The 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship was a CAMS sanctioned Australian motor racing title open to Group 3A Touring Cars. The championship, which was the 31st

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 ...

,''Australian Titles'', docs.cams.com.au, as archived at web.archive.org
/ref> was promoted as the Shell Ultra Australian Touring Car Championship.Official Souvenir Programme, Shell Ultra Australian Touring Car Championship Round 6, Mallala Motor Sport Park, 9–10 June 1990 It began on 25 February 1990 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 ...

and ended on 15 July at

Oran Park Raceway Oran Park Raceway was a motor racing circuit at Narellan south west of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia which was operational from February 1962 until its closure in January 2010. The track was designed and started by George Murray and Jac ...

after eight rounds.Australian Motor Racing Year, 1990/91, pages 278 & 279 The title was won by Jim Richards, his third Australian Touring Car Championship victory. Richards drove for Nissan Motorsport Australia, utilising both

Nissan Skyline HR31 GTS-R 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 ...

and the new Skyline R32 GT-R during one of the most competitive seasons in the history of the championship.

Teams and drivers

The following drivers and teams competed in the 1990

Season review

The opening three rounds of the championship continued the story of the previous two seasons with the

Ford Sierra RS500 The Ford Sierra RS Cosworth is a high-performance version of the Ford Sierra that was built by Ford Europe from 1986 to 1992. It was the result of a Ford Motorsport project with the purpose of producing an outright winner for Group A racing in ...

's of

Dick Johnson Racing Dick Johnson Racing (formerly DJR Team Penske), is Australia's oldest motor racing team competing in the Supercars Championship. The team currently fields the #11 and #17 Ford Mustang (sixth generation), Ford Mustang GTs for Anton de Pasqu ...

teammates Dick Johnson (winner of

Symmons Plains Symmons Plains Raceway is a motor racing circuit in Australia, located about south of Launceston, Tasmania. Since the closure of the Longford circuit in the 1960s it has been Tasmania's premier motor racing facility. The circuit is one of th ...

and

Phillip Island Phillip Island (Boonwurrung: ''Corriong'', ''Worne'' or ''Millowl'') is an Australian island about south-southeast of Melbourne, Victoria. The island is named after Governor Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, by explorer ...

) and John Bowe dominating podiums with only the tight nature of the

layout giving another driver a look-in, namely the

Nissan Skyline 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 i ...

of Jim Richards who held off Bowe in a race long duel to win the season's opening round. Another tight track at

Winton Motor Raceway Winton Motor Raceway is a motor racing track in Winton, near Benalla, Victoria, Australia. History The Benalla Auto Club began planning for a permanent racing track around 1958, as a replacement for their existing track at Barjarg. In 1960 i ...

gave Richards his second victory of the year with team-mates

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 ...

and Alan Jones putting their

Benson & Hedges Benson & Hedges is a British brand of cigarettes owned by American conglomerate Altria. Cigarettes under the ''Benson & Hedges'' name are manufactured worldwide by different companies such as Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, Philip Morris USA, British ...

Sierras ahead of the DJR pair onto the podium (the Longhurst Sierra's were generally acknowledged as most powerful of the Blue Oval's cars at some , though the extra power usually hurt the Sierra's skinny rear tyres and as team manager Frank Gardner put it a year later, ''"We usually started at the front and worked our way back"''). Lakeside Raceway saw a complete upset with veteran

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 his first ATCC race since

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...

from former teammate

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 ...

in his Mobil 1 Sierra and

Holden Racing Team Walkinshaw Andretti United is an Australian motor racing team based in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton. The team currently fields two Holden ZB Commodores in the Supercars Championship for Nick Percat and Chaz Mostert, along with a Porsche 91 ...

driver

Win Percy Winston "Win" Percy (born 28 September 1943, near Tolpuddle, Dorset) is a former motor racing driver from England. Percy was British Touring Car Champion three times, and at the time of his retirement was the most successful non-Antipodean drive ...

in what would prove be Holden's only podium finish of the season. Englishman Percy, a former three time British Touring Car Champion, had taken over the role of team manager and lead driver of the HRT in 1990 and was contesting his first ATCC. Colin Bond made it two in a row at Mallala after

Mark Skaife Mark Skaife (born 3 April 1967) is a retired Australian motor racing driver. Skaife is a five-time champion of the V8 Supercar Championship Series, including its predecessor, the Australian Touring Car Championship, as well as a six-time Bath ...

's spectacular debut of

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 ...

's new , 4WD, twin turbo Skyline R32 GT-R, which was nicknamed "Godzilla", ended with a broken hub after storming to the lead in the early laps. As at Lakeside, Bond's steady, though unspectacular race pace paid off and as others fell away, his

Caltex Caltex is a petroleum brand name of Chevron Corporation used in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, and Southern Africa. It is also the brand name of non-Chevron petroleum companies in some countries (such as New Zealand, and previously ...

Sierra emerged in front.

broke through for his first victory of the year at

Wanneroo Wanneroo is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located within the City of Wanneroo. Geography As it is on the Swan Coastal Plain, the Wanneroo wetlands stretch parallel to the coastline and to the north and south of the suburb. Education ...

despite driving with falling turbo boost pressure for the last half of the race which actually helped minimise his tyre wear, while a broken axle to Johnson at Wanneroo saw his points lead surrendered to Richards who finished fourth in his first race of the new GT-R. Ahead of the

Grand Finale, Richards held a three-point lead over two-time defending champion Johnson, with Bond and Brock still a chance being eleven and twelve points behind respectively. Bowe, winless despite his form, was too far behind even if he won and all other contenders retired. Richards, again in the GT-R, dominated Oran Park, making the points calculations irrelevant. Second place allowed Brock to slip past Johnson and Bond into the series runner's up position. After a poor start by Brock, who proved to be the only Sierra driver capable of matching Richards in the Nissan (though his fastest lap time proved to be almost 2 seconds slower than the Nissan), Richards drove away from the field. Behind Bowe, Longhurst was sixth after an inconsistent season ahead of

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 ...

's improving Sierra. Percy was the best of the Holdens in eighth ahead of Alan Jones and

Gregg Hansford Gregory John "Gregg" Hansford (8 April 1952 – 5 March 1995) was an Australian professional motorcycle and touring car racer. He competed in the FIM Grand Prix motorcycle racing world championships from 1978 to 1981 and in Australian to ...

who only had a partial season in

Allan Moffat Allan George Moffat OBE (born 10 November 1939 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) is a Canadian-Australian racing driver known for his four championships in the Australian Touring Car Championship, six wins in the Sandown 500 and his four ...

Eggenberger Motorsport Eggenberger Motorsport was a Swiss motor racing team that competed in the European Touring Car Championship in the 1980s. History In 1982, Eggenberger Motorsport won the 1982 European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) with Umberto Grano and Helmu ...

built Sierra. For the first time since the ATCC changed from a single race to a series of races in 1969, the ATCC did not appear in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

with neither

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 ...

or Calder hosting a round. The Phillip Island circuit, revived in 1989 for the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix which was a round of the 1989 Grand Prix motorcycle World Championship, held its first ATCC race since

1977 Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic R ...

Results and standings

Race results

The 1990

consisted of 8 rounds with one race per round. Each race was slightly under one hour in duration.

Championship standings

Points were awarded on a 20–15–12–10–8–6–4–3–2–1 basis for the first ten outright positions in each race.Graham Howard, Stewart Wilson & David Greenhalgh, The official history, Australian Touring Car Championship - 50 Years, page 305 The best seven race results counted for each driver's total.

References

External links

Shell Ultra Australian Touring Car Championship - 1990, touringcarracing.net

Touring Cars 1990, autopics.com.au
{{Australian Touring Car Racing Australian Touring Car Championship seasons

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 ...