1984 Sandown 1000

The 1984 Sandown 1000 was an endurance motor race staged at the Sandown Raceway in Victoria, Australia on 2 December 1984.^[1] It was the eleventh and final round of the 1984 FIA World Endurance Championship and was the first FIA World Championship race to be held in Australia. It was to be the first of a three-year contract to race at Sandown, though the final two years would be cancelled.

The event was the final round of the World Endurance Championship for Drivers ^[2] but did not count towards the associated World Endurance Championship for Manufacturers,^[3] the Group C2 Prototype FIA Cup,^[4] or the FIA Grand Touring Cup.^[5] The race was open to Group C1 Sports Prototypes, Group C2 Sports Prototypes, Group B GT Cars and IMSA GTP, GTX, GTO & GTU cars.^[1] With their drivers no longer in a position to win the Drivers Championship and no manufacturers points on offer, the Martini Racing team did not participate in this event with their Ferrari powered Lancia LC2s.

An invitational class for "Australian Cars" (AC) was also included for cars that raced in the Australian GT Championship, and the Australian Sports Car Championship. These Group D GT, Group B Sports Sedan, and Group A Sports Cars, did not conform to World Endurance Championship regulations.^[1] The FIA only allowed five AC cars to compete and the drivers were not eligible to score championship points. Only four of these cars started, with the Bryan Thompson / Brad Jones Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC powered by a twin turbo, 4.2 litre Chevrolet V8 engine did not start due to overheating issues in practice and qualifying.

Fittingly in Australia's first ever FIA World Championship event, the race included Australia's only two World Drivers' Champions. Sir Jack Brabham (1959, 1960 & 1966) and Alan Jones (1980) both participated as part of the factory backed Rothmans Porsche team. The race was Sir Jack's first and only World Championship race since the 1970 Mexican Grand Prix, though between 1970 and 1984 he had been a semi-regular competitor in Australian touring car racing.

The race proved to be a financial disaster for promoters, the Light Car Club of Australia. The club failed to secure a major sponsor for the race, and were late in arranging a television deal so the race could be broadcast back to Europe. It wasn't until the last minute that the ABC decided to telecast the race (of Australia's major television stations, the Seven Network was committed to showing the 1984 Australian Open tennis from Kooyong in Melbourne, Channel 9 was showing a match between Victoria and the touring West Indies cricket team at the Melbourne Cricket Ground while Channel 10 was covering the Australian federal election). The official attendance was just 13,860, though many observers put the figure at less than 10,000. It was estimated that the LCCA lost anywhere from A$300,000 to 500,000 on the race.

Qualifying

As expected, the factory Rothmans Porsche 956 of Stefan Bellof took pole with a time of 1:31.600 (prior to the race, the lap record of the new 3.9 km circuit was 1:36.9 set by John Bowe in a 1.6 litre Ford powered Ralt RT4/85 Formula Mondial car during the final round of the 1984 Australian Drivers' Championship). Sharing the front row was his team mate and rival for the World Endurance Championship Jochen Mass with a lap of 1:32.300.

British driver Gordon Spice qualified 12th and was the fastest Group C2 runner with a time of 1:38.000 in his 3.3 litre Tiga CG84-Cosworth DFL.

Four times CAMS Gold Star winner, Melbourne resident Alfredo Costanzo, qualified the 1984 Australian Sports Car Championship winning Romano WE84-Cosworth he would share with car owner Bap Romano in 13th place and fastest of the AC class with a 1:38.400 lap, despite persistent understeer in the slow corners (due to 70 kg of lead ballast the car was required to carry for the race), Costanzo twice stripping second gear in the car and an overnight engine change from the 3.0 litre Cosworth DFV engine to a more powerful 3.9 litre Cosworth DFL.

In the only IMSA car in the field, American driver Jim Cook qualified 15th in Chuck Kendall's Lola T600-Chevrolet V8 with a 1:39.500, while Altfrid Heger qualified his Group B BMW M1 in 28th with a time of 1:50.500. The Group B BMW M1's (powered by the 3.5 litre BMW M88 Straight-six engine) actually proved slower than the production based Australian Group C touring cars had been at the circuit three months earlier, including being almost 3 seconds slower than the BMW 635 CSi touring car which used the same M88 engine.

Race

Without the factory Lancia's, the Group C class turned into a Porsche benefit with the first 10 places on the grid being filled by the 956 model and position 11 being the newer Porsche 962 run by John Fitzpatrick Racing for Australia's "Mr Versatile" of motor racing Colin Bond, and open wheel driver Andrew Miedecke.

Alan Jones had the honour of leading the first lap of the race having got the jump on temporary team mates Bellof and Mass. As in qualifying, the race was a Porsche benefit with the German cars finishing in the top 9 places (the 962 of Bond/Miedecke finished 6th). Rothmans Porsche drivers Bellof and Derek Bell won the race, giving Bellof the 1984 World Endurance Championship in the process. Team mates Jochen Mass and Jacky Ickx finished three laps behind in 2nd, with Jonathan Palmer and Jan Lammers a further lap down in 3rd place in their Richard Lloyd Racing 956B. The only car to actually challenge the Rothmans Porsche's during the race, the Skoal Bandit 956B of Thierry Boutsen and David Hobbs, was the only Group C1 car not to finish after suffering a burnt-out an ignition coil on lap 171.

The first non-Porsche finisher was the Group C2, 3.3L Cosworth DFL powered Tiga GC84 of Gordon Spice and Neil Crang in 10th place. The Tiga won C2 after a race long battle with the Italian Alba's and the German Gebhardt JC843-Cosworth. The AC class was won by the JPS Team BMW's 320i of Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst who finished in 14th place overall despite several spins and punctures caused by the road surface in the new infield section breaking up under the strain of the 650 bhp (485 kW; 659 PS) ground effect Group C Porsche's. The BMW was followed in 15th place by the Group B winning BMW M1 of Helmut Gall and Altfrid Heger. The only IMSA car in the race, a Lola T600-Chevrolet run by Chuck Kendall failed to finish having completed 95 laps.

The race distance was to be 257 laps, or 1000 km (620 mi) long. However, under WEC rules, with the exception of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, races had a time limit of 6 hours. The six-hour mark was reached when the Bellof/Bell Porsche had run only 206 laps (803.4 km), thus the race was declared at the time limit some 51 laps short of the 1000 km distance.

Official results

Pos	Class	No	Team	Drivers	Chassis	Tyre	Laps
					Engine
1	C1	2	Rothmans Porsche	Stefan Bellof Derek Bell	Porsche 956	D	206
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
2	C1	1	Rothmans Porsche	Jochen Mass Jacky Ickx	Porsche 956	D	203
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
3	C1	14	GTi Engineering	Jonathan Palmer Jan Lammers	Porsche 956 GTi	D	202
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
4	C1	10	Porsche Kremer Racing	Sarel van der Merwe George Fouché	Porsche 956	G	200
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
5	C1	11	Porsche Kremer Racing	Manfred Winkelhock Rusty French	Porsche 956B	G	200
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
6	C1	34	Team Australia John Fitzpatrick Racing	Colin Bond Andrew Miedecke	Porsche 962	D	198
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
7	C1	7	New-Man Joest Racing	Klaus Ludwig Henri Pescarolo	Porsche 956	D	197
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
8	C1	3	Rothmans Porsche	Vern Schuppan Alan Jones	Porsche 956	D	196
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
9	C1	55	Skoal Bandit Porsche Team John Fitzpatrick Racing	Rupert Keegan Franz Konrad	Porsche 956	G	194
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
10	C2	70	Spice-Tiga Racing	Gordon Spice Neil Crang	Tiga GC84	A	189
					Ford Cosworth DFL 3.3L V8
11	C1	12	Schornstein Racing Team Joest Racing	"John Winter" Dieter Schornstein Paul Belmondo	Porsche 956	D	184
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
12	C2	74	Gebhardt Motorsport	Frank Jelinski Beate Nodes Günter Gebhardt	Gebhardt JC843	A	181
					Ford Cosworth DFL 3.3L V8
13	C1	17	Porsche Kremer Racing	Kees Kroesemeijer Peter Janson Jésus Pareja	Porsche-Kremer CK5	D	179
					Porsche Type-935 2.8L Turbo Flat-6
14	AC	62	JPS Team BMW	Jim Richards Tony Longhurst	BMW 320i	Y	178
					BMW M10 2.0L I4
15	B	106	Helmut Gall	Helmut Gall Altfrid Heger	BMW M1	D	170
					BMW M88 3.5L I6
16	C2	99	JQF Engineering	Jeremy Rossiter Roy Baker Gary Evans	Tiga GC284	?	156
					Ford BDT 1.7L Turbo I4
NC	C2	83	Roger Andreason Racing	Richard Jones Don Burroughs John Bartlett	Lola T610	A	120
					Ford Cosworth DFL 3.3L V8
NC	C1	56	Rothmans Porsche GTi Engineering	Johnny Dumfries Jack Brabham Richard Lloyd	Porsche 956	D	108
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
NC	AC	61	Bap Romano Racing	Bap Romano Alfredo Costanzo	Romano WE84	A	106
					Ford Cosworth DFL 3.9L V8
DNF	C1	33	Skoal Bandit Porsche Team John Fitzpatrick Racing	Thierry Boutsen David Hobbs	Porsche 956B	G	171
					Porsche Type-935 2.6L Turbo Flat-6
DNF	AC	65	Jeff Harris	Jeff Harris Ray Hanger Barry Jones	JWS C2	A	114
					Mazda 13B 1.3L 2-Rotor Turbo
DNF	C2	81	Scuderia Jolly Club	Guido Daccò Lucio Cesario	Alba AR2	A	114
					Giannini Carma FF 2.0L Turbo I4
DNF	C2	73	Gebhardt Motorsport	Cathy Muller Sue Ransom Margie Smith-Haas	Gebhardt JC842	A	95
					BMW M88 3.5L I6
DNF	IMSA	131	Kendall Racing	Chuck Kendall Jim Cook Peter Fitzgerald	Lola T600	?	95
					Chevrolet 5.8L V8
DNF	C2	80	Scuderia Jolly Club	Martino Finotto Carlo Facetti Guido Daccò	Alba AR2	A	91
					Giannini Carma FF 2.0L Turbo I4
DNF	C2	72	ADA Engineering Gebhardt Motorsport	Ian Harrower Neville Crichton Bruce Davidson	Gebhardt JC843	?	64
					Ford Cosworth DFL 3.3L V8
DNF	C2	90	Jens Winther Denmark	Jens Winther Lars Viggo-Jensen	URD C81	A	42
					BMW M88 3.5L I6
DNF	B	113	Strandell Racing	Nick Faure Kenneth Leim Peter Clark	Porsche 930	?	0
					Porsche 3.3L Turbo Flat-6
DSQ	AC	64	Re-Car Racing	Allan Grice Dick Johnson Ron Harrop	Chevrolet Monza	D	114
					Chevrolet 6.0L V8
DNS	AC	63	Thomson-Fowler Motorsport	Bryan Thomson Brad Jones	Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC	A	-
					Chevrolet 4.2L Twin Turbo V8
DNA	C1	16	Terry Hook	Terry Hook Warwick Brown	Lola T610	?	-
					Chevrolet 6.0L V8

Note: Cars that failed to complete 75% of the winner's distance were Not Classified and are marked as NC in the above table.

Statistics

• Group C Pole Position - Stefan Bellof - #2 Porsche 956 - 1:31.600
• Group C2 Pole Position - Gordon Spice - #70 Tiga CG84 Cosworth - 1:38.000
• AC Pole Position - Alfredo Costanzo - #61 Romano WE84 Cosworth - 1:38.400
• IMSA GTP Pole Position - Jim Cook - #131 Lola T600 Chevrolet - 1:39.500
• Group B Pole Position - Helmut Gall - #106 BMW M1 - 1:50.500
• Fastest Lap - Stefan Bellof - #2 Porsche 956 - 1:34.500
• Average Speed - 166.468 km/h

References

1. Official Programme, Sandown 1000, page 43
2. 1985 FIA Yearbook, Red section, page 86
3. 1985 FIA Yearbook, Red section, page 87
4. 1985 FIA Yearbook, Red section, page 88
5. Autosport, 31 January 1985, page 37

Further reading

• Australian Motor Racing Year, 1984/85. 14. Berghouse Publishing Group. 1985. pp. 76–81. ISSN 0158-4138.

External links

• "FIA World Endurance Championship 1988". World Sports Racing Prototypes. 2 October 2005. Retrieved 2008-01-22.
• "1984 Sandown Park 1000 km". Team Dan Motorsport Almanac. 21 December 2003. Retrieved 2008-01-22.
• "Sandown Park 1000 Kilometres 1984 (Photo Archive)". Racing Sports Cars. 11 June 2006. Retrieved 2010-04-30.