The 1986 Australian Touring Car season was the 27th season of touring car racing in Australia commencing from 1960 when the first

Australian Touring Car Championship The Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) is a touring car racing award held in Australia since 1960. The series itself is no longer contested, but the title lives on, with the winner of the Repco Supercars Championship awarded the trophy ...

and the first Armstrong 500 (the forerunner of the present day

Bathurst 1000 The Bathurst 1000 (formally known as the Repco Bathurst 1000) is a touring car race held annually on the Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. It is currently run as part of the Supercars Championship, the most recen ...

) were contested. It was the second season in which Australian Touring Car regulations were based on those for the FIA

Group A Touring Car Group A is a set of motorsport regulations administered by the FIA covering production derived vehicles intended for competition, usually in touring car racing and rallying. In contrast to the short-lived Group B and Group C, Group A vehicles we ...

category. Touring Cars competed at 21 race meetings in Australia during the 1986 season, contesting the following events: * The ten rounds of the

1986 Australian Touring Car Championship The 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship was the 27th running of the Australian Touring Car Championship. It began on 2 March 1986 at Amaroo Park and ended on 13 July at Oran Park Raceway after ten rounds. This was the second ATCC to be run ...

(ATCC) * The five rounds of the 1986 Australian 2.0 Litre Touring Car Championship, with four of these rounds held at ATCC meetings * The six rounds of the 1986 Australian Endurance Championship, all of which were also rounds of the 1986 Australian Manufacturers' Championship. Round 5 of the AEC at Calder Park doubled as the opening round of the

South Pacific Touring Car Championship The South Pacific Touring Car Championship was a motorsport championship staged in Australia and New Zealand for Group A touring cars between October and December in 1986. The championship was won by Australian driver Allan Grice. The series re ...

* The five rounds of the 1986 Better Brakes/AMSCAR series, held exclusively at

Amaroo Park Amaroo Park Raceway was a motor racing circuit located in Annangrove, New South Wales, in the present-day north-western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Opened in 1967, the road circuit served as a venue for a variety of competitions including t ...

, with the opening round also an Australian Touring Car Championship round and the final round also an Australian Endurance Championship / Australian Manufacturers' Championship roundStewart Wilson, Better Brakes/AMSCAR Series, Australian Motor Racing Year 1986/87, pages 230 to 234 * The second round of the 1986 South Pacific Touring Car Championship, which was held as a support race at the 1986 Australian Grand Prix meeting at the

Adelaide Street Circuit The Adelaide Street Circuit (also known as the Adelaide Parklands Circuit) is a temporary street circuit in the East Parklands adjacent to the Adelaide central business district in South Australia, Australia. The "Grand Prix" version of t ...

Season review

The second year of

Group A Group A is a set of motorsport regulations administered by the FIA covering production derived vehicles intended for competition, usually in touring car racing and rallying. In contrast to the short-lived Group B and Group C, Group A vehicles w ...

in Australia saw the domination of the

JPS Team BMW JPS Team BMW is a former Australian motor racing team that ran from 1981–1987. The team's main focus was touring car racing but also ran in sports sedans and GT cars as well. The team, under the management of former British Touring Car Cham ...

team fade with several other teams pushing forwards. Most spectacularly was the return of Nissan Motorsport Australia (now under the leadership of former Bathurst winner Fred Gibson) with the newly homologated

Nissan Skyline DR30 RS The is a brand of automobile originally produced by the Prince Motor Company starting in 1957, and then by Nissan after the two companies merged in 1967. After the merger, the Skyline and its larger counterpart, the Nissan Gloria, were sold in ...

turbo. Led by long time Nissan lead driver

George Fury George Fury (born 31 January 1945, in Hungary) is a retired Australian rally and racing car driver. For the majority of his career Fury was associated with Nissan, twice winning the Australian Rally Championship, and twice runner up in the Austr ...

they were the main rival for another new team, the John Sheppard run

Volvo Dealer Team The Volvo Dealer Team was an Australian motor racing team that competed in Australian touring car racing in 1986 winning the Australian Touring Car Championship. The team was managed by John Sheppard and had its base at the Calder Park Racewa ...

, a factory supported team which succeeded the

Mark Petch Motorsport Mark Petch Motorsport was a motor racing team that competed in Australian and New Zealand motorsport. History Mark Petch Motorsport was formed in 1985 by former New Zealand National Championship winner Mark Petch who by 1985 had become a wealth ...

Volvo team of 1985. The Touring Car Championship became a two horse race between Volvo's

Robbie Francevic Robert James Frančević, (born on 18 September 1941 in Auckland, New Zealand) is a retired racing driver who featured prominently in New Zealand and Australia during the 1970s and 1980s. His biggest wins were the inaugural Wellington 500 street r ...

and Fury. Fury was never able to haul in Francevic's early points lead and Francevic was crowned champion. Francevic was fired from the Volvo Dealer Team by Sheppard the day after the Castrol 500 at

Sandown Sandown is a seaside resort and civil parishes in England, civil parish on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom with the resort of Shanklin to the south and the settlement of Lake, Isle of Wight, Lake in between. Together ...

after refusing to drive what he believed would be an un-competitive car which had only been completed at the meeting started. He then returned to the Mark Petch team as they began development of a Ford Sierra turbo. Although Francevic won the ATCC in the car, 1986 was the last time the Volvo 240T was seen in Australian touring car racing. Defending ATCC, Endurance and AMSCAR champion, JPS Team BMW's Jim Richards picked up race wins during the season, claiming the Australian Endurance Championship.

Peter Brock Peter Geoffrey Brock (26 February 1945 – 8 September 2006), known as "Peter Perfect", "The King of the Mountain", or simply "Brocky", was an Australian motor racing driver. Brock was most often associated with Holden for almost 40 years, a ...

likewise returned to the winner list for

Holden Dealer Team The Holden Dealer Team (HDT) was Holden's semi-official racing team from 1969 until 1986, primarily contesting Australian Touring Car events but also rallying, rallycross and Sports Sedan races during the 1970s. From 1980 the Holden Dealer ...

, dominating the

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

round of the ATCC before engine failure, and later claiming an ATCC win at Surfers Paradise which would prove to be the last time a

Holden Holden, formerly known as General Motors-Holden, was an Australian subsidiary company of General Motors. It was an Australian automobile manufacturer, importer, and exporter which sold cars under its own marque in Australia. In its last thre ...

won a race in the championship until 1992. Brock's win at Surfers in his

Holden VK Commodore SS Group A The Holden Commodore (VK) is a mid-size car that was produced by Holden from 1984 to 1986. It was the fourth iteration of the first generation of the Holden Commodore and introduced the luxury variant, Holden Calais (VK) sedan. Overview The ...

would also prove to be the 34th and last ATCC race win for the HDT who had won their first ATCC race when coincidentally Brock won at Surfers in 1973 in a

Holden LJ Torana GTR XU-1 The Holden Torana is a mid-sized car that was manufactured by Holden from 1967 to 1980. The name apparently comes from an word meaning "to fly" in an unconfirmed Aboriginal Australian language. The original HB series Torana was released in 19 ...

(Brock contributed 28 of those 34 wins with

Colin Bond Colin John Bond (born 24 February 1942) is a retired Australian racing driver. Bond reached the highest levels in Australian motorsport in 1969 when he was recruited by Harry Firth to the newly formed Holden Dealer Team. He quickly found succ ...

winning the other 6). While Richards won the Endurance Championship through consistent placings, the big prizes went elsewhere. Nissan claimed the

Sandown 500 The Sandown 500 (formally known as the Penrite Oil Sandown 500) is an annual endurance motor race which is staged at the Sandown Raceway, near Melbourne, Victoria, Australia from 1964. The event's name, distance – and the category of cars co ...

with Fury and his new young team mate

Glenn Seton Glenn Seton (born 5 May 1965) is an Australian racing driver. He won the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1993 and 1997 while driving for his own team. Although he never won the Bathurst 1000 like his father Barry did in 1965, Glenn star ...

(the son of 1965 Bathurst winner

Barry Seton Barry Seton (known as 'Bo'), (born 5 October 1936), is an Australian racing driver. He won the Bathurst 500 (500-mile race, about 800 km) in 1965 with co-driver Midge Bosworth driving a Ford Cortina GT500.

who also built the engines for the Nissan team), while

Allan Grice Allan Maxwell Grice (born 21 October 1942), known to motor-racing fans as "Gricey", is an Australian former racing driver and politician, most famous for twice winning the prestigious Bathurst 1000 (1986 and 1990), and as a privateer driver o ...

and

Graeme Bailey Graeme Alfred Bailey (born 11 July 1943 in Ourimbah, New South Wales), is an Australian retired racing driver, best known as co-winner of the 1986 Bathurst 1000. Career Group C Bailey's career emerged in the late 1970s, becoming a front runn ...

returned from their attempt at the FIA Touring Car Championship in Europe to claim victory in the

, with Grice also winning the Group A support race at the

Australian Grand Prix The Australian Grand Prix is an annual motor racing event which is under contract to host Formula One until 2035. One of the oldest surviving motorsport competitions held in Australia, the Grand Prix has moved frequently with 23 different venu ...

. John Smith claimed the debut title for small touring cars, the distinction for the class was set at two litres leaving a field of Toyota Corollas, Isuzu Geminis and a Nissan Gazelle. The

based Better Brakes/AMSCAR series was claimed by JPS Team BMW's number 2 driver,

Tony Longhurst Anthony Lawrence Longhurst (born 1 October 1957 in Sydney) is an Australian racing driver and former Australian Champion water skier. He is most noted for his career in the Australian Touring Car Championship and V8 Supercar series. Longhurst is ...

driving the team's secondary car, a BMW 325i, the forerunner to 1987's

BMW M3 The BMW M3 is a high-performance version of the BMW 3 Series, developed by BMW's in-house motorsport division, BMW M GmbH. M3 models have been produced for every generation of 3 Series since the E30 M3 was introduced in 1986. The initial model ...

. Australia hosted the opening two rounds of the inaugural

with the final three rounds held in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. The opening round also doubled as Round 5 of the Australian Endurance Championship at Calder Park while Round 2 was the Group A support race at the Australian Grand Prix. Allan Grice who won in Adelaide went on to claim the South Pacific title after a further win at Baypark in NZ.

Race calendar

Australian Touring Car Championship

Australian 2.0 Litre Touring Car Championship

Australian Endurance Championship

Australian Manufacturers' Championship

The 1986 Australian Manufacturers' Championship was awarded to

Nissan , trade name, trading as Nissan Motor Corporation and often shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. The company sells ...

Castrol 500

James Hardie 1000

Better Brakes/AMSCAR Series

( BMW 325i) won the 1986 Better Brakes/AMSCAR Series for

from

(

Alfa Romeo GTV6 The Alfa Romeo Alfetta (Type 116) is a front-engine, five-passenger sedan and fastback coupé manufactured and marketed by Alfa Romeo from 1972 to 1987 with a production total over 400,000. The Alfetta was noted for the rear position of it ...

) and his JPS team mate Jim Richards ( BMW 635 CSi).

South Pacific Touring Car Championship

1986 Australian Grand Prix Support Race

South Pacific Touring Car Championship – Round 2
This race was a support event at the 1986 Australian Grand Prix meeting. The race was held over 32 laps of the 3.780 km (2.362 mi)

.1986 AGP Adelaide Group A Support Race
/ref>

References

Linked articles contain additional references.

External links

Official V8 Supercar site
{{Australian Touring Car Racing Australian Touring Car Championship

Touring Cars Touring car racing is a motorsport road racing competition with heavily modified road-going cars. It has both similarities to and significant differences from stock car racing, which is popular in the United States. While the cars do not mo ...