Lola F5000 at Bathurst

“This is a shot of Max Stewart and I at Bathurst with Jackie Stewart in 1976. It was a special ‘let’s see’ day for having a world championship grand prix at Bathurst, and Max and I drove our Lolas there. The day was sponsored by Goodyear, who were the main tyre company in F1 at the time. Jackie was their ambassador, so that’s why he was there. Formula 5000 cars were the closest things we had here to F1 cars at the time. They got Max and I to do it because we both had Goodyear sponsorship. The idea for a world championship grand prix at Bathurst didn’t go anywhere, but I actually thought they could have run an F1 race at Bathurst – I certainly wouldn’t have had any qualms at the time racing my Lola there. But what that day pointed out to us was that there would have needed to be a test day in advance, to determine the right tyre compound. With the tyres we had on the 5000s, they would only come up to temperature by the time we’d got to The Cutting, and then they’d cool down on Conrod – so we were severely lacking grip at Murray’s and various other places where the tyres had cooled down too much. That day we had to run a lot of wing just to heat the tyres up, which was self-defeating because it slowed us up on the straights. But Max and I weren’t mucking around that day – we were going quick. We were actually on track for a couple of hours. Both of us were under the outright lap record…” [ED: That lap record was a 2:09.7 set by Niel Allen in 1970 driving an early F5000 car, a McLaren M10B-Chevrolet.]