Creating a giant-killer
“A
t last I think it’s time to actually believe
CAMS has made a nal decision on the
Mazda,” a relieved Allan Moffat told me in
February 1981. “Now all I have to do is build
a racecar.”
Having convinced the factory in Japan that
this decision would stick and not be reversed,
a crate of engines and gearboxes was soon
on its way to Australia. But the rest of the car
would have to be built at Moffat’s Malvern Road,
Toorak workshop on his famed ‘surface plate’ – a
perfectly at
eel platform
ted to him
ars earlier by
ord.Complicating matters was the fact that this
would be the rst car built there in metric.
Everything until now had been in inches, and
that would result in some simple mistakes
being made, he admitted. As if understanding
the Japanese-language specs manual wasn’t
hard enough...
Mazda wanted to employ a professional
manager to run the team, so Moffat
recommended Horsley, who had just left Oran
Park, and then he rang Mick Webb to head up
the mechanical team.
Only a few months earlier, Webb had built
Moffat’s ultimately unsuccessful yellow Bathurst
XD Falcon, in just 30 days. He would have six
months to build the rst Mazda with a crew of
four, and even then it would take every working
day and night to get it nished.
Webb was joined by Ian Walburn, Andrew
Cowcher and Dennis Watson, then brought in
ace fabricator Chris Farrell (not to be confusedwiththeSydneyF2racer)to buildthe48mm
alloy roll-cage. It was all new territory to them,
and they literally went by the book.
“Mazda in those days put out a fantastic
step-by-step book for building a racecar,” Webb
recalls, “so we built the rst car through this
workshop manual basically. Things like, ‘These
are the rear suspension bushes, instead of
putting nylothene or rotor joints in them, you drill
a few holes in the upper and lower control arms
to give them a bit more wobble and a bit more
movement so they don’t bind up.’
“One day I’m sitting there looking at the CAMS
Manual, making notes on what we were and
weren’t allowed to do, and I remember Allan
walking up and looking over my shoulder. He
said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said I was just
seeing what we can do with the suspension. He
grabbed the book and threw it straight in the bin
and said, ‘Don’t worry about the rule book, build
the best and fastest racecar you possibly can,“We stretched the limit with that little car in
lots of areas, from suspension to the engine.
We sort of followed the book initially, but
we changed lots of things.” - Mick WebbDavid G Segal