Le Mans and the Polarizer
S oon after starting full-time at HDT, Jeff was asked to help assemble two new Ralt RT4 Formula Paci c cars that had lobbed at the Chetwynd Street workshop. They belonged to Greg ‘Pee Wee’ Siddle, who was running them at Calder for Alan Jones and Roberto Moreno. Jeff worked on Moreno’s car at the track in ’83 and therefore became an Australian GPwinning mechanic!
Also at Calder was British team owner/driver John Fitzpatrick, who had won Bathurst in 1976 with Bob Morris, and soon Brock, Siddle, Perkins and Porsche Australia boss Alan Hamilton had hatched a plan to run one of Fitz’s Porsche 956s at Le Mans in 1984. A quick sponsorship pitch to Bob Jane and, in the spirit of national pride from the America’s Cup win a few weeks earlier, Team Australia was born.
Jeff accompanied the experienced Bartley to the UK and they then spent six weeks getting a tatty old Porsche 956 up to scratch for the Silverstone 1000, whcih was the race before Le Mans.
Perkins, being an ex-F1 driver, was more recognised in Europe than Brock, and he also performed better in the ground-effects car, which had huge downforce. They ran fth before an under-spec suspension bolt broke.
With ve weeks until Le Mans, though, they were still in good shape – until the following day, when they discovered the car had been sold to Charles Ivy, who would run it for – of all people – Allan Grice!
“We’d just spent six weeks prepping the bejesus out of this thing and it was almost ready to go to Le Mans. LP came down and there was some angst in the front office, but they sold the car and we got the next shitbox in the workshop, and it was worse than the one we had, so we had to start all over again. We were so pissed off.”
Still, the car wasn’t being collected until the next day, so Bartley and Grech went back to the workshop that night and swapped over all the good bits from ‘their’ car.
“They came and picked the car up and no one knew, not even LP. Then they (Ivy) got to Le Mans and all sorts of things were breaking…
“The faster you went (through corners with a 956) the more grip you got because of the aerodynamics, and Brock just couldn’t get his head around driving the car faster. At Silverstone we had the high-downforce bodykit, which he wasn’t too bad with, but at Le Mans we had the lowdownforce set-up. I think he was uncomfortable at that speed and he was very slow.
“LP started to panic and he just overdrove trying to make up the time. It was night, he was tired, he’d done a lot of hours, and he crashed. It was a shame.
“LP was hard on himself and didn’t blame anyone but himself. He was gutted because they wanted to go back the next year with a new 962. Bob Jane and Alan Hamilton were keen, but then the Polarizer thing started…
“Brock wanted two brand new VKs for Bathurst – the famous dayglo cars – and we had six weeks to build them. We got back and there were just two bare bodyshells from Holden.
“Brock usually popped into the workshop to see how things were going, but we were into building these new cars and hadn’t seen him. Harves said he’d got crook coming home from Europe, so we just pressed on. A week before Sandown, Brock nally fronts, and he was just a different bloke.
“Before Bathurst we still didn’t see a lot of him, then at the hotel up there Bev and Peter came in and introduced this guy, Eric Dowker.
“There was some weird stuff… and Brock wasn’t Brock, but we got a 1-2. Then we got back and Slug (John Harvey) said to us, ‘This Dowker’s got in his ear and my theory is he’s been hypnotised.’ It was hard to believe, but his personality had changed.” On the track, though, nothing had changed. “If he did 15 laps before the race I’d be overstating; he just hopped in and, bang, he was there. LP would be in there grinding the car all day, but Brock just smoked it.”
After smashing the opposition at Sandown, Bathurst and then Surfers in the nal days of Group C, the team turned its attentions to building a new Group A Commodore for 1985 and moving into HDT’s new facility in Port Melbourne. They raced an interim car in New Zealand and returned via Surfers Paradise to do some testing, where Perkins received a disturbing call from engine builder Burns, after which he told them to pack up and head home.
“Larry got a call from Part because Brock had been on the dyno and putting bags of crystals on the manifold and saying it was running better and all this weird stuff, and that’s when it got really bad. I just couldn’t stand the weirdness, so I left.
“I had been in awe of Brock. He was just an icon but when he was around the race team he was just a normal bloke, having a beer or whatever. That’s why in ’85 I thought, ‘This just can’t be happening.’ I was still young, so I wasn’t the one to be going to him saying, ‘What are we doing with this crap?’
“For me personally, it really hurt to leave. It was my dream job.”