AUTOSPORT HISTORICS 25 JULY 2019 27STAR CARS
John Watson ended Marlboro McLaren
International’s four-year win drought
with a resounding home victory in the
1981 British Grand Prix at Silverstone,
his second, but the first for a carbon
composite-chassised car. Otherwise, the
Formula 1 World Championship season
was challenging for the Woking team,
developing John Barnard’s ground-breaking
MP4/1, which carried huge hopes after a
series of outmoded duds. Ron Dennis’s
relief was palpable, since McLaren’s
previous success was James Hunt’s last,
driving an M26 in Japan’s 1977 finale.
The tides changed over the winter.
Wattie and new team-mate Niki Lauda
(who replaced the mercurial Andrea
de Cesaris) were armed with B-spec
MP4/1s built around lighter, slimmer,
monocoques, the underfloors of which
were key to a transformed aerodynamic
package. The squad was back in the
ballpark from the first race, finishing
fourth (Lauda) and sixth (Watson) in the
altitude of South Africa’s Kyalami circuit,
where Alain Prost sizzled his 1500cc
Renault V6 turbocar to victory.
Lauda won the USGP West on the
streets of Long Beach in his Cosworth
DFV-engined car, and Watson the Belgian
GP at Zolder. Two premier-league victories
from the first five starts made them
contenders in an unusually open 16-race
season, in which 11 drivers representing
eight marques topped the podium.
Although he raced updated sister
chassis 2 at Zolder, Watson’s regular
MP4/1B-5 carried him to seven pointsfinishes, topped by a sensational victory
in June’s Detroit GP – from 17th on the
grid! Seconds in Rio and Las Vegas’s
Caesar’s Palace, third in Montreal, fourth
at Monza and sixths at Kyalami and Long
Beach landed the Northern Irishman a
career-best third in the championship,
behind Keke Rosberg (Williams) and
the injured Didier Pironi (Ferrari).
Triple FIA Historic F1 champion Steve
Hartley debuted the McLaren this year
and won at Brands Hatch in May.1982
MCLAREN
MP4/1B-5
CURRENT OWNER^
STEVE HARTLEY
The notion of topping 180mph down
Mount Panorama’s Conrod Straight in a
touring car, rear wheels spinning over its
twin crests in the dry, would widen any
top-level single-seater driver’s eyes. Yet
Tony Longhurst did just that in setting
the all-time Bathurst 1000 qualifying
record on Australia’s fearsome 3.86-mile
circuit in 1990 in this Ford Sierra RS500.
His 2m13.84s beat George Fury’s 1984
Nissan Bluebird mark by 0.01s, but a
mistake in the Top 10 Shootout left
Longhurst fifth on the grid.
European Formula 3000 champion
Roberto Moreno recalled the bewinged
Sierra turbocars – the two-litre four-
cylinder Cosworth-developed engines
made 560bhp in the UK at their height,1990 FORD SIERRA RS500
CURRENT OWNER CAREY MCMAHON
although Aussie Dick Johnson claimed
rather more – being incredibly fast from
when Andy Rouse’s out-accelerated his
Cosworth DFV-powered Reynard on
Silverstone’s Hangar Straight on a test
day in 1988. “But I went back past when
he had to brake for Stowe...”
Longhurst and Tomas Mezera (a Formula
Ford racer in Europe before switching
codes) had won at Bathurst in 1988 in
a similar Benson & Hedges Racing
RS500, but the team principal and Mark
McLaughlin were sidelined at one-third
distance in 1990. The Group A Sierras were
done at the end of the season and this
machine, built on the Gold Coast by triple
British Saloon Car and 1971 European
F5000 champion Frank Gardner and Jim
Stone, spent the next 23 years in the
Bowden family’s fabulous car collection.
When Sydney engineering firm boss
Carey McMahon, whose racing dream
began as a lad at Brands Hatch in the
1960s, sold his ex-Jim Richards/Mark
Skaife 1991 Bathurst-winning Nissan
Skyline R32, he was privileged to acquire
the Sierra, still in original paint. Following
a mechanical restoration for 2016’s Phillip
Island Classic, the combo has starred
in Australian events and is currently
enjoying a European tour, which continues
at the Silverstone Classic this weekend.HAWKIN
SHAWKIN
S