- Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. - Mint Mobile unlimited, premium wireless. ♪ Have it to get 30, 30, 30, but to get 20, 20, 20 ♪ ♪ Have it to get 20, 20, 20, but to get 15, 15, 15 ♪ ♪ Just 15 bucks a month, so ♪ - Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. - $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of detail. - The National Motor Racing Museum is a must-see if you're in the central west of New South Wales. It's on the outside of Murray's Corner at the famous Mount Panorama in Bathurst and celebrates the rich history of Australian motorsport. There's famous cars, bikes, memorabilia, so much to take in, including the spectacular immersive room. It gives you an amazing taste of the speed, the sound, and the excitement of the mountain. The museum's generally open six days a week and also during events, so visit their Facebook page or themuseum's Bathurst.com.au website for further details. A motorsport podcast network production. It's time for another RICO Rewind on the V8 salute podcast and on this day, September the 12th, we are winding it back to one of the most controversial finishes in the history of the Sand Down Enduro. Notice I didn't say Sand Down 500 because on this day, September the 12th, in 1982, the Castrol 400, as it was then known, it wasn't a 500 by that stage, ended in, well, what could only be described as farcical circumstances with two drivers, both named Alan, claiming victory. Alan Moffatt in the Peter Stuyvesant Mazda RX-7 and Alan Greis in the Ricah Commodore V8. Now, before we get into what happened on this day for RICO on September the 12th in '82, we probably need to do a little bit of background and the timing of this is perfect as we get set for this weekend's Sand Down 500, the 60th anniversary of the Melbourne Touring Car Classic. So the race began in 1964. It was a six hour race, ran for two years, then went away for a couple. The light car club of Australia took over running Sand Down and brought back a Touring Car in Duro a three hour, as it was, in 1968. And that came into the calendar in September. So of course it was the perfect run up for the Bathurst race because it shared the same rules of the time. Now, over time it was a three hour, a 250, a 400 and became a 500 in 1984. And as many of you know, it hasn't always run to that full scheduled distance either. Sometimes it's been time certain finishes, we saw some race delays with accidents down the end of the back, straight there, a few years back with war repairs that were required. But in one infamous year on this day in 1982, the endurance race at Sand Down was both shorter than the build distance and also longer. In some ways, it was three months longer, in fact. So the 1982 race was the first of the six year period under cast role sponsorship. Of course, cast role, fantastic partners of ours on the V8 slide podcast. At the time, it was the cast role, 400. But in 1982, cast role, 341 probably would have been a bit more appropriate. It was scheduled the race for 110 laps instead of the usual 129 to fit into Shokhora, a Channel 7 live television broadcast window. Now, that was one of the very few years, if only, that Channel 7 covered the Sand Down in Duro. In the years leading up and in the years that followed, it was an ABC telecast event. Channel 7 next showed it in 1987, as a one off, and then didn't show it again until it had the V8 supercar rights, some years later, 2007. So, and of course, in that time, they'd been ABC, SBS, and Channel 10 as well. But anyway, let's go back to '82. In the end, Alan Greiss and Alan Moffatt were right in the middle of all of this. In the end, the winner was recorders only completing 109 laps of the 110 lap race. There was a pile of penalties, a protest, and appeals that meant that the race results were only declared final over three months later, just before Christmas in 1982. And Alan Moffatt was in the middle of it all. He largely dominated the '82 race with the master, but he got two separate one minute time penalties for speeding in pit lane. And this is back in the days of Sand Down's original layout before the infield circuit was used and before the realignment of some of the corners and some of the areas. The pit lane at the time ran alongside the inside of the straight that connected the old turn one to the current turn four. There's none of that left these days. So, the drama really started on this episode of RICO Rewind when Moffatt pitted from the lead. Lap 46, he was on a two-stop strategy, started the race with less than a tank of fuel to get the speed up in that little Mazda. He was judged to have driven too fast in the narrow pit lane, which per the telecast was meant to have a speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour these days. It's 40. So, he copped the one minute penalty for that. So, he gets the lead back on the road about 30 laps later when Greisbate, he's won and only stopped in the recap. Commodore, the Mazda came back for a final splash in dash fuel stop with 10 laps to go. So, again, the officials hit Moffatt with a penalty because he was driving too quickly in their view through the pit lane. This time, he also hit the roadways chief mechanic, John McCarthy, who copped a bruised ankle as a result. So, there's two one-minute penalties for Moffatt, plus a black flag for a stop-go penalty, which he did serve with a trip through the pits at, let's put it an even higher speed a couple of laps later. So, amid all of this, Greisbate's given the chequered flag as the winner of the race, completing 109 laps, half a lap behind Moffatt on the road, who'd actually completed 110, but was scored as being almost a minute behind the Commodore when the penalties were applied. So, the great theatre that unfolds in front of the great Sanddown Grandstand follows. Moffatt shows up to the podium, regardless. He's playing up to the boos and the jeers from the Grandstand. Greis flagged the winner of the race. Dick Johnson, third, amused by all the goings on. There was no question whether he was first or second, he was definitely third. But Moffatt immediately protested the validity of the penalties, as well as the post-race charges from the stewards of driving through the pits in a manate-deemed, dangerous, and, of course, also, failing to observe the black flag. So, the protest was heard a few days later. There was a seven-hour stewards hearing, and this is what I love. I hear all the time about modern motorsport fans. So, it used to be all wonderful back in the day. It was all gentlemanly, and they didn't carry on with drama. There was plenty of drama going on in the aftermath of all of this. So, the extra charges were dropped. The one-minute penalty stood. So, then Moffatt appealed it to cams, but that was dismissed at a hearing just prior to Bathurst. Then, third time was a charm, because he lodged another appeal. This time to the Australian motorsport appeals court, which in December overturned both the one-minute penalties, declared him the winner of the race, and the final results back dated to the last completed lap of lap 109. So, talk about a bun fight. So, Alan Moffatt took three months to in his fourth of an eventual six-sandown endurance races, and that broke the streak that Peter Brock had running. He'd won seven in a row from 75 to 81. He was an early retirement from the '82 race with a gearbox problem. So, massive dramas on this day at Sandown, back in 1982, our latest RICO rewind, a controversial day in Australian touring car racing, and a bit of a postscript to all of this. Alan Grice kept the trophy as the winner of the Castro 400. Some years later, it was eventually handed over to Alan Moffatt in a private little get-together in recent years, so that trophy did find its way back many years later to Alan Moffatt's hands, but an absolute bun fight of the highest levels on this day at Sandown in '82. A controversial finish, if you were there that day, we'd love to hear from you, but the vision does tell so much of the story. Alan Moffatt, the winner at Sandown, on an amazingly strange old day, and of course, remember, he was in the Mazda up against the Commodores and the Falcons, so I think the crowd was already half against him before he'd even had any of these dramas go on in an amazing period in group C touring car history. Don't forget to RICO filters amazing partners of ours. They are the official filtration partner of the Repco Supercars Championship. They're on board with us here at V8 Sleuth as well. If you need to filter out the bad stuff, you need to get RICO filters. Find out the right one for you at ricofilters.com.au. Thanks for tuning in to RICO Rewind. I'll have another one for you very soon on the V8 Sleuth Podcast on a day today as we look back to Sandown in 1982. The National Motor Racing Museum is a must-see if you're in the central west of New South Wales. It's on the outside of Murray's Corner at the famous Mount Panorama in Bathurst and celebrates the rich history of Australian motorsport. There's famous cars, bikes, memorabilia, so much to take in, including the spectacular immersive room. It gives you an amazing taste of the speed, the sound and the excitement of the mountain. The museums generally open six days a week and also during events, so visit their Facebook page or themuseumspathurst.com.au website for further details. (upbeat music)
