John Sheppard’s HDT
Some of the secrets behind Brock’s ’78 Bathurst win – and how it easily could have gone wrong.
When prodigal son Peter Brock returned to the HDT in 1978 it was to a team managed by John Sheppard. ‘Sheppo’, one of the unsung heroes behind Holden and Brock’s Bathurst success, tells AMC that the ’78 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 could easily have turned out very differently.
Peter Brock was renowned for his good fortune during his halcyon days and, while his many admirers argue he made his own luck, former Marlboro Holden Dealer Team boss John Sheppard is here to present the case that his lead driver was indeed blessed. In recounting how they won their rst Bathurst together in 1978, ‘Sheppo’ reveals how a random pre-race component selection ruined John Harvey’s race in the sister car while Brock cruised to a famous victory in #05.
After the 1978 Hang Ten 400 at Sandown – in which the MHDT Torana A9Xs had nished 1-2 – the team sent its six alternators to an electrician to be race-prepared for Bathurst, the biggest event of the year. When they came back, one of those randomly selected alternators went into Brock’s car. Another went into Harvey’s car, and failed. It could easily have been the other way around.
“That was just sheer arse,” says Sheppard, HDT head honcho in 1978 and ’79, winning Bathurst both years and the ATCC in ’78. “That alternator could easily have gone on Brock’s car. It was just one of a heap of them. That was just purely and simply a ‘pick up and put on’ component, and if it had gone on Brock’s car he wouldn’t have won the race. Anyone who denies the word ‘luck’ in motorsport…”
Instead, Harvey and Charlie O’Brien spent half an hour in the pits trying to diagnose the problem and nished 21st, while Brock and new co-driver Jim Richards raced trouble-free to a one-lap victory over Allan Grice and John Leffler in the Craven Mild Torana.
O’Brien had crashed the #15 Torana during Friday’s qualifying session, much to Sheppard’s annoyance.
“Charlie was faster than Harvey and I said, ‘Okay, you can qualify the car; you do one warm-up lap, one fast lap and one cool-down lap,” he recalls.
“So Charlie goes and does his one warm-up lap and one fast lap, which was quite a fast lap, and he must have got a rush of blood to the head because he decided to do another fast lap, and crashed the car. I thought that was typical, because Charlie was a bit of a spoilt boy most of his life, and he’s not used to doing what he’s told. That put us in a bit of a hole because we had to race prepare Brock’s car while we were repairing the other one. It was a huge distraction. We had to stay up all night.
“Brian Wood (who sponsored Murray Carter) was the chairman of a sort of touring car association that we were part of, and on Sunday morning he came up and said, ‘The word’s around that you just put in one of the promo cars’, the cars that go to the dealers. Brian was a nice bloke, and I said, ‘Well, we didn’t, we actually repaired it, and if it wasn’t you I’d tell you to get stuffed.’ I showed him where it was repaired and he was sort of happy and went off and told all the other teams.”
There was more drama for MHDT before the start. After the warm-up lap Brock said he thought the differential wasn’t working properly. The team quickly jacked the car up, turned the rear axle and decided there was nothing wrong. In doing so, though, the no-spin diff had disengaged.
Starting from pole position, Brock made a slow start, trailing the two Moffat Ford Dealers team Falcons and Bob Morris’s Torana into Hell Corner.
“The ag dropped and he just sat there, because turning the diff like that on the jack
pushes the little gizmos that lock it and push the drive dogs out of mesh, and to get it to re-engage you’ve got to put a little movement on it and it just goes ‘doonk’ and falls in, but because he had all those revs on at the start it wouldn’t re-engage; it wasn’t until he lifted off to select second that the diff engaged! With the bene t of hindsight, I would have told Brock to just give it a little ‘doomp’ to engage the diff, but we weren’t aware that that’s what it would do. Why would you ever jack the car up and unlock the diff?
“Brock was a special person. The things he would always think of… not necessarily logical stuff he’s talking about, but my attitude was, if they’ve got any little whims or whatever they want then just do it. If he’s worried about the diff we’ll check it for him. But we made the problem by unlocking it.”
As it was, the diff was ne and it was relatively plain sailing for Brock. On the second lap he moved past the white Moffat ‘Cobras’ to be second, then passed Morris for the lead on lap three. Moffat then led for 30 laps, but after that Brock and Richards were not seriously challenged.
Sheppard said Richards was the perfect co-driver.
“He was a nice bloke, would never say anything nasty, and drove bloody quick. He’d be there in his thongs and shorts, you’d tell him, ‘We need you in half an hour or so’, and he’d arrive all dressed to go, do his three laps, get out of his racing gear and back into his shorts. You wouldn’t Left: Sheppard’s post-Firth HDT had show as well as go. O’Brien’s practice crash (above) was an unnecessary annoyance, says Sheppard. A crew error in checking what Brock (incorrectly) felt was a faulty diff ironically caued the diff to unlock and leave Brock going nowhere off the line.
“Because Moffat had done it the year before, we staged a 1-2 finish at Sandown and Brock said, ‘I’m never doing that again; I actually lapped Harvey and he’s beside me!’
really know he was there. He was ideal. We never compared times, but he was smart enough to know not to go quicker than Brock anyway.
“In the race it started to rain and we were in a comfy lead, but Grice started to catch him a little bit, and I just wrote on the board ‘HOLD 28s’ – next lap was a 2m28. He was just the ideal bloke, got along with everybody, no ego-tripping and all that sort of stuff. You couldn’t have picked a better bloke for the job.”
The Moffat team’s famous form nish at Bathurst the year before was still fresh in the mind, so MHDT had done the same thing at the chequered ag at Sandown, though Harvey had been a lap down. But at Bathurst – despite cruising around in tandem over the concluding laps – Brock dashed away on the nal lap. Sheppard knows why.
“Because Moffat had done it the year before, we staged a 1-2 nish at Sandown and Brock said, ‘I’m never doing that again; I actually lapped Harvey and he’s beside me!’ He thought he was making Harvey look like a hero.
“Brock was a very difficult man to manage. He had a charmed life. I regarded Brock as a spoiled boy a little bit, but not a lot. The relationship was reasonably alright. We didn’t part the best of friends, but afterwards I went to a meeting with my kids and he welcomed me like a long lost brother. When I wasn’t his boss, he was quite happy to be my friend, but he was a bit like Larry Perkins – he didn’t like authority.”
Sheppard didn’t really celebrate that 1978 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 victory, because he went to every race meeting expecting to win (“as you should”) and always reacted more strongly to losing than winning.
“I’d always been told not to rub people’s noses in it when you win, so it was just, ‘oh yeah’. My attitude was always to just accept the win. I used to get much more like ‘humph’ out of losing than ‘yeee’ out of winning. To be honest, I remember it more when it was ‘empty’ than when it was ‘full’ because what used to happen was all the hangers-on would come around and beat their gums and be your friends.”
And after Bathurst 1978 there was no shortage of people slapping Sheppard and Holden’s prodigal son on their backs for a stunning victory.
Next issue John Sheppard is the subject of AMC’s Muscle Man pro le.