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1990 was probably one of, if not the most competitive of the Group A and Group C years in Australia.
At any given race any of the top teams could win (some obviously would need luck in the ATCC. The Holden's weren't really a factor in that). Johnson & Bowe, Brock & Miedecke, Seton & Fury, Bond, Longhurst & Jones in the Fords, Gibbo's boys in the Nissan's and even Pommy Percy and Larry Perkins in the V8 Commodore's were a chance. Yes the ATCC was still a turbo benefit and no one really expected anything different, but the Commodore's were coming on strong and a full season of development on the race track would finally see the Walkinshaw VL as a force come the late season enduros.
The Sierra's were probably at the peak of their development, before 1992's CAMS enforced 7,500 rev limit showed them that there was an alternative path to fast lap times other than outright horsepower. The HR31 Skyline was similar in that it was at the peak of its development in 1990 and in Jimmy Richards, Nissan had just the right driver to exploit it. And of course Nissan had the better than anything else GT-R waiting to be unleashed mid-season.
And for the first time since Perkins ran his team under the HSV banner in 1988, there was a factory Holden team on the grid with Win Percy running the newly formed HRT and doing the driving. A Pom running an Australian factory backed team that was owned by a Scotsman took a bit of getting used to for those who grew up worshiping Brocky and the HDT. But I think most Holden fans were just happy that they had a V8 Commodore or two to cheer for after two years of domination by that blue oval mob.
Here is a bit of interesting information regarding the 1990 Tooheys 1000. Some of you might already know, but some who read this might not be aware that Fred Gibson's team pulled a very VERY illegal swifty the night before the race.....
I don't know what the actual problem was, but late on the Saturday afternoon the team discovered something very wrong with the brand new GT-R that Richo had qualified 11th. It was actually enough that the car simply could not race and there was nowhere near enough time to fix the problem. There remained 2 solutions. Scratch the car which was undesirable as the boss of NISMO (Mr Aoki) was at Bathurst to see the car in action. Or they could do something totally illegal and race a completely different car, but they had to make sure they got away with it. So, under the cover of darkness that night the team swapped everything they could....including Seven's racecam unit and the compliance plates, and put it all into the spare GT-R which was the one Skaife had debuted at Mallala earlier in the year. The ATCC car masquerading as the new car lined up on the grid the next morning with Richo ready to storm to the lead and put the fear of God into the Sierra's and no one knew anything about what had gone on the night before.
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