The sweetest victory
In this extract from his book, Holden and Harry Firth recounts his decision to quit Ford to assume the reins of the new Holden Dealer Team in 1969, and how he led the squad to victory at Bathurst with the new HT model Monaro GTS 350.
My working arrangement with Ford had become difficult by the end of 1968. I could not work with the new competition manager, John Gowland, and then with Al Turner arriving from America it was obvious they had their own ideas of how it should run. Things were changing at Ford. There was a new breed coming into Ford then; they had university degrees and they spoke beautifully but they didn’t know anything.
At the same time there was a bloke named Peter Lewis-Williams at Holden. He was in their public relations department and he was a motorsport person. I knew him pretty well and I said to him, “these Ford people better get their act smartened up or I’m gonna piss off, I’ve had enough”. “Oh,” he says, “I’ve been talking to the boss and they’re sort of interested in doing something about that – would you be interested?”
I most de nitely was interested. A couple of days later he came back and said, “are you free for a meeting?”
So I go down and meet with John Bagshaw, the sales director. We made an agreement, shook hands and that was that. Just after talking for an hour or so. He said, “what do you want?” I said, “this is how I do it: I want sole say, I want to liaise with the engineering department, I want someone like Peter Lewis-Williams to do all the nitty gritty and all the things within the company, and invoices to be paid in 30 days.”
“That’s no trouble,” he says, “what else?”
“Well, I would want say into the engineering department as to what cars you want to race and what’s got to be done to them, and I want to know about any new models in advance. The way I do it, when you’re going to produce a car, you make a race ar out of it, the items that are xed that have to be on the car, you make them into the car when you make it. Then all you have to do is the free things, you just add them on to it and there’s your racecar.”
I also said: “I want to be able to have regular meetings with you and the managing director at least once every couple of weeks, so that if there’s any trouble with the department chiefs, you’ll be able to sort that straight away.”
Peter Lewis-Williams
The reason I asked for that was that I expected the section chiefs at GM-H would have the idea that I was still a Ford person, and therefore wouldn’t give me much cooperation. And they did think like that at rst.
But Bagshaw sorted them out. He was good. He agreed to everything I asked, and so away we went.
As is well known, GM-H’s new team was to be called the Holden Dealer Team because of a world wide ban on motor racing by General Motors. GM-H could not be seen to be actively going motor racing, but this did not apply to the dealers. For some reason rallying did not count in the ban. The money for the team came via the back door at GM-H through Peter Lewis-Williams and the advertising agency as part of a special HDT slush fund. Some of the GM executives weren’t even aware of it! But the dealers were actually also involved, and some of them really joined in, with supply of road cars and the use of premises when we were racing at events in their area – a great help.
1969 Bathurst 500
This race was even more of a challenge than it should have been, for the following reasons. We were starting with a completely new team of cars and drivers, and I’d had no development input on the 350 Monaro. The fact that I was dealing with a very conservative motor company which did not race officially didn’t make things any easier. There were lots of problems. The 350 model had tramp rods on the rear axle which didn’t work, and a rear gearbox mount that exed at speed. This allowed the car to jump out of gear – not ideal.
Four specially prepared engines were sent out from Chevrolet’s competition department. So Holden’s engine department gets them and the
rst thing they do is put them on the dyno – and proceed to wear them out. Three weeks before the race and I didn’t have any engines. They said they were still testing them. I said, “You don’t have to bloody test them, we’ll do all the testing. For Christ sake give us the bloody engines!
In the meantime do you mind if we have a go ourselves and blueprint one?”
So we got a 350 engine and we blueprinted it as we thought it should be done, and we didn’t think it was too bad. So then they said we could come and pick the others up, and did we mind if they put ours on the same dyno under the same conditions?
I was very happy with our engine. I said to them after the nal dyno run, “Take it off – do not run it again. I will pick it up the next day”.
Then I was casually asked, “Did it have chrome piston rings or new moly lled?” They
Firth assembled a somewhat obscure driver lineup for the HDT in ‘69 at Bathurst but his selections of Colin Bond and Peter Brock were masterstokes.
were chrome. Well, we get down there to pick up the engine the next day and they tell us there has been a small problem. “What do you mean?” I said. “Well, we decided to give it another run to verify a couple of gures and now there is a problem with it.”
They knew a power run at high RPM for ve minutes full chat would cause the chrome to lift off rings and scuff cylinder bores. That is what they did. The bloody bastards. It was their egos; it was all too much for them.
So, three weeks to go and we had the four worn out Chev engines, our own to repair after they’d killed it on the dyno (with new moly rings this time) and another of our own part built. Out of all this we salvaged two and a half of their Chev units and nished our two.
After the Sandown Three Hour we had car and brake problems to sort out and get CAMS approval – we were now dealing directly with the chief engineer and Charlie Patterson, who were cooperative and did things in a hurry, so the simple x was found in cutting the body away behind front bumpers, taking off the disc dust shields, and putting the slotted wheels back on.
Already we had special pads and linings made up and I made a board to hold the new pads, pins, clips and cold wheel nuts. We made bars with tapered ends to push back the pistons in the calipers on both sides of the car (at the same time by called order) and special wheel braces. Fuel churns were xed from previous races, so a time and motion study and much practice gave a time of 2 minutes 45 seconds for pads and fuel (1m45 fuel only) including change driver. We expected to change pads twice on each car during race.
The team had support from Castrol and the Wool Board, and through them new team greenand-gold driving and mechanics’ suits made by Mike Treloar (husband of fashion designer Prue Acton). They looked ultra smart, although with everything going on we didn’t have time to sew on the sponsors’ badges.
While all this was going on, I had organised for Colin Bond to take a car to Amaroo Park and do a 130 laps with it and see what happens: how long the brakes run for or anything that goes wrong with the car. We’d run a car at Calder as well. From Bond’s test we got a good idea about pad wear and fuel consumption, and we also found that the fuel pickup needed attention. The Michelin X was the tyre, and our race brakes were OK if used as directed – on/off, not hard press, and in a straight line rather than cornering as this cut off the air scoop. We also had to reset the carby needles.
We drove the cars to Bathurst rather than putting them on trailers. I am often asked why did we do that, rather than transport them. For one, we didn’t actually have the money for a proper transporter! But it also saved us on airfares for the driver, because you could get the driver to drive it to the track himself. In doing that, he also got a bit of extra practice in the car, so it worked out well.
I drove one car to Sydney and did a little bit of publicity with it. I can remember taking Doug Stewart and a mate who I used to stop with at the Travelodge, and I was around there doing a couple of things on the way through. I had the car with me so I said “Stewy, come for a ride”. Up the back of Kings Cross, in the back streets... “Bloody hell!” he said, geez it is quick!” But we didn’t get arrested or anything. It was sign written but that didn’t matter.
We actually had a big argument about the sign writing. Bill Patterson wanted to paint them white with a blue stripe and someone else wanted something different. I said, “I think you had better leave it with us”, and I came up with the white car with the green and gold stripe along the side and each car had either one two or three of these stripes along one side of the roof. So we could identify them very easily. The Holden and the Dealer words were slanted back the other way and the team was made a little smaller. It really stood out. I got Peter Lewis-Williams to bring out his camera and run it across the cars to see. He told me a white car with dark lettering is what you want. I said, “we’ll paint the bonnets dark green and just put the ash on and we’ll have the Wool Board sticker and the Castrol sticker”. He thought it looked pretty good, so that is what we went with. It did look reasonable on the tellie. That is where we got the idea that everything we did from then on. We ran a mock up across the camera to see how it came up on the screen. That is also how the ’72 Bathurst car paint scheme came about; they were outstanding, really good. The agency did those in their entirety. A bloke at the agency (George Pattersons) was really smart. We were arguing about it and he said he’d like to have a go at it. He reckoned he could come up with something really outstanding. So I said, “Here
you are, go for it”, and that was what he came up with.
I spent considerable time explaining exactly how the cars were to be driven and also making sure our pit stop drill was understood. The media treated my choices of Bond and Brock with absolute ridicule, but it didn’t worry me what they thought. Bond, from NSW, I’d had my eye on. I thought he’d be real good value, and valuable on the rally side as well because he was very good in rally cars. He was already a bit of a star so I grabbed him. Tony Roberts had driven the previous year and done reasonably well, and I knew him, so I thought I’d put him in with Bond. Des West was an experienced touring car driver who I felt could help Brock, who was completely inexperienced and obviously pretty bloody wild, but also very good – you could see that. Henk Woelders was a Formula 2 driver with no touring car experience. Woelders worked at Pattersons, and his old man was very much up in the dealer situation, so I thought it was diplomatic to use him. The other driver was Peter Macrow. He was good; I’d been helping him for years.
For Ford, AI Turner had the best American pit crew available – but he chose Goodyear tyres and did not do a race simulation. I tried them, but the advantage was not worth the risk and they were no good in the wet unless they were soft compound – but then the wear rate was far too high.
Performance-wise the 327 Monaro the previous year had been on a par with my XT Falcon. But the new 350 was down on power against the XW GT-HO 351. I well knew what the GT-HO would be like, because before I’d left Ford I made the 36-gallon fuel tank and twin exhausts, and I’d had my pick of the 351 engine range. AI Turner just added a rear sway bar and spoilers to create the GT-HO.
“Third and top gear were only used and we’d change at 4500 rpm so there was peak torque in next gear – 5500 rpm limit in top equalled 125 mph (200km/h). Then you’d tap brake at 300 yards on last hump on Con-Rod to keep nose down and three presses on/off to the corner”
- Harry on the GTS 350
The GT-HO was faster in a straight line than the 350 Monaro, but the Monaro was better out of slower and uphill corners. It made more low down torque than the Ford, and was kinder on its tyres. The brake packages were about the same, but the Monaro had more efficient rears. If the limited slip diff was adjusted correctly, the Monaro was more drivable as a race package – sort of neutral, whereas the Ford had power oversteer in a big way. Of course, this destroyed rear tyres. The Detroit Locker diff in the Ford would lock in on power and then release when the driver lifted off, so the HO had to be pointed in the right direction before accelerating – and then the driver had to be careful not to give it too much or the tail would walk. But the 350 under the same conditions could be driven very hard without stuffing the rear tyres. This would be the crucial factor at Bathurst.
I decided not to show our hand in practice. I thought it would be better to push the Fords and see what the places were by the rst pit stops in the race. Woelders was meant to go fast initially but was clearly not con dent and unhappy with his practice times – this did not please me as his car was the strongest by 15 bhp.
Bond was clearly the best (helped by the 130 laps pre-practice). Roberts was not as good; West and Brock were up there and made a good steady pair, but the surprise was Macrow – good lap times and easy on the car.
The horri c rst lap crash created by Bill Brown did not help anyone’s nerves and it was a long wait in the pits counting your cars as the race went on in complete chaos on top of the mountain. When it all settled down we were well placed, but Woelders was obviously affected and not competitive.
Near the rst pit stop it all started to happen. Ford’s new Goodyears blew and we were in front and going very nicely.
How it went from there was that Ford would catch up, and then blow another tyre.
Woelders pulled in early and Macrow drove for the rest of the day. Roberts took his stint in Bond’s car and Brock with West – in very quick stops saw us hold lead. Roberts was not obeying pit signals so was pulled in and Bond put back in. It meant one extra can of fuel at a later stop, but I didn’t care because the drivers did as told or else out.
All the time you could hear the P/A announcers at the track talking about our inexperience and what was going to happen. This was so funny to me – they had completely forgotten how many 500s my cars had won!
At half distance we pulled Macrow in for pads and fuel – as practice on the worst placed car – and did all three cars on scheduled laps in 2 minutes 45 seconds.
Bruce McPhee was going very well and had Michelins – but would have longer fuel stops – and our cars were securely in rst ve places now. At the last big stop it appeared to be ours – I had counted McPhee’s laps and he also had to make a stop. Plus, he hadn’t changed the right front and it was down to steel cords – so no quick laps.
The last stops happened as forecast. Our cars were one-three-six. McPhee was a good second, his tyres throwing sparks on corners as they down to wire ribbing.
Ours were like new; the second set of pads on Bond’s car were half gone, and we had no fuel problems – third and top gear were only used and we’d change at 4500 rpm so there was peak torque in next gear – 5500 rpm limit in top equalled 125 mph (200km/h). Then you’d tap brake at 300 yards on last hump on Conrod to keep nose down and three presses on/off to the corner.
Brock and West ended up third, and their car had a bit of a mis re towards the end. Brock did take a little while to settle in, took him a little while to get used to the big time. With what he’d been driving, the Austin A30Firth’s conservative strategy paid dividends in his first Bathurst with the Holden Dealer Team.
Holden, he was down in a much lower bracket of motor racing. But Bathurst, that was in the big league. I said to him, “Peter, just go out there, remember everything I’ve told you about what to do, and just treat your rst run as a practice session. Don’t think of it as a big deal, just go out and do your stint.”
Well, by the time he got to his second stint, he was going very, very well!
The dramas didn’t stop with the end of the race. At scrutineering Big AI had someone protest our cars, claiming the Chev 350 did not have four-bolt main bearings as standard. So I said, “There’s one on the oor at the local dealers and could we bring it around and cut sump open so the bearings could be seen?” They said, “You can’t do that to a new car” but the Holden dealer (Peter Sargent), being present, said, “You most certainly can”.
So we drained the oil and cut open the sump and officials inspected it and were happy. AI and co, when asked, said they didn’t want to look – John Hinxman (ARDC) exploded and said, “After doing that to a new car you don’t even want to look?” Protest dismissed, and all costs to repair new car to be met.
The winning car was put back together and driven home to Melbourne where it was given a normal check and new discs and rear axles and driven up to Surfers Paradise for the 12-hour race. They used a local pit crew from one of the Holden dealers there and they were quite adequate.
The car won the race – Bond/Roberts again – and was driven home afterwards. A classic example of driving within the rev range – good fuel mileage, and 12 hours on an engine that had already done Bathurst was no problem. Rear wheel bearings problems on the long sweeper at the end of the straight at Surfers Paradise caused fracture of outer sleeve through seal ring groove, but it lasted the event.