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.

Layout of the Sandown Raceway international circuit (1984-1998)

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.

A Porsche 956, similar to the race winning car. (Image from 2013)

Qualifying

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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 teammate 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

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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 teammates 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. Teammates 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

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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
  Jesús 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

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  • 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

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  1. ^ a b c 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

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