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Originally Posted by anthony81901
In 96 it came to light that a number of Ford (and possibly Holden) teams were running lighter than normal body and window panels. Think it all came to light when during a startline start at Waneroo when Bowe was pushed into Wayne Gardner and eyebrows were raised at the ease with which it gave way. Again no one was penalised, but all cars were rectified from the next round.
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Yes, that was Wanneroo in 1995 at the start of the Peter Jackson Dash.
The story is outlined in the 1995 edition of
The Great Race. The story goes that the category scrutineer was at one of the major Ford team workshops when he noticed that all the new body panels had 'do not lean here' (or words to that effect) tags on them. Panels that had come straight from the factory... A panelbeater by trade, the scrutineer knew that something wasn't right.
After some investigation, it was found that Ford had been producing special thinner-gauge glass, panels, and - gasp! - bodyshells since the inception of the category. This meant that every Ford Falcon racecar built for the category using a Ford Motorsport bodyshell (which was all of them except Garry Willmington's, who had built his from a road car) was technically illegal! And this was only weeks before Bathurst!
(As an aside, Holden admitted to doing much the same thing, but had allegedly stopped the practice before Ford's indiscretions came to light.)
The reason for this was to get the Falcon - a heavier car than the Commodore - down to the minimum weight. The solution was to make the illegal cars carry ballast whilst letting them continue competing, as banning them this close to the biggest race of the year would have been disasterous for Ford, Holden, the category, and the entire event.
It makes you think about some of the early-build Falcons that were written off in accidents over the years, particularly Johnson's car at Bathurst in '93.