PREPARATION & PERSEVERANCE

In 2013, for the first time since 1979, Larry Perkins wasn’t at the Bathurst 1000 as either a driver or team owner. Son Jack Perkins was on the grid with Garry Rogers Motorsport, but no Larry? It was a startling thought.

There are others such as the late Peter Brock who have won more often at Bathurst, but surely not even Peter Perfect was a more popular winner than Perkins? Or more different; Brock the handsome, urbane, media star, Perkins craggy, bespectacled and with his drooping moustache.

For a short and sharp five-year run, Perkins was not only a popular winner but a frequent one too.

It was October 1993 that Perkins and the late great Gregg Hansford triumphed after a fantastic duel with Jim Richards and Mark Skaife to win the Bathurst 1000.

Two years later Perkins and an expatriate openwheel racer by the name of Russell Ingall scored perhaps the greatest Bathurst win of them all, coming from last and a lap down.

In 1997, Perkins and Ingall did it again, this time winning a race of attrition as the other top fancies wilted.

As he stood on the podium soaking up the adulation that day, Perkins did so as a six-times Bathurst winner, having already claimed three victories in 1982-83-84 with Brock’s Holden Dealer Team.

Those wins count, of course, and should not be underestimated because Perkins’ engineering, organisational and driving skills were pivotal. But we all know it’s those three Bathurst triumphs at the wheel of his own Perkins Engineering-built Holden Commodores that Larry treasures most.

He did it on his own terms and he did it best in Australia’s greatest race.

“Starting my own business and winning Bathurst my own way was certainly a highlight,” he reflected.

“I suppose the one thing underlining all my career was doing it myself.”

Perkins never won Bathurst again – although he and Ingall finished second in 1998 and Ingall and Steven Richards second in 2002 – and by 2003 LP had called it quits after a Saturday practice crash and a struggle for Sunday pace that signalled that at 53 his time as a top-line racing driver was over.

By 2008 he had withdrawn from the day-to-day running of a team in V8 Supercars by entering his business – including two Racing Entitlement Contracts (RECs) – into an engineering arrangement with Kelly Racing.

By the end of 2012, with the Kellys about to turn their Holden privateer team into Nissan Motorsport and the Car of the Future arriving, Perkins sold them his RECs and bowed out of formal involvement in motorsport.

Perkins raced here and overseas for 43 years, 26 of them under the banner of Perkins Engineering.

From 1985 to 2012, Perkins Engineering built 49 V8 Supercars, 198 race engines, won those three Bathursts, three Sandown/Queensland 500s, took over 20 race wins and three pole positions.

Through all that there’s no doubt that five-year period of Bathurst success was Larry and his team at

Perkins The F1 Driver

Often overshadowed by his Bathurst achievements is the fact that Larry Perkins, before venturing into touring cars, was an accomplished openwheel racer who made it to Formula 1.

After winning the Australian Formula Ford and F2 championships, Perkins ventured to Europe and won the European F3 championship in 1975. From 1974 to 1977, he grafted away in Formula 1, making 15 appearances for Amon, Ensign, Brabham, BRM and Surtees before deciding on a move back to Australia.

Of the Australians who have competed in Formula 1, Perkins is only behind Sir Jack Brabham, Alan Jones, Mark Webber, Daniel Ricciardo, Tim Schenken and David Brabham for most starts.

Perkins also competed in the Le Mans 24 Hours race in 1984 and 1988, the first time in a Team Australia Porsche 956 alongside Peter Brock.

their finest at the track he loved most.

It enabled him to show off not only his driving skills but the engineering brains that did as much to make him a legend of Australian touring car racing.

In 1993 he won the race on the pace and fuel economy he managed to eke from the locally-built Holden five-litre V8, while his Holden rivals had swapped to the Chevrolet engine.

In 1995 it was his own braking system designed inhouse and developed expressly for Bathurst so time wasn’t lost in the pits changing pads that helped him claw back that huge gap.

Not all of his punts paid off of course. His 1996 decision to revert to a VP Commodore because the VR had been the subject of a late aerodynamic cut in this early parity-driven part of the V8 era, resulted in only a sixth-place finish.

Nevertheless, it was a great example of the independent thinking that had always brought him to the fore at Bathurst.

You could also add a forensic knowledge of the rulebook and pathological dislike of bureaucrats to the list of obvious Perkins traits.

“I’m an engineer who drives,” he said. “The driving is easy, the engineering is much harder.”

No doubt from Larry’s perspective he speaks the truth, for the driving did always come naturally to him from the early days on the family farm at Cowangie in Victoria’s dry and dusty Mallee, when dad Eddie (a Redex Around Australia Trial winner) dropped him in the seat of a tractor and walked away.

Then it was fighting with his three brothers to get behind the steering wheel of the legendary Ford Model A with Porsche wheels (a favourite LP story) and fixing it in between times, delivering an important grounding in practical mechanical understanding.

Larry’s driving skills took him to Europe and all the way to Formula 1, but they were never better on show than at Mount Panorama.

He qualified on provisional pole and took out the top 10 in 1993, then raced to victory in his final stint on slick tyres in wet-dry conditions. Rain-master Richards, in the Winfield Commodore, spun trying to keep up.

Perkins also took provisional pole in 1995 and set the fastest race lap in 1997. That 1995 provisional pole was particularly instructive of Perkins’ competitive character and talent.

Circulating in the Friday afternoon session having set fastest time on brand-new Dunlop tyres, he was radioed the news that Glenn Seton had just gone faster in the Peter Jackson Ford Falcon EF, setting a 2:11.87. So Larry went at it again. The result was a 2:11.57 and provisional pole on used tyres.

“I’m a racer – I drive a racing car,” he said when quizzed at the time about why he went for it once more when already safely settled in the vital top 10. “I’m motivated by competition.”

He was certainly never motivated by the glory or the trappings of motor racing. The Moorabbin Airport workshop where Perkins Engineering was based throughout its halcyon days was a utilitarian place, housing the machinery necessary to do the work and a tin roof to keep the rain off.

At Bathurst, Perkins was not one to care about the decorations that were starting to colour the pit boxes and garages of the leading teams.

“We didn’t have palm trees in our workshop but we had bloody good brakes,” he said famously after the 1995 win.

“This is superb. No-one can argue about this win in any way, we won it fair and square.

“You don’t normally win Bathurst by giving the opposition a lap start.”

The drama of 1995 was amazing. Luck, driving talent and engineering skill and preparation all played a role.

The drama was set in play when Perkins – who ended up qualifying third – hit his left-front wheel on the exhaust pipe of pole qualifier Craig Lowndes’ factory Holden Racing Team Commodore and suffered a puncture, forcing him into the pits on lap two.

“He’s a menace,” Perkins had raged later about Lowndes post-race.

“This is the thing about the tag of ‘old drivers’, at least we know how to respect each other. You can’t go swapping from side to side at the start as if it’s a bloody sprint. He caught me by surprise, we were travelling close about a foot apart, and he’s bloody whanged it into me and broke me bloody wheel. He must realise it could have easily broken his wheel and that’s the stupidity of it.”

Perkins dropped a lap down to the Skaife/Richards Winfield Commodore, which moved past initial leader Wayne Gardner’s Coke Commodore to dominate the first third of the race.

A broken tail-shaft ended Skaife’s run – when he and Richo appeared to have a firm grasp on the race, displaying a better combination of fuel economy and performance than their rivals – and put the Castrol Commodore back on the lead lap as both Perkins and Ingall put in sizzling stints.

“The advantage of having a first-lap screw-up you think really clear because you have no pressure on,” Perkins said.

“There was only one thing to do – press on, just press on. I had to keep calling up the pits because I didn’t see a car for 30 laps, I needed to know how quickly the leaders were lapping and all that stuff. We ran conservatively for a while because I knew we weren’t going to change brake pads and I thought, ‘Let’s not screw them’.

“Then when Russell did his excellent first stint I thought, ‘This is alright’, so I went as hard as I could in my second stint when Skaifey dropped out.”

They weren’t the only rivals to fall by the wayside. Disastrously, the Lowndes/Greg Murphy and Brock/ Tomas Mezera HRT cars went out early with identical engine failures.

Following the demise of the Winfield car, Seton and John Bowe battled for the lead until Seton hit the Shell-FAI Falcon in the rear climbing up to the top of the mountain on lap 93.

Bowe slewed right into the concrete wall, sustaining extensive front-end damage to the car. Although it was brought back to the pits and repaired, the Falcon was retired on lap 143 because of a bent flange drive sustained in the crash.

The Gardner car then moved into the lead but codriver Neil Crompton ran off and flat-spotted a tyre, dropping them from the lead to fifth, giving Seton and co-driver David Parsons a solid lead.

When a privateer Commodore – driven by David ‘Trucky’ Parsons – crashed heavily on Mountain Straight, the pace car was called out so the car could be removed, allowing the top five to close up and Perkins to erase the final deficit to the leaders.

He was fourth when racing got underway again on lap 138, and immediately passed Seton’s teammate Alan Jones, and then got by Brad Jones in the second Coke Commodore a lap later.

Fightback

Vitalstats

Active years: 1979-2003

Bathurst starts: 26

Bathurst wins: 1982, 1983, 1984, 1993, 1995, 1997

Bathurst podiums: 12

Bathurst poles:

Bathurst Shootouts: 18

Teams: Cadbury

Schweppes (1979), Peter Janson (19801981), Holden Dealer Team (1982-1984), Dick Johnson Racing (1985), Perkins Engineering (19861987), Holden Special Vehicles Racing (1988), Holden Racing Team (1989), Perkins Engineering (1990), Advantage Racing (1991), Perkins Engineering (19922003).

“I was boring it up it,” Perkins said. Crucially, the brakes had stood up to the punishment. But the car also had pace, clocking 289km/h down Conrod as the chase continued.

In those days of open tyre warfare, Dunlop also had a sticky compound for him in the last stint. But Perkins could not close the gap to Seton to less than 4.5 secs, and had virtually conceded victory when with just 11 laps to go the Falcon’s engine developed a low end misfire, which rapidly became terminal engine failure.

“I thought, ‘How good’s this?’. It’s nice to win no matter how you win the damn thing,” Perkins said.

“Obviously, Glenn had a problem, I’ve got a bit of sympathy for him, but not very much.”

Merciless perhaps, but completely in character. As Perkins proved upon his own farewell from Mount Panorama in 2003.

Despite his crash, which meant lead driver Steven Richards missed the Shootout, the duo still managed fourth in the race in a VY Commodore rebuilt overnight from the suspension mounts forward.

“We had a really excellent chance of winning today but we needed two strong drivers,” Perkins said that evening as the sun fell on the day and his driving career.

“I just didn’t feel comfortable in the car. I was not game to throw it around on its limit, it felt nervous to me and I wanted to give it back to Richo straight. But the times were too slow and you can’t have that luxury anymore of one good guy and one not-good guy.”

Typically, though, Perkins fought all the way, twice building up a freight train behind him that produced some of the most exciting racing of the day as the likes of Ingall, Skaife, Marcos Ambrose and Todd Kelly tried to find a way around him.

“We had a tremendously strong car, the best engine out there and it must have been frustrating for the queue behind me,” Perkins said.

“I thought, ‘I’ve paid my dues if you’re good enough you can pass me’.”

They did, but in typical Perkins style he gave no quarter and offered his best. And that is surely his Bathurst epitath.