This weekend is all about Scott McLaughlin and Shane Van Gisbergen when they tackle the Bathurst 1000 in the race to become the ‘King of the Mountain’.
Both guys are hardcore racers who have realistic chances of victory, but when we look back in history, there is also a long list of rally drivers who have successfully made the switch from gravel to tarmac.
The most famous is Jim Richards, the legendary Kiwi who spent most of his racing life in Australia. He started his motorsport careering rallying back home, mostly in a Ford Escort Mk1, before concentrating on the tarmac.
The now 73-year old also drove as part of the official BMC team in a Morris Marina in the Heatway Rally of the 1970s.
With seven Bathurst 1000 wins, Richards is second on the all-time list, only behind Peter Brock, with nine.
Interestingly, ‘Gentleman Jim’ also won the week-long Targa Tasmania rally eight times, while Brock was also adept on the gravel, most notably when he won the 18,000km Round Australia Trial in 1979.
Other New Zealanders who come to mind are Greg Murphy and Leo Leonard.
After four Bathurst wins, Murph only recently made the switch to the loose stuff, while Leonard made a number of Bathurst starts in the 70s and 80s, although was best known for his exploits in a BDA Escort.
Rally drivers making the annual pilgrimage to Bathurst to take on the mountain is by no means a rare thing, however.
Over the years there has been a long list of Australian Rally Champions who have competed, and often excelled, at Bathurst.
Colin Bond was perhaps the most successful of those who started on gravel. After originally making his name in a Holden Torana for the official factory team, Bond made the transition to Ford in 1977, where he drove alongside Allan Moffat.
He’ll forever be remembered for the 1-2 finish in 1977 (see main picture), and the classic overhead footage of he and Moffat racing down Conrod Straight side by side. But it was also the year he started the Ford Rally Team, originally with 2-litre Escort Mk2s, and then for three seasons with BDAs.
Another to successfully make the transition was George Fury. A mild mannered farmer from country NSW, Fury won the Aussie rally title twice for Datsun, then became the manufacturer’s lead driver when they went touring car racing.
His greatest Bathurst moment came in 1984 when he qualified his Bluebird Turbo on pole position, becoming the only driver of a Group C car to lap the circuit in under 2 minutes and 14 seconds. Not even Brock did that.
More recently, the Bates brothers, Neal and Rick, had several starts at Bathurst in Falcons, Commodores and Corollas. Other national champions to tackle the race include Bob Watson (1970 champion) and Ed Ordynski (1990).
Of the international visitors to Bathurst, the most famous rally driver was Rauno Aaltonen from Finland. One of the original ‘Flying Finns’, Aaltonen was a regular visitor to Australia’s Southern Cross Rally, but also conquered the mountain, driving a Mini Cooper S to victory in 1966.
The list of those who chopped and changed between rallying and racing goes on and on: Harry Firth, Gregg Hansford, Doug Chivas, Des West, George Reynolds, Bob Holden, Tony Roberts, Roger Bonhomme, Peter Janson and Larry Perkins all come to mind.
Had this year’s Bathurst 1000 have been held a month later, you could have added Shane Van Gisbergen to the list too.
A rally driver won’t win the race this Sunday, but the sport has a long history of its stars making the transition. And successfully, at that.
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