Mount Panorama street racing circuit in Australia

The 1990 Tooheys 1000 was a motor race held on 30 September 1990 at the Mount Panorama Circuit just outside

Bathurst, New South Wales Bathurst () is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Bathurst is about 200 kilometres (120 mi) west-northwest of Sydney and is the seat of the Bathurst Regional Council. Bathurst is the oldest inland settlement in ...

, Australia. The event was open to cars eligible under CAMS Group 3A regulations, commonly known as Group A Touring Cars, with three engine capacity classes. It was the 31st running of the "

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 rece ...

". The race, which was Round 2 of both the

1990 Australian Endurance Championship The 1990 Australian Endurance Championship was the seventh running of the Australian Endurance Championship. It began on 9 September 1990 at Sandown Raceway and ended on 3 November at the Eastern Creek Raceway after three rounds. The championshi ...

and the

1990 Australian Manufacturers' Championship The 1990 Australian Manufacturers' Championship was open to manufacturers of cars complying with CAMS Group 3A Touring car regulations and was contested over a four-round series. Schedule *Round 1, Sandown 500, Sandown Raceway, Victoria, 9 Sept ...

, resulted in an upset victory for British 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 ...

and

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 **Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal enter ...

Bathurst 1000 winner

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 ...

in a

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 ...

entered Holden Commodore over the

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 ...

Ford Sierra The Ford Sierra is a mid-size car or large family car manufactured and marketed by Ford Europe from 1982-1993, designed by Uwe Bahnsen, Robert Lutz and Patrick le Quément — and noted for its aerodynamic styling producing a drag coeffi ...

Jeff Allam Jeffrey Frank Allam (born 19 December 1954 in Epsom, England), is a former British racing driver who made his name in Saloon Car racing. He now works as Head of Business for Allam Motor Services in Epsom which are a Skoda sales and service and V ...

and

Paul Radisich Paul Radisich (born 9 October 1962, in Auckland) is a retired New Zealand racing driver and businessman of Croat origin. He has competed in saloon cars for many years — both European-style tourers and the V8 Supercars of Australia and New ...

and the

Perkins Engineering Perkins Engineering was a team contesting the Australian V8 Supercar Championship Series, operating as an active racing team between 1986 and 2008. From 2009 onwards, the involvement of Perkins Engineering in the championship wounded back into ...

Holden Commodore of

Larry Perkins Larry Clifton Perkins (born 18 March 1950) is a former racing driver and V8 Supercar team owner from Australia. Biography Early years Growing up on a farm in Cowangie in the Mallee region of Victoria, Larry, the son of racing driver Eddi ...

and

Tomas Mezera Tomas Mezera (born 5 November 1958 in Czechoslovakia) is a naturalised Australian racing driver. Mezera won the 1988 Bathurst 1000, and for many years was a member of the Holden Racing Team as both a driver and team manager. Mezera's sporting ...

. The race marked the first Bathurst 1000 victory for the Holden Racing Team and the team's first race win since Larry Perkins won the Group A support race at the Australian Grand Prix in November 1988.

Class structure

Holden VL Commodore SS Group A SV of Percy & Grice

Cars competed in three divisions as follows:

Division 1: 3001cc and Over

Division 1 featured the turbocharged

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 ...

s and

Toyota Supra is a sports car and grand tourer manufactured by the Toyota Motor Corporation beginning in 1978. The name " supra" is derived from the Latin prefix, meaning "above", "to surpass" or "go beyond". The initial four generations of the Supra were ...

s, the V8 Holden Commodores and a

BMW 635CSi The BMW E24 is the first generation of BMW 6 Series range of grand tourer cars, which was produced from January 1976 to 1989 and replaced the BMW E9 coupé. The E24 was produced solely in a 2-door coupé body style. All models used petrol straig ...

Division 2: 1601 to 3000cc

Division 2 was composed of BMW M3s, a BMW 323i and a

Mercedes-Benz 190E The Mercedes-Benz W201 was the internal designation for the Mercedes 190 series sedans, a range of front-engine, rear drive, five passenger, four-door sedans manufactured over a single generation, from 1982 to 1993 as the company's first compac ...

Division 3: Up to 1600cc

Division 3 was composed exclusively of various models of Toyota Corolla.

Tooheys Top Ten

* After being fastest qualifier by almost half a second, and breaking

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 ...

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...

Hardies Heroes record time of 2:13.85 in the process (by just 0.01 seconds), and with his B&H Sierra the fastest car on Conrod Straight at over ,

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 ...

made a mistake in the shootout and lost over two seconds while teammate Alan Jones suffered gearbox problems on his shootout lap and did not record a time.
*

Klaus Niedzwiedz Klaus Niedzwiedz (born February 24, 1951 in Dortmund, Germany) is a former professional race driver and motoring journalist. Driver His greatest success came in the 1980s as a driver for Ford. Niedzwiedz rose to prominence when driving a Ford C ...

, who was only seven after official qualifying, improved his time by over a second to win his second Top Ten for Allan Moffat Racing after also winning the "for money only" shootout in

1988 File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Bicenten ...

.
* The

Gibson Motorsport Gibson Motorsport was an Australian motor racing team that competed in the Australian Touring Car Championship from 1981 until 2003, though the team had its roots in Gibson's "Road & Track" team which ran a series of Ford Falcon GTHOs in Serie ...

Nissan Skyline GT-R of Jim Richards and

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 ...

, which was expected to take pole, failed to make the Top Ten, being only 0.04 behind the 10th placed

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

of eventual race winners

and

at the end of Friday's qualifying. During the final qualifying session, Richards reportedly matched Longhurst's top speed on Conrod.
* 1990 was the fifth and last time that Allan Grice was the fastest of the Holden Commodore runners in the Top Ten. Previously he had led the Holden charge in 1982 (pole),

1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...

(4th),

(2nd) and

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, ...

(7th).
* V8 Holdens were back in the runoff after missing out in

1989 File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs ...

, with the

car, and the Percy/Grice HRT car qualifying over 4 seconds faster than the Commodores had managed 12 months earlier.

Official results

Statistics

* Provisional Pole Position - #25 Tony Longhurst - 2:13.84 * Pole Position - #10 Klaus Niedzwiedz - 2:13.94 * Fastest Lap - #1 Mark Skaife - 2:15.46 (165.12 km/h)Australian Motor Racing Year 1990/91, page 280 - Lap 98 (new lap record) * Race time of winning car - 6:40:52.641990 Tooheys 1000 Race Results, Tooheys 1000 Official 1991 Programme, page 29 * Race average of winning car - 149.72 km/h

References

External links

Tooheys 1000 Bathurst 1990, touringcarracing.net

* ttp://autopics.com.au/bathurst-1990/ Images from Bathurst 1990, www.autopics.com.au {{Bathurst 1000 races Motorsport in Bathurst, New South Wales Tooheys 1000 September 1990 sports events in Australia