Allan Grice

To win Bathurst, as Wally Storey points out, you need a fast car and two fast drivers. The HRT certainly had the latter in Win Percy and Allan Grice. In fact, it had more than that, because not only were Grice and Percy among the world’s top touring car drivers in 1990, they had also had plenty of recent experience driving together.

Percy had shared Grice’s privateer Commodore VL at Bathurst in ’87, the pair returning in Grice’s VL ‘Walkinshaw’ the following year. But Bathurst ’88 was just one of a number of endurance races Percy and Grice did together as part of Nissan’s European touring car squad. Just two months prior to the 1988 Great Race they’d shared a Skyline HR31 to sixth place in the Spa 24 Hour.

“As drivers we were a good match,” Grice says. “We were as quick as each other, and our driving styles were similar.”

The Commodore they were sharing at Bathurst in 1990 was Percy’s rather than Grice’s car, but with Percy struggling with a bad shoulder it would be Grice who did the bulk of the driving – including a double stint to the end of the race.

“Win said it was the hardest call as a team manager not to nish the race off. Had I been in his position I probably would have felt the

same. But I was in the rhythm of things out there, I was doing it easy and doing the times we needed to do. Putting on the manager’s hat, he asked me how was I going and could

I do more laps, and I said, ‘yeah, no problem.’ And that’s what happened. I was always good at long stints anyway because I could relax. All the way up Mountain Straight and all the way down Conrod, you spend a lot of time there in a straight line, and you should be relaxing then. I had a technique for getting myself to relax on the straights, and it worked. I’d often get out of the car after a decent stint and I’d be ne, and the younger gym jockeys are falling around and lying in ice baths!”

The press seemed to think it was a bit of a façade but towards the end but we were genuinely concerned about fuel. I was in economy mode: not doing four down changes through each gear at the end of the straight, and instead braking right up to the back of the corner and then just do one heel-and-toe rather than four.

for the next three laps but the chances of getting 30 laps out of a set of intermediates was next to zero. And this was the last stop – about 30 laps to go, we weren’t going to be stopping again.

“I don’t know what his decision-making process for doing that was, but I watched them put the intermediates on and I was over the moon.”

Radisich’s intermediates lasted just seven laps. As he pitted for slicks, the HRT Commodore took the lead. From there, Grice did the job, and even though that entailed conserving fuel to avoid a late race splash-and-go stop, he had enough pace to keep the DJR Sierra at a safe arm’s length.

This victory must surely be Holden’s greatest at Bathurst. Going into the race the Commodore VL was heavily outnumbered and looked certain to be outgunned, and yet it prevailed. What’s

It was a magnificent win for the HRT against overwhelming odds. An overjoyed Wally Storey (right) with engine man Rob Benson (back to camera) on the podium.

more, with Larry Perkins and Tomas Mezera

nishing third, and the second HRT Crompton/ Brad Jones entry fth, three of the top ve were Holdens.

And only eight months earlier the HRT was operating out of a near-empty shed, with a new team of people, and only one race-ready car. For a racing driver that had no prior experience as a team manager, and who was operating in a foreign country, Win Percy achieved something truly remarkable with the Holden Racing Team he created in 1990.

“The team was a good group of people,” Storey says. The two drivers were very fast, and the car was durable. Rob (Benson) did a really good engine, but every single individual was a really clever bloke and everyone had input. We even had Holden’s motorsport manager John Lindell working as a refueller at Bathurst. Each bloke worked unbelievably hard It was just one of those things that worked.”