Bob Morris

Isometimes get asked about the various co-drivers I’ve had at Bathurst over the years. Maybe that’s because I often had international drivers.

The reason for bringing in drivers from overseas was that I always felt it was better to have two number one drivers in the car, rather than a co-driver who just lled in during the middle of the race.

I’ve had some great co-drivers, but some of the drivers we brought out for the race didn’t work out.

It wasn’t easy for them, because they were unfamiliar with our cars, and the Group C cars in the 1970s and early ’80s – and even the earlier Series Production cars – were very physical to drive. To give you an example, the XE Falcon was the rst car I’d ever raced with power-steering. We only put that on because Alan Jones asked for it. When AJ came back and rst drove one of these cars he couldn’t believe it: they don’t stop, they don’t go around corners, they’re hard to drive. He was fresh from winning the World Championship at the time but this was a totally different eld from what he knew. It was just a different era and you just had to learn to drive what you had. You could probably say that we didn’t know any better; you just adapted to what you had, and did your very best with it.

So it was hard for the guys that came out from Europe, although Dieter Quester and Derek Bell did adapt very quickly. Dieter was the European Touring Car Champion when we brought him out in 1978. It was a pretty hot team we had that year: we had Dieter; we had Derek Bell, who went on to win Le Mans ve times; and we had John Fitzpatrick, who was European Porsche Cup champion. John was great – very professional, tted in with what we were doing with no fuss and was happy to drive the car as I had set it up. And he was fast. Of course, it was John behind the wheel of the Torana at the end when we won the race in ’76.

That was the period when quite a few internationals were coming, and it was great to have them because you could compare yourself to the best in the world. Moffat brought Dieter Glemser out rst, and then others followed. It was good to be able to have that comparison with them.

Even now, when you see the 12 hour sportscar race at Bathurst where they have the top guys from all over the world, the local guys acquit themselves pretty well.

Knowing the circuit helps. Bathurst, with the undulations and blind corners, really sorts out the guys who don’t commit. Because you won’t go fast there if you don’t commit.

In 1977 we had Johnny Rutherford and Janet Guthrie. That didn’t go well. Guthrie was hopeless. The best thing that happened to her was when Johnny Rutherford crashed early in the race, so that she didn’t have to drive. She was really slow in the car. Even Rutherford wasn’t that good.

Ron Hodgson was astute enough to say to me, ‘You get in the car and drive it rst, so they don’t have any excuses’. So I drove the car in the rst practice session. I was quicker than last year’s lap record. The car wasn’t slow; it was a brand new car and the same as mine, except mine was a four-door and theirs was a hatchback.

So we handed the car over to them, and the practice car we supplied them with, which was the L34 that won the race the previous year – away you go. It was a bit difficult, because Rutherford was the American hero, and he’d won Indy. I didn’t want to tell him how to drive. We’d actually been to Oran Park with them, so they’d had a chance to get used to the car. But when we got to Bathurst, he was out of his depth.

After the rst practice session he came to me and said, ‘Can you show me the way around?’ So between the sessions we got in a road car and I drove him around the circuit, showing him the lines and braking points that I used, and so on. Which was good, because I didn’t feel comfortable telling him what to do, because he was a star driver. But he came to me and asked – that was different.

He was frustrated, but his wife was even more frustrated! He quali ed fairly well down, but all she was concerned about was the press back home, and worried about them saying how uncompetitive he was, basically. Being outside the States, though, I would have thought no one there probably knew what was happening, or that he and Guthrie were even here.

Then again, the whole reason he was here was because Channel Seven paid him a lot of money and they paid us to build a car for him. Channel Seven wanted to get the broadcast into America, that’s what it was all about – attracting interest over there because it had some big American name drivers.

Janet Guthrie was pretty well credentialed; she came out of the NASA space programme. Technically she knew a lot, and she was the rst woman to qualify for Indianapolis. But she didn’t like the circuit, and she didn’t like the car. Rutherford was slow but she was a lot slower than him. It was a shame because they were well credentialed and they had everything laid out in front of them.