A magnificent day

Oran Park was a rudimentary facility in 1971. One thing it did have, though, was a dynamic promotional team which was quick to see the raw – and growing – appeal of sedan racing. Oran Park offered something different from the traditional sports car and open wheeler championship style events found at, say, Warwick Farm: shorter, sharper races with the emphasis on non-stop entertainment, all day. In a way the ATCC in 1971 was perfect for Oran Park – it wasn’t much different from the regular sedan racing fare the circuit had hung its hat on, but with superstar cars and drivers.

And it happened at just the right time: the convergence of the venue’s growing reputation as a place of guaranteed action with the explosion of interest in the ATCC (only in its third year as a series). The proof of that pudding was in the enormous crowd that turned out to see it.

Racing Car News attributed the big crowd to the dynamic promotional efforts of the track: What had brought them? All these drivers [and cars] had been to other circuits [during 1971], the weather had been good at most of them, and they had all been advertised.The only difference was that this one had been promoted – Oran Park means ‘total entertainment’…

The official crowd gure was 32,000. Brian Goulding says it was the biggest crowd he’s ever seen at Oran Park. What’s more, he says: “It was one of the few times in motor racing that I believed the crowd gure,” in an allusion to some of the claimed early Warwick Farm crowd numbers. It seems the phenomenon of the rubbery crowd gure at motor racing events wasn’t invented by V8 Supercars…

A marching band, sky divers, drag racing demos, a half-lap ‘bicycle race’ (above left - Doug Chivas rides the ‘town bike’, with assistance from Kevin Bartlett) and 19 races. all between 10am and 5pm - Oran Park lived up to its claim as the ‘action circuit of the seventies’.

After the last race Goulding trekked across to the pits (as was the thing to do), where he got autographs from Bob Jane and John Harvey. By the time he got back to the car it was dark, around 8pm, but such was the traffic jam that they still couldn’t drive out of the circuit.

He remembers it even today as the greatest Australian race meeting he’s ever been to.

What made it so great wasn’t simply the atmosphere of the big crowd and the spellbinding ATCC clash, though. It was the whole day’s entertainment. No sooner had the dust settled on the ATCC title decider when out came the cars for the next race, the 25-lap Series Production Toby Lee Series round: the Falcon GT-HOs of John Goss and Fred Gibson vs Peter Brock’s HDT Torana XU-1 etc – a headline act in itself. Then there was Oran Park’s speciality, the Sports Sedans. There were no less than seventy eight Sports Sedans entered; a eld of Division 1 cars and two for Division 2! The nal race on the day was a six-lapper for Division 1, and this featured a torrid battle between John Harvey’s Torana XU-1 Repco V8 (left) and the local Barry Sharp Falcon XY 302 Lightweight. Sharp held Harvey at bay for two laps before the V8 XU-1 grunted past on the straight to win. According to RCN, just about every one of the 32,000 crowd stayed for that race, and ‘yelled themselves hoarse. It was a fantastic nish to a magni cent day.’

That had been the 19th race on the day – all between 10.15am and 4.50pm! Your average Supercars round today would be lucky to get in

half the amount of races... And they still found time for the drag racing and sky diving demos, marching band (which marched a full lap of the track!), a pushbike race for drivers and journos, and not forgetting the Miss Hot Pants competition…

In its race report, Motor Manual magazine described it as ‘the best motor race meeting ever seen in Australia’:

But why was it so good? In between the mass brass band, the free-fall sky divers, the ‘Great Bike Race’ and a demonstration of drag racing, there was some real, genuine dead-set motor racing which all added up to hard, tightpacked entertainment – bonus value for the $1.50 or whatever each adult had to pay. I’d reckon every last spectator would be back for another dose of Oran Park if they knew it’d be so good. Stirred by Adrian Ryan’s commentary straining in overdrive and the stampeding, smelly spectacle of Australia’s top touring cars in frantic battle, the crowd was involved to mild hysteria normally reserved for footy grand nals.

For the touring car title, the talented loser Allan Moffat commanded every decibel and as much acclaim as winner Jane – and there was some true sincerity in the stunned enthusiasm when Moffat lost by a mere sixtenths of a second.

If it wasn’t the greatest Australian motor racing meeting, it was surely a coming-of-age moment for Oran Park – and probably for Australian touring car racing as well.

Above: While HDT team-mate Colin Bond won his Dulux Rally events, Peter Brock (still sporting the beard) found himself in the thick of the action in the Toby Lee Series Production 25-lapper. It was won by Fred Gibson, whose Falcon had ferried ATCC winner Bob Jane (on the Phase II’s bonnet!) around the circuit on a victory lap - just before the start of the Toby Lee race, the next event on the programme after the ATCC final! Wouldn’t happen like that today...