PETER Brock famously posted two of his nine Bathurst 1000 wins by ditching his broken primary car and hopping – legally – into his team’s second machine.
But do you remember the time he piloted his team’s second car to second place, while his original car was repaired and came home fourth?
A look at the results for the 1990 Sandown 500 confirms that, yes, Brocky finished second with Charlie O’Brien in the #6 Mobil Ford Sierra, while the car he started the race in – his usual #05 Sierra – finished in fourth place with Brock, Andrew Miedecke and David Parsons credited with the driving.
It was all perfectly legal under the rules of the era which allowed drivers to ‘cross-enter’ into multiple cars.
Brock wasn’t the only driver to do it; one example was at Bathurst in 1988, when Dick Johnson and John Bowe joined John Smith in the #18 Shell Sierra after both the #17 and #28 cars had been retired.
However, Brock was the only driver to switch cars and win at Bathurst: the only years he moved into cross-entered cars were 1983 and 1987.
Cross-entering was also allowed at the Sandown enduro, and Brock actually switched cars on five separate occasions – four of those came in the space of four years between 1988 and 1991!
1990 was the only time it paid Brock any sort of dividend.
Scheduled to share the #05 Sierra with Miedecke, Brock had just moved into third place on the second lap when he suffered a front suspension problem.
“There’s a nut that holds the strut in at the top, and it appears it’s stripped and allowed the strut to just fall out. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life,” Brock said.
“I’ll hop in the second car now and have a drive. We can still win this race; it’s sort of like interchange in footy – we’re right!”
The #05 car lost several laps while repairs were made, but high attrition meant Miedecke and Parsons still finished in fourth place despite being 10 laps adrift.
Meantime, Brock replaced O’Brien in the team’s #6 car at its first pit stop but, despite pushing hard for the remaining 100-plus laps, was unable bridge the gap to eventual winners Glenn Seton and George Fury.
Brock had been pursuing his 10th victory in the Sandown enduro, while Seton’s triumph was the first for his own team.
Seton’s full career will be covered in his upcoming autobiography Seto: The Official Racing History of Glenn Seton, a 320 page hardcover book due out at the end of this year and available to pre-order HERE in the V8 Sleuth Bookshop.
