As the Repco Supercars Championship fraternity welcome back the Penrite Sandown 500 to the calendar in a little more than two weeks time, the Repco Garage reflects on the first major changes to the historic venue in 1984.
Since opening as a motor racing venue in 1962, Sandown had gone through minimal changes through the 1970s and early 1980s, however a push by the Light Car Club of Australia to attract international sports car racing forced a redevelopment.
The LCCA took control of the motorsport activities at Sandown in 1966 and developed the pre-Bathurst race at the circuit as a traditional warm up to the 1000, but it was eager to continue to attract international names like the Tasman Series did early in the track’s life.
In a coup, the World Sportscar Championship was attracted by the LCCA in 1984 leading to significant changes to the circuit.
As it stood, Sandown was a challenging layout as back then the start-finish line was in the same place, but the straight was longer heading into the 90 degree Shell corner as a short straight in front of the old pits led to Peters Corner, which remains to this day. Continuing along the back straight to Rothmans Rise is still a feature of the current layout, as Dandenong Road followed then a small deviation to the notorious Causeway, which came back onto the fronts straight.
The first major change was the pits being moved from in between Turns 1 and 2 to the current location beside the grandstand. Shifting the garages to here allowed Turn 1 to be moved back and a new chicane to be installed before Peters Corner. Moving the pits also ensured the notoriously boggy paddock was a thing of the past.
Due to FIA requirements, the circuit extended into the infield by adding a much unloved loop bypassing the fast Esses at Rothmans Rise. Another area of the track to receive attention was the Causeway, which was re-aligned to feature a chicane to not only slow drivers, but added further length to extend the layout from its original 3.100km to 3.878km.
Having just acquired naming rights from Castrol, the traditional 500km race not only witnessed the debut of HDT’s last of the big bangers VK Commodore, but of the new layout. Brock promptly won as the VKs dominated the dying days of Group C.
The World Sportscar Championship raced there in December of 1984 contesting a 1000km event won by Derek Bell and Stefan Bellof in a Porsche 956. Australia did achieve success at the event as Neil Crang took C2 Class success partnering Gordon Spice in a Ford-powered Tiga GC84.
Returning in 1988, the World Sportscar Championship was a battle between Sauber Mercedes and Silk Cut Jaguar culminating at Sandown. Jean-Louis Schlesser and Jochen Mass took the win for Team Sauber Mercedes, but the Frenchman lost the title to Jaguar’s Martin Brundle.
Although prestigious, the two World Sportscar Championship events incurred heavy financial losses for the LCCA ending with it forced into liquidation in 1992.
Sandown continues to press on today despite an uncertain future as the long International layout was canned in 1989 leading to the layout used today, albeit a minor re-alignment heading to the old Causeway in the early-2000s and extra run off at Rothmans Rise, in addition to Turn 1.