The odd couple
Some said pairing the pragmatic Larry Perkins with flamboyant Peter Janson at Bathurst would be a disaster. They were wrong. AMC chatted to two very different characters about their remarkably successful privateer partnership.
‘Captain’ Peter Janson and Larry Perkins were poles apart on the personality front but made for an odd couple at Bathurst that was extraordinarily effective.
Peter Janson and Larry Perkins are not exactly two peas in a pod. When they drove together in the Bathurst 1000 in the late seventies and early eighties, one was an entrepreneurial Melbourne socialite, who was prominent at equestrian events one weekend, before enjoying the many delights of motorsport the next. The other was a no-nonsense, engineering-focused bloke usually absorbed in solving all manner of mechanical problems.
Janson was English-born and lived a showy lifestyle supported by an occupation he described as being ‘a gentleman.’ Perkins, in contrast, grew up on a farm in Cowangie in the Mallee region of Victoria, and had doggedly forged a career in motorsport that took him all the way to Formula 1.
Yet, despite being motor racing’s odd couple, at least from the outside, their partnership produced a trio of Bathurst 1000 podiums in just four
Mountain campaigns together for Janson’s parttime team.
The duo nished best of the rest behind the Moffat team 1-2 of 1977 in their rst drive together. Perkins didn’t contest the 1978 Hardie-Ferodo 1000, but returned to the Cadbury-Schweppes Torana A9X for 1979 as they nished runners-up to six-lap victors Peter Brock/Jim Richards. The unlikely combo’s nest moment came 12 months later, when their VC Commodore nished just a lap behind #05, which somehow held together after an early-race skirmish left it battered, bruised and seemingly out of the hunt.
The pair circulated in the top ve again in 1981 until engine woes curtailed their day after 69 laps.
It was indeed a golden period for Janson’s privateer out t, which was managed by former Holden Dealer Team lead mechanic Ian Tate. Podium results were not uncommon for the predominantly yellow machines, The Captain even scoring a win at Calder’s ManChamp round in late 1978. But it was in the highpro le October classic where Janson’s unconventional approach and pitlane antics, backed up by solid results, saw him attain Aussie motorsport cult status.
“The best thing I ever did was bring Larry back from England and I talked him into that,” The Captain explained. “It was Ian Tate who recommended him to me. He said, ‘If you could get him, he’d be perfect for you – fast and reliable.’ When I rang Larry, he said to me, ‘Okay, cock, you’re on!’ So I got a ticket for him and got him out here.
“A couple of times I ew Larry back from England and then he came home permanently. We worked together and produced what we did with what little money we had.”
If the relationship bore bountiful fruit for Janson, it proved equally bene cial for Perkins. It was the start of a new chapter in his racing life.
“It was Janson who got me into touring car racing,” Larry explained to AMC. “I was full-time in Europe at the time. It was Ian Tate who rang me initially, when I was in England, on behalf of Janson, as I had never met Janson.”
The paths of Tate and Perkins had crossed when both worked for Harry Firth preparing HDT Torana XU-1s in the early 1970s. Perkins earned a quid on the tools at Firth Motors while he raced junior open-wheelers domestically and also competed in the odd event for ‘H’, most notably in rallycross.
Larry won the 1971 Formula Ford Driver to Europe series, graduated to Australian Formula 2 the following year, securing another title, before taking the plunge and heading overseas.
Perkins then grafted out a living in the old dart, clawing his way to racing’s top level. He ultimately made 14 F1 World Championship Grand Prix appearances between August 1974 and July 1977 in a succession of mid- eld or tail-end chassis – Amon, Ensign, Brabham, BRM and Surtees. Rarely able to bring a budget, he tended to ll gaps on the grid when better-funded drivers couldn’t be found.
So when Tate, and subsequently, Janson phoned Perkins in mid 1977, LP was all ears.
“At that stage I was ‘between contracts’ – in other words, I didn’t have a drive! So I thought, ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty good.’ I had known and worked under Ian Tate, he had been the boss at HDT and we had always got on well.
“I thought it was pretty cool that Ian had rung me up. So I came back and did the Janson thing. I stayed in his apartment in the Windsor Hotel for the rst of many times. He was a straight-shooter, which I always appreciated. And we got on well; we never had a blue. Well, we probably did have blues, but we moved on quickly and got along really well.” Janson concurs.
“Everyone said I would never ever get on with him,” The Captain says. “They reckoned after ve days at Bathurst together that’d be the end of it, because we were chalk and cheese. And you know, we never ever had a cross word. And only once in our time did Larry admonish me. That was when we went around the circuit before the race started, and I went a bit over on the gravel to throw some Cherry Ripes to the ag marshals.
“Larry said to me, ‘F***k it, Janson, you idiot, what about the tyres? You could have got a puncture.’ That was the only time he got stuck into me. And I think in four years running together, we couldn’t have had a better relationship. And it’s a friendship I still have with him today.”
Reminded of this incident, Larry could only laugh at the memory.
“I was in the car with him, in the passenger seat, for the supposed warm-up lap – more so a parade lap – 30 minutes before the start. I didn’t know he had his friggin’ pockets full of Cherry
“He lived on gin and tonic, chased some wild women, but he was fantastically up to the job of driving. History should record that he was a bloody good driver because he was certainly up to the job in those cars. – Perkins on Janson
Ripes, and we were going up the hill before The Cutting when he pulled right over to the side of the track and onto the dirt. ‘Get back on the track, you’re on your bloody race tyres for Chrissake!’ And he very quickly pulled back onto the track and was very apologetic, like a little school boy. ‘Sorry, Larry, I’m sorry.’ We’ve both got a good memory!”
Perkins suggests that the key to their success was that both parties brought something complementary to the partnership. The fact that they were such different characters proved to be a plus not a minus.
It must also be noted that Janson wasn’t the only one with a sense of humour. While Perkins doesn’t suffer fools gladly, he does possess an outgoing personality and a repertoire of one-liners.
“Janson had unique skills – like how he put deals together – and I had a different set of skills. And neither of us tried to cross the line into the other’s territory and suggest ‘I know better than you.’ That’s why we got on. I’m sure there were things that raised my eyebrows, but it was team and I didn’t have a single quarrel with that. He was a privateer, don’t forget, so he was up against the big teams – the Holden Dealer Teams, the Moffats, the Johnsons, whoever – and he had to fund it all. And he did so successfully for many years.
“He lived on gin and tonic, chased some wild women, but he was fantastically up to the job of driving. History should record that he was a bloody good driver because he was certainly up to the job in those cars. We decided on a lap time that we wanted to circulate at and he did that with ease. While I was driving with him he never spun it or crashed it or blew it up. I have great memories of my time with young Janson, that’s for sure.
“What surprised me as time went on, the motoring journos never gave him any credit for being a bloody good driver. He was always on the pace. His speed never cost us any results or anything. No, I got on really well with old Janson.
“One of the reasons we got on well, was that he didn’t abuse the machinery. If I or Ian Tate said to him do X,Y or Z he would quite happily say, ‘Yep I’ll do that.’ He would follow instructions without the slightest bit of fanfare. It was refreshing to drive with him.”
Janson, meantime, says while he himself was no Rhodes Scholar, he was smart enough to recognise that he could learn a lot from LP.
“Larry was very good for me because he made me a better driver. He tempered me, threatened to read me the riot act. He said immediately, ‘right this is what we’re going to do... we’ll do it this way.’ Larry’s in uence on me was what got us those results.”
Now, backing up a little, what were some of those things behind the scenes that raised Larry’s eyebrows? After all, Janson’s approach to racing was... unorthodox. Do tell, dear Larry?
“(Laughs), yes, well, three times I came out from England to drive with him to drive at both Sandown and Bathurst – I did both within the same trip as such – and each time I stayed with him at the Windsor Hotel while I was out here. And my wife and I got married at the Windsor Hotel. But no, he was just an average bloke when it came down to it. He was always hosting or going
to functions – cocktail parties I guess you’d call them. He appeared to be close to inebriation from the time he got out of bed, but in reality he was a long way from that. When I stayed with him, it was not unusual to look around at 8 or 9 o’clock at night and nd that he had sneaked off to bed. He was never as villainous as his reputation may have suggested.”
The partnership ended when Perkins, who had settled back in Australia, had an offer from the HDT he couldn’t refuse.
“It was a sport for me,” Janson said, “but for Larry racing was his future. That last year with Larry, 1981, I rode in the Royal Show, and won in the show jumping. And the next minute I’m stepping on the plane to Bathurst. Next was a cross country steeple chase, where I stepped off the horse to do another motor race.”
Perkins ran the HDT team and won three consecutive Bathursts, 1982-’84, co-driving with Brock.
Janson replaced Perkins with David Parsons and continued to be a privateer benchmark in terms of speed, if not results, until the Group C category gave way to Group A and he closed his team. From 1985 Janson became a co-driver himself, scoring fourth in ’88 in a BMW, before hanging up his helmet after the last Group A event, in 1992.
While Janson was winding down, Perkins was just getting into stride as a team owner/driver. Perkins Engineering’s trio of Bathurst wins – 1993 with Gregg Hansford and ’95 and ’97 with Russell Ingall – cemented his reputation as the Great Race’s supreme automotive engineer.
And to think, his entree to Bathurst came thanks to Panorama’s clown prince.
“Larry was very good for me because he made me a better driver. He tempered me, threatened to read me the riot act. He said immediately, ‘right this is what we’re going to do... we’ll do it this way.’ Larry’s influence on me was what got us those results.” – Janson on Perkins