A day at the Park

And what a day it was – Jane vs Moffat in the nal round of the ATCC, and an Oran Park crowd so big it gridlocked south west Sydney

It’s a race meeting that’s still talked about, even half a century on. It was the day Allan Moffat took on Bob Jane at Oran Park’s Australian Touring Car Championship winner-take-all final round, in front of a crowd so big it gridlocked the southwest Sydney region for most of the day. Oran Park would host the ATCC each year for the next 37 years but none of those subsequent ATCC encounters topped this one for action, excitement and the sheer sense of occasion. For some who were there on August 8, 1971, it remains the greatest day in Australian motor racing.

It wasn’t just the finest race meeting ever held at Oran Park, according to Racing Car News: it was ‘Australia’s mightiest race meeting ever’. Half a century on it’s a day that’s still talked about. It might even today still be our ‘mightiest race meeting’. As the final round title decider, it culminated in a straight fight between two of our all-time touring car greats, Bob Jane and Allan Moffat. But there was more to it than simply two great drivers competing for a title. The rivalry that had developed between these two fiercely competitive men was personal and it was bitter. Any time in the early ‘70s when Moffat faced off against Jane was one not to be missed; there was always the feeling when those two met on track, that anything might happen. And when the was a championship at stake… They were matched like a pair of heavyweight prize fighters; the brooding intensity of Moffat versus the extroverted aggression of Jane. Fittingly the machines they took to the fight were themselves heavyweight contenders: two of the all-time greatest Australian touring cars in Moffat’s Trans Am Boss Mustang 302 and Jane’s 7.0-litre Chev Camaro ZL1. At the time, the Oran Park circuit wasn’t yet 10 years old. It was still in the transition phase from club circuit to a proper national-level venue. It had already hosted a round of the Gold Star, but proper national championship motor racing in Sydney was something that generally took place elsewhere – namely at Warwick Farm. The 3.6km Warwick Farm’s covered grandstands, superb facilities and central metropolitan Sydney location were in stark contrast with the rather less lavish amenities on offer 20km out of town at the 1.9km Oran Park. Where ‘The Farm’ was resplendent with beautifully manicured lawns, Oran Park was surrounded by cow paddocks and actual farms. Only a few years earlier they were still using an old double-decker bus as the control tower. But big plans were afoot. Excavations had already been completed to build a drag strip complex adjacent to the main straight. When Oran Park finally closed 38 years later the drag strip still hadn’t been built, but in early 1971 those earthworks showed the level of ambition the circuit’s custodians had for the place – just three years later they would complete the 2.6km ‘grand prix’ track extension, with its trademark Bridgestone Bridge ‘flyover’. One thing they did get done in time for the ’71 ATCC round was the circuit’s first grandstand, situated on the main straight just out of BP Bend. As it happened, they’d be needing every inch of it at the ATCC round…