PICTURE this. You’re strapped into an Audi Super Tourer heading for Lakeside’s high-speed, narrow and bumpy Turn 1 kink: a corner best taken single-file, or two-wide at a stretch.
Ahead your team boss, Brad Jones, is hurtling towards the corner side-by-side with Paul Morris, who’s already carved out a reputation as an aggressive driver, not afraid of contact.
Their battle at the previous corner and the double-slipstream effect means you’ve got a run on them both, but the only space available will put you on the outside for the left-hand Kink.
What do you do next?
For most people, the answer might appear obvious. But on July 22, 1995, this Audi’s 23-year-old driver, Greg Murphy, was a young man in a hurry and chose the boldest option available.
“I saw an opportunity to get a bit of a run and ended up inside against the pit wall, but on the outside going through the kink at Turn 1,” Murphy recalls.
“It was one of those moments where it was like, ‘oh well, we’re here now and I’ve got four-wheel drive, so if I get two-wheels off the road, she’ll be right!’.”
WATCH: 1995 Australia Super Touring Championship, Lakeside Race 2. Click through for more videos on the V8 Sleuth YouTube channel.
As history shows, the trio went through the Kink three-wide – Murphy on the outside, Morris on the inside and Jones in the centre – with barely a millimetre to spare.
The three cars remained in that formation heading into Turn 2, the looping right-hander called the Karrussell, for which Murphy had the inside.
Championship leader Morris, in a spare car after a big crash in practice and now facing an impossible mission on the outside of the Karrussell, backed out first.
Jones fought Murphy under brakes, but the Kiwi had the line and took the lead.
In all it was a truly breathtaking double-pass that helped put a young Murphy – and indeed the two-litre Australian Super Touring category – on the map.
The footage gained global attention at a time when Super Touring was motorsport’s ‘world game’; the moment’s prominence undoubtedly helped by Darrell Eastlake’s legendary commentary.
“One, two, three abreast as they go down the Kink, you can’t do this, but they’ve done it!” Eastlake had bellowed in his trademark, pants-on-fire commentary style.
The late Eastlake’s role in the overtake’s place in Australian motorsport folklore is not lost on Murphy.
“I don’t think it would have been the same without Darrell Eastlake’s commentary,” Murphy told the V8 Sleuth Podcast in 2020. “That voice over the top of that racing go hand-in-hand.
“It became one of those halo moments for the category and very, very memorable as far as Super Touring goes.
“I just happened to come out on the right side of [the battle] for a little while, until I was instructed to pull over!”
The latter underlines the context of just how audacious the pass was; Murphy would later have to pull over anyway to let team boss Jones through.
It was just one moment in a thrilling race between the two Audis and Morris, who eventually triumphed ahead of Jones and Murphy after some bold overtakes of his own.
Murphy’s drive at the Brad Jones Racing Audi squad in 1995 had been arranged by his backer and category co-owner Peter Adderton and marked a major opportunity for the youngster.
The Australian Super Touring Championship was on the up. The staged races of the previous year were well behind it and the new Audi 80s were the potential BMW-beaters the category needed.
The Kiwi though was already looking further ahead. He was in the United Kingdom testing a Formula 3000 car the week before the Lakeside event and had his sights set on a future in either Formula 1 or IndyCar.
“I was in a bit of a hurry, obviously looking for success and wanting to do big things,” says Murphy, who also made his V8 debut during 1995, co-driving with the Holden Racing Team at Sandown and Bathurst.
“I knew I was the number two in that team (BJR), but I didn’t really accept it very well and I think I rubbed Brad and Kim (Jones) up the wrong way pretty early on in the piece.
“We’ve had a few laughs about it all since then but I’m not sure if Brad has fully gotten over it! I think Kim more so has!”
Murphy took a surprise maiden win during Race 1 of Round 2 of the season at Oran Park, which was the only time the Morris/Geoff Brabham BMW juggernaut was beaten until Winton’s Round 7.
Round 6 at Lakeside, the Frank Gardner-led BMW team’s home test track, was not expected to suit the Audis; Morris and Brabham locked out the front-row for both races and finished one-two in Race 1.
But Brabham stalled on the grid ahead of Race 2 and, amid confusion over whether the start would be abandoned, Morris hesitated, and the two Audi Quattros leapt into an early lead.
That was just the start of a battle that would become part of Australian motorsport folklore, headlined by the three-wide moment.
“The Audis worked in places where you thought they wouldn’t be very good and then places you thought they’d be great they weren’t as fast as what we hoped,” recalls Murphy.
“At Lakeside that weekend the battles were fast and furious between Paul, myself, Brad, Geoff Brabham and everybody else. It was pretty epic.
“Lakeside was just one of those places; I have memories of driving there being terrified most of the time because there was no run-off anywhere, but it was just a great racetrack.
“That weekend Brad had a little bit of an engine upgrade that I didn’t have. The Beemers were very fast and I remember driving the absolute wheels off the thing trying to keep up with the guys in front.”
LISTEN: Greg Murphy on the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Repco
