1985 Australian Touring Car Championship

Season summary

Triple Bathurst winner Jim Richards won his and BMW's first Australian Touring Car Championship driving a 3.5-litre 6 cyl BMW 635 CSi entered by JPS Team BMW. Defending champion Dick Johnson placed second in his Ford Mustang (the first time a Mustang had been seen in the ATCC since 1973), with Peter Brock finishing third in his Holden VK Commodore.

The first round of the series at Winton also created history when for the first time since the ATCC was first held in 1960, no Holden of any sort was on the grid. The only running Group A Commodore at the time was the Brock's Holden Dealer Team car that had raced in Nissan-Mobil 500 series in New Zealand in January and February, but had missed the Winton round as it was still on the boat heading back to Melbourne. The race also saw the first ever ATCC race win by a BMW with Richards, driving the full Group A 1984 Bathurst 635 (driven at Bathurst by ex-F1 champ Denny Hulme and Bavarian Prince Leopold von Bayern), winning by a lap from his new JPS teammate, fellow New Zealander Neville Crichton (like Brock's Commodore, Crichton's own ex-Alpina BMW 635, fresh from winning the Nissan-Mobil series, was still on its way to Australia so at Winton he drove the JPS team's spare, the converted ex-1984 Group C 635). Richards' win in the BMW also saw the first ATCC round win by a European car since Jim McKeown won the 7th and final round of the 1970 ATCC at Symmons Plains in a Porsche 911S.

Although both Jim Richards and Neville Crichton ran under and were fully maintained by Frank Gardner's JPS Team BMW which was based in the suburb of Terrey Hills in Sydney, both cars in fact had separate JPS sponsorship through the respective Australian and New Zealand arms of Amatil.

Swedish marque Volvo also joined the winners list when Kiwi Robbie Francevic won Round 3 at Symmons Plains in Tasmania in a Volvo 240T turbo owned by his friend, Auckland millionaire of mechanical seals designer and manufacturer (and sometimes race driver) Mark Petch. Still a resident of Auckland, Francevic's win also saw him become the first non-Australian resident to win an ATCC race. The big Kiwi's win in Tasmania in the Volvo (which Dick Johnson referred to as a "Swedish Valiant" on RaceCam during Ch.7's telecast) was also the first of what would be an eventual 55 ATCC round wins (out of a possible 72) for cars powered by turbocharged engines up until the end of Group A racing in 1992. It was not the first turbocharged car to win an ATCC race however, as George Fury had won the Lakeside round in 1984 in a Nissan Bluebird Turbo. Although the other drivers and teams knew the speed potential of the turbo Volvo with it winning races in the European Touring Car Championship, as well as Francevic and Belgian jeweller Michel Delcourt winning the inaugural Wellington 500 in New Zealand earlier in the year in the same car, Francevic's win at Symmons Plains over the big Holden and Ford V8's still came as something of a culture shock to Australian race fans.

Richards (Winton, Wanneroo, Adelaide, Calder, Surfers, Lakeside and Amaroo, which staged its first ATCC race since 1978), Brock (Sandown) and Francevic (Symmons Plains and Oran Park) were the only drivers to win a race in the series. That actually gave New Zealand born drivers 9 wins out of the 10 rounds, a record for non-Australian wins that still stands as of 2016.

Jim Richards and John Smith in his Toyota Team Australia Corolla were the only drivers to finish each round of the series. Smith won the Up to 2000cc class at the first nine rounds of the series before finishing a close second behind teammate Drew Price in the final round at Oran Park.

Other drivers/cars who made an impression in Australia's first foray into Group A included Sydney privateer Garry Willmington in his privately entered Jaguar XJS (built from a second hand road car) with its 5.3 litre, V12 engine which proved fast but underdone thanks to Willmington's small budget. The Jaguar was often the fastest car in a straight line when it appeared (e.g. on the 900+ metre straights at Sandown and Adelaide), but Willmington's lack of budget to develop the car saw it lack both the reliability and the handling needed to be competitive on the smaller Australian tracks. Also impressing were Perth based expat Kiwi Tim Slako in an ex-Andy Rouse BTCC Rover Vitesse powered by a 3.5 litre V8, another Kiwi in Jim Richards' JPS teammate Neville Crichton in his BMW, and yet another Kiwi Kent Baigent who joined the series in Adelaide driving his ex-Schnitzer Motorsport BMW 635. Also impressing with giant killing performances was Formula One World Champion Alan Jones in Colin Bond's second Network Alfa team Alfa Romeo GTV6. Jones, in an Luigi Racing (ETCC) built GTV6 generally out-performed Bond who drove his Alfa which had been converted from Group E to Group A specification in 1984. Jones, contesting his first ever ATCC finished 8th in the championship despite not contesting the final three rounds (Jones would return full-time to F1 in late ). Don Smith and Lawrie Nelson both drove a privately entered Ford Mustang each, and even though they would on occasions both achieve decent results in qualifying, lack of reliability and funding kept them well off the pace of Johnson's front running Greens-Tuf Zakespeed Ford Mustang GT.

Teams and drivers

** Peter Brock and John Harvey both drove #05 and #7 during the season.*

Race calendar

The 1985 Australian Touring Car Championship was contested over a ten-round series with one race per round.

Classes

Cars competed in three classes determined by engine capacity.

• Up to 2000cc
• 2001 to 3000cc
• 3001 to 6000cc

Points system

Championship points were allocated on a three tier system, to Australian license holders only, for outright places gained in each round:

• Scale A was applied to drivers of cars in the Up to 2000cc class
• Scale B was applied to drivers of cars in the 2001 to 3000cc class
• Scale C was applied to drivers of cars in the 3001 to 6000cc class

Points from the best nine round results were retained by each driver, any other points not being included in the nett total.

Results

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References

References

1. Australian Motor Racing Year 1985/86, pages 313–314
2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1XFQ1IB1Zk 1985 ATCC Round 4 Barbagello]
3. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82-kbWwBZ4w 1985 ATCC Round 5 Adelaide International Raceway]
4. "1985 ATCC".
5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El7LY4Z6V8U 1985 ATCC Round 7 Surfers Paradise]
6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYT1VT7amew 1985 ATCC R8 Lakeside]
7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZiHl8qIhJ8 1985 ATCC Round 9 Amaroo]
8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlThf6dov-Y 1985 ATCC Round 10 Oran Park]
9. CAMS Manual of Motor Sport, 1985, page 90
10. CAMS Manual of Motor Sport, 1985, page 86
11. Graham Howard, Stewart Wilson, David Greenhalgh, The official history - Australian Touring Car Championship - 50 Years, page 261