This weekend the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship heads to Sydney Motorsport Park for the Red Rooster Sydney SuperSprint, which makes us rewind back over time to some of the events hosted by the Western Sydney venue.
The track opened in November 1990 but didn’t host a round of what was then known as the Australian Touring Car Championship until 1992.
Today we’ve rewound the clock back to the opening round of the 1999 Shell Championship Series hosted at what was then known as Eastern Creek – and as this shot shows it was a very, very big field!
Held on the last weekend of March, this particular round was dominated by the Mobil Holden Racing Team duo of Mark Skaife and Craig Lowndes.
Skaife won the first two sprint races and Lowndes the third for the pair to finish 1-2 for the round overall with the podium completed by Garth Tander (competing at Eastern Creek in a Supercar for the first time given it wasn’t on the calendar in 1998, his debut year).
Looking back at the results sheet brings back plenty of memories and a lot of things stand out.
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A total of 40 cars were permitted to start each race however there were actually 41 cars that tried to qualify.
Privateer gun Cameron McLean (in his ex-Dick Johnson Shell Falcon EL) missed qualifying due to an engine change and did a deal with Richard Mork for the Commodore privateer to surrender his grid spot.
As it turned out Todd Kelly had a huge crash in the Young Lions Commodore at turn one in Race 1, opening a spot on the grid for Mork for the remaining two races anyway!
This round was also the championship debut of the new AU Falcon after its brief run in the non-championship event at Albert Park.
Best of the Ford pack was Glenn Seton’s new Ford Tickford Racing example, finishing fourth overall with a 5th, 7th and 4th in the sprint races while teammate Neil Crompton made do with the older model EL.
A total of six AU Falcons were on the grid – Seton’s pair of FTR cars, the two Shell Helix cars of Dick Johnson and Paul Radisich and the Stone Brothers-run Pirtek car of Jason Bright and Mitre 10 car of Mark Larkham.
We take tyres for granted in the category these days given everyone is on the same rubber, but March 1999 at Eastern Creek was actually a very important milestone in the history of the Supercars category – the first round held using control tyres, given Bridgestone had been awarded the inaugural contract.
A huge crash at the beginning of Race 3 wiped out a range of cars; in fact seven cars were unable to take the restart, leaving plenty of teams with repair bills before the next round of the championship in Adelaide for the inaugural Sensational Adelaide 500.
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