrale rally car at about the same time as a Group A BMW. The Taylor brothers had a roadmarking business in Wanganui and dabbled in everything motorsports

[conrod]

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September 15th 2007. No idea if this is the original or not.

Yes the original car, owned by a chap in Nelson who pilots a large fishing trawler, and drags it out at the occasional historic event. Drives it very well too He purchased it many years ago from Ken Smith. It is a "proper" Gp.A car built by Sytner from a BMW Motorsport Gp.A kit.

I would agree with you about Ken Smith having this car. it was also raced by Croz and Lew McKinnon, Graeme Lorimer,Warren McKellar and Richard Gillies and must have been one of the higher mileaged Grp A cars in New Zealand.. I remember being told by Lew it was quite special with a very low chassis number 001.. Greg pedalled a bunch of cars including a quick 1200 coupe and a lease deal of a Tranz Am Ford that he shared with Dick Johnson. My memory is hazy but it sounds plausible he did have a drive of the Beemer as well..

The very early (001?) chassis numbered car is still owned by some friends of mine, they purchased it for not much in 1989,when it was well past its "use by" date, and is still as last raced. Was an Eggenberger car, and converted at some point to RHD. Basic colour is yellow, ran with a few liveries and sponsors in its day, and still retains alloy roll cage.

[Shoreboy57]

Note the flaggies perched on the concrete wall that separates the two straights here!

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Martin Smith photo[/QUOTE]

Great memories Steve. I was on the next flagpoint along from Crunch, at the entrance to the right hander that took the cars from the wharf on to Custhomhouse Quay (look above the Falcon in the photo). You can see that this corner, like many parts of the track used containers rather than concrete barriers to line the track, in this case on the exit. And in the photo you can spot one of the many spectators who thought standing on a container would make a great viewing spot. We spent the weekend chasing them off. Fortunately no one it hard as I recall

[ERC]

Thanks for the reports on the race and the interesting TV aspect. I feel much better for that!

As the Sytner/Morton team kept accurate lap charts (which was the norm, even for F1 teams years ago with a triple analogue stopwatch board - stopped, running, ready) it is almost impossible to get it wrong, just as long as the scorer presses the lever each time the car goes past. They are used to watching just their own car and it is/was very rare to miss it.

As I remember it, at Manfeild, each timer wrote the lap time on a pad so I am not sure if the above mentioned 'flip pad' system was in addition to the time keeper's or was combined? Maybe someone will know?

If combined, it was far from fool proof and even lap times could be very dubious, as in handicap racing particularly, if they failed to spot a car until it was past the finish line, that lap would be a second or two longer than normal, meaning that the next lap would then be a second or two quicker, leading to some weird 'fastest laps'! The same applied to timekeepers at other circuits of course.

As always, the timekeeper was a judge of fact, but the stewards could have accepted the Morton/Sytner pit crew's summary and compared it to the Petch charts, (I assume they were doing the same?) as it is extremely difficult to fake - especially given the time scale - as the cumulative time and the individual lap times could have been tied to the TV coverage, particularly the pit stops, which was of course filmed and broadcast live.

[Steve Holmes]

This is what Lew MacKinnon wrote on the 10-Tenths Forum a couple of years ago:

I mentioned earlier about the Wellington Street Race result in 1985 and that John Morton and Frank Sytner felt that they were robbed of 1st place when the win was awarded to the Mark Petch owned Volvo 240 (Michel Delcourt / Robbie Francevic ) with Morton / Sytner ‘s BMW credited with 2nd. Subsequent events indicate that Morton and Sytner may have been right.

This was the first ever event of this nature for Wellington. The track was along arterial streets of Wellington City and back via the wharves, so the circuit could only be completed on the Friday night, with practice scheduled for Saturday and racing on Sunday. But the circuit failed to pass the inspection – all to do with (the lack of) run off areas / positioning of armco / positioning of shipping containers as barriers etc. In the end, the race was run as a NZ National Invitation race rather than an FIA sanctioned race – and this posed major challenges for drivers holding FIA racing licences. Australian drivers were OK but for the likes of Walkinshaw, Percy, Delcourt, it meant a series of late night calls from NZ to Europe for approvals to be given that they could race at all!

Officials for the event came (largely) from the Manawatu Car Club (Manfeild Circuit, some 3hrs north of Wellington) and marshals were largely volunteers from local Car Clubs. Electronic tags in cars didn’t happen until the 1986 races, so lap scoring was via a person assigned to each car, sitting in a trackside grandstand and turning over a small, numbered , flip chart each time ‘their’ car passed. TVNZ assigned a person to watch these scorers / these charts, to keep an eye on leaders / update the commentators. There were no official lap scorer(s).

On the Saturday night (practice was over), the Mark Petch owned Volvo 240T (Francevic / Delcourt) was flown from Auckland to Wellington in a Bristol Freighter and (as it hadn’t practised) it had to start from the rear of the grid. But within a few laps, it was already working steadily through the field.

Anyone watching the TV at the time would have noted that, toward the final stages of the race, the commentators had no idea who was leading. Or who was second. Or sixth. But the Volvo had become the darling of the event – carving its way through the field but having to make several stops because of a flapping bonnet (broken bonnet clip). But the lap scorers couldn’t keep up with the pit stops and several cars were ‘credited’ with incorrect completed laps. But it had become decision time for the TV team.

Fast forward to the following year, and the TVNZ Director / Producer for Sport (Iain Eggleton) spoke of the 1985 event to members of the Hutt Valley Car Club near Wellington. He said that, with 90 minutes left of the race, he had no idea who was leading the race and no-one could tell him. So with the race building to a climax and no-one able to tell whether the BMW or the Volvo was leading, HE made the decision and told the commentators to call the Volvo as leading and for the BMW to be second. And that’s how the TV says it finished. The irony is that Eggleton could just as easily have said the BMW was in front and the Volvo in second.

At the end of the race, Morton and Sytner produced full lap charts done by their team - complete with lap times / cumulative times / pit stops and showed that they had completed an extra lap compared to the laps credited to the ‘winning’ Volvo. But the officials decided that the results were to stand.

It is clear that Morton and Sytner were stiffed by poor lap scoring, but the ‘win’ by the Volvo quickly evolved into folk lore – it was a story too good to change after the fact. I’ve also replayed the entire TV coverage but agree that it doesn’t provide sufficient proof one way or the other.

But because of the lap scoring fiasco in 1985, electronic tags were used in each car from 1986.

Wow, brilliant!

[Carlo]

Our team was in the pits adjacent to the Volvo, we had three people doing our lap scoring/timekeeping duties and we had the Volvo in the lead.
We need to remember that most cars had numerous pit stops because of clipping kerbs, damaging tyres and items falling off them whilst our Bluebird turbo just keep on circulating out of trouble until we lost a brake pad with about 35 minutes to go. Even though our car was probably the slowest on the track it was running 3rd when the pad dropped primarily because it kept out of trouble and played the percentage game of achieving a result by spending less time in the pits and more time on the track. That last half hour saw us over run by 5 cars that were considerably faster than ours.

[Steve Holmes]

Had it not been for a small mistake by Kent Baigent just after the halfway mark, its quite likely this car would have won the race. Neil Lowe made an early pit stop on lap 20 due to a fluctuating oil pressure light, but the team did a quick check, and came to the conclusion it was a signal fault, not an oil pressure issue. The stop dropped the car one lap down, but it made up ground when the others made their first stops. Eventually, Lowe/Baigent worked their way into the lead, which they then lost when they picked up a puncture. But the car was quick, and with others also having issues, this pair eventually moved back in front.

Just after the halfway mark, with Baigent at the wheel, the oil light came on again, distracting Baigent for a moment, and he missed his braking point, got on the marbles, and slid into a concrete kerb. This punctured another tyre, but also damaged the suspension, which lost the team several laps. At the time the car was leading, and the Sytner/Morton car was running second, but both these drivers struggled as their stints went on, because the Metro magazine BMW didn't have power steering, and the Baigent/Lowe car was consistently faster.

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Martin Smith photo

[Steve Holmes]

Another shot of the Baigent/Lowe BMW. I may well be wrong about this, but I seem to recall this was a Schnitzer car out of Europe? Sadly its career ended in a nasty barrel-roll along the back fence of Manfield a year later.

Its amazing the number of potential hazards the Wellington track had in this first year. As Carlo said above, most of the top runners were making multiple unscheduled pit stops due to being caught out by the track.

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Steve Twist photo

[Steve Holmes]

Woohoo! Jeez...I was a skinny bugger back then. Possibly the most exciting flag point I ever worked on. I'm the skinny dude in the grey sweatpants. If we needed to go to the toilet during the race; we had to sprint across the track! Life was so easy back then....

Ha ha ha, thats brilliant crunch, I love it!

[Steve Holmes]

Here are a couple of pics of the two GTM Engineering Volvos from Frank de Jongs excellent touring car history website. Both Michel Delcourt and Pierre Dieudonne drove these cars throughout the 1984 ETCC. Dieudonne was originally entered in the Petch car at Wellington. You can see the similarities with the Petch car, right down to the white number backings and the tape on the headlights.

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[Steve Holmes]

Its hard to find a better looking colour scheme than the black and gold of JPS in the '80s. This is the Crichton/Wilkinson car prior to the race. Wilkinson did the opening stint, and ran second to Johnson in the early laps before a quick spin, then a delay with a puncture. Another spin while lapping a slower car put the BMW into one of the shipping containers lining the track, which created further delays while the bodywork was whacked back into shape. This dropped the team three laps down, one of which they made back up to finish 3rd.

One week later at Pukekohe, this car won, which I believe gave Crichton/Wilkinson the series title for both events.

I believe this was one of the former Group C cars run in Australia by Frank Gardner? I assume its still in Group A guise? Where is it now?

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Steve Twist photos

[Steve Holmes]

Brilliant shot here of JPS crew members man-handling the front guard away from the tyre following the mid-race spin and subsequent clash with a container. Note how close the punters were able to get to the action in the background!

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Martin Smith photo

[TonyG]

Pukekohe the week after the Wellington race.