BobBob Morris’Morris’ recollections:recollections:
SYMMONS PLAINS
P
robably the hardest race that year was
Symmons Plains. Brocky and I were side
by side into the hairpin, I’m on the inside
and he’s on the outside and he just tried to
chop me off, basically. But I didn’t give way,
so we hit each other in the rst corner of the
second lap of the championship! That sort of
set the tone...SANDOWN
T
he other thing he (Brock) had was John
Harvey as a backup. At Sandown, Peter
and I had a big dust up, and I think his tyres
went off – I was able to keep him under
enough pressure for his tyres to go off, but
in doing that my tyres had gone off too. Next
minute Harvey’s there, and he’s giving me
heaps of trouble. Then he tries to go round
the outside of me at the end of the back
straight. So we had a bit of a touch, and he
came off second best. At Wanneroo that year
theyalsohadWayneNegus– sothreecars
againstus!ADELAIDE
I
said to Molloy, ‘Look, the only way we’re
going to beat this guy is to have a car we
can drive at the end of the race. The tyres
are going to be shot, so we need to soften it
up, so we can have it good at the end’. So we
did our pre-race testing on the tyres that we
nished our last race with and that’s how we
set it up for that last race, on softer settings
so that it was as driveable as we could make
it on worn tyres. As a result, the car wasn’t
fantastic at the start, but was still good
enough for me to put some pressure on him.
On that banked oval at Adelaide, you were
generating a lot of force into the tyres. But you
had no choice but to press on through the
banking, because it led onto the straight, and
if you were slow onto the straight, you’d get
overtaken. So what happened was that, just as
we’d hoped, Peter’s tyres started to go off faster
than mine, and I was able to get a faster run off
the banking and pass him down the straight.
My tyres were shot too – I remember it was like
driving on liquorice! – so his must have been
very bad.TWOCARS
W
e had a different approach. Ron Missen
was still spannering the cars, but we
had Peter Molloy as the team manager and
chief engineer that year and he had vast
experience with a lot of other drivers and
tactics and things like that.
I think the fundamental difference was that
Ron Hodgson put more effort behind it in terms
of money, which allowed us to run two cars. It
was the rst time we had ever run two cars.
We had a budget that allowed us to try
things, we had a good test programme for
our engines and Ronnie Missen had all the
experience of building the cars so he knew what
broke and what didn’t. Ronny’s experience at
putting the cars together played a huge part.
Also I think because, we had less down-time
because we rotated the two cars, we didn’t have
any major crashes or accidents at all during the
year so we didn’t get out of step.
And that’s the key thing; if you’re in step and
you keep ahead of the game then you have a
chance, but if you have an accident and you’ve
only got one car then you lose valuable testing
time or your rushing to catch up all the time.
You know, we were able to go to a race
wherever it was, the mechanics would y home
n Sunday night and be working on the car
hat was in the workshop and have it ready
or testing just as the other car arrived home
and was ready to be pulled down so we could
always go testing in the other car, a freshly
prepared car, three days after a race. It also
gave me great con dence as a driver knowing
hat if I did damage one, there was always the
ther car ready and waiting to go.