King of Amaroo
At a slippery Oran Park in ‘82 he was classified a fine second outright behind Kevin Bartlett’s Camaro after winner Peter Brock’s Commodore was disqualified.
The Mazda RX7 gestation into a giant-killer in the hands of Allan Moffat was years in the making. Racing with the smaller, less powerful 12A engine was a pointless exercise, as Shiel discovered. He sat out most of 1979 but agreed to race at Bathurst with new mate Burbridge, who had bought an RX7 road car that he converted to race. With ares but no wing, a standard-port 12A and close-ratio gearbox, the RX7 was hopelessly outclassed and not even as quick as the (ported) RX3s that were still allowed to run. In the race, the tailshaft whipped up and broke the back of the gearbox on lap 72.
The following year would be no better for Shiel, who accepted an invitation from Novocastrian Alan Bryant to co-drive his RX7 at Sandown and Bathurst. This RX7 was little more than a road car with racing numbers. It lasted a handful of laps at Sandown and broke its gearbox at Bathurst after 19 laps. Shiel bemoaned his fate.
“It was totally uncompetitive. I had been there the whole week and was resigned to the fact that this is as good as it gets. This is not the way to go racing.”
However, by the end of 1980 there was light on the horizon for the Mazda RX7. Through Moffat’s
persistence, the peripheral-ported 12A rotary engine was homologated for Group C. Finally, Shiel surmised that the RX7 would be competitive, and he knew where to nd one.
“Ross Burbridge had taken his RX7 back to Queensland after Bathurst (1979), but he and his partners had a bust-up and the bodyshell sat there for
12 months. At the end of ’80, when Moffat got the peripheral port homologated, I thought at last the RX7 would be a goer. I remembered where this RX7 was and spoke to both parties. One owned the gearbox and the other the bodyshell and I purchased both. It was all I needed. We built it up with a peripheral-port engine built by Racing Beat in the USA and supplied by Penrith Mazda.”
The story of Shiel’s Mazda RX7 (and its present-day resurrection) was told in AMC #103, but it’s worth retelling brie y here. The build occupied most of 1981 and its debut at Bathurst with old friend Don Holland co-driving was an anti-climax when the engine failed after 17 laps. Shiel recalls they hadn’t hooked up the crank trigger to the CDI ignition, leading to cross- ring and breaking the Apex seal in the engine.
The 1982 season was a busy one for Shiel and his RX7, competing in the Amaroo AMSCAR series, the Oran Park ATCC round and the Endurance championship. At a slippery Oran Park he was classi ed a ne second outright behind Kevin Bartlett’s Camaro after winner Peter Brock’s Commodore was disquali ed. The early AMSCAR rounds had been promising, but then prime sponsor Penrith Mazda pulled out.
“I had a friend who knew Jeff Burling, the GM of Eurocars on Sydney’s north shore. I spoke to Jeff, who was kinda interested and was coming out to Amaroo on the weekend. I had a fairly ding-dong race with Moffat, making a rare AMSCAR appearance, plus a skirmish with Grice in the feature race. He said, ‘Come and see me during the week.’ We did a deal for the July
meeting. It all came together and we won both races at that meeting.”
Indeed, Shiel quali ed on pole, led every lap of the 25-lap nal and broke the lap record!
The Endurance Championship that year was a bit of a mixed bag for Shiel. A fth at Sandown and fourth at Surfers Paradise were his only
nishes, while Bathurst was a case of ‘what if.’ Teamed with the rapid Peter Hopwood, they quali ed 20th, but had a litany of problems in the race with the electronic ignition, a at battery and nally a broken anti-roll bar. They were unclassi ed on 121 laps.
Eurocars renewed its commitment for 1983 and for probably the rst time Shiel had the budget to tackle the AMSCAR Series and other selected races seriously. Indeed, he won three of the four AMSCAR rounds to comfortably win the series and become the uncrowned touring car king of Amaroo. Alas, the Endurance Championship would be yet another anti-climax for the Sydneysider. He took pole for the Amaroo 300 and then an early shower when the engine tightened in the race. At Oran Park he quali ed fth but didn’t start due to damaged engine bearings. He nished fth again at the Sandown 400 among a otilla of RX7s, including that of Moffat, who controversially won.
At Bathurst Shiel had top racer and engineer Wally Storey along to co-drive. “We were making a couple of improvements to the car out at Mawer Engineering where Wally Storey worked. I needed a new fuel tank and other stuff. Wally asked what was I doing at Bathurst. I didn’t know. Wally was keen to drive and help out with the fuel tank and other fabrication jobs. So we did a deal. We went to Bathurst with a 13B engine. I couldn’t afford one, but Eurocars approached Mazda and they provided a factory 13B peripheral-port engine. It had already been run and was complete but without fuel injection. Phil Alexander built a second 13B engine that we used in practice. We never ran the 13B before Bathurst.”
The result was the second-quickest RX7 in qualifying, just behind Moffat in 15th. In the race, an axle broke early on put the car out of contention before it nally succumbed to the RX7’s main weakness, a broken gearbox, after 122 laps.
Despite such a successful year, storm clouds were gathering for Shiel.
“After Bathurst Eurocars pulled the pin. They offered less money but I said, ‘I can’t do it, we’ll look silly.’ I sent about 80 sponsorship letters out but couldn’t get a cracker, not even a cent.”
The sponsorless white RX7 did compete in the second round of the 1984 AMSCAR series at Amaroo, but was then sold.