Saturday Sleuthing: 10 years on
Today on Saturday Sleuthing we're getting in the mood for next weekend's SKYCITY Triple Crown at Hidden Valley by profiling the car that won in the 'Top End' a decade ago.
Todd Kelly and his Holden Racing Team VY Commodore - chassis HRT 048 to be particular - were victorious in Darwin in 2004 on an intense weekend of racing.
Kelly and his #22 Holden were a force from the outset in Darwin 10 years ago, topping the opening day of practice and qualifying alongside teammate Mark Skaife for an all-HRT front row in Race One - a 17-lap sprint on Saturday afternoon.
Skaife led the race into the final corner when a hard-charging Marcos Ambrose lunged him under brakes. They made contact; Skaife was carted into the dirt and Ambrose's SBR teammate Russell Ingall sailed through for the win with Kelly second.
The first corner of Race Two on Sunday afternoon was just as explosive as Ambrose hit teammate Ingall into a spin with an over-ambitious move at the first corner to take the lead.
Excellent pit work and strategy from the Kmart Racing team elevated Rick Kelly into the race lead, and eventually he won from sixth on the grid.
With brother Todd finishing second it was the first time two brothers had finished 1-2 in an Australian Touring Car Championship/V8 Supercars Championship race.
In Race Three it was Todd and HRT who got the jump on Rick and the Kmart crew in the pit lane, and Todd held on to win the race and the round overall for the factory Holden squad.
It was a memorable weekend for our profiled car with the elder Kelly brother never outside the top three in any session all weekend.
But what of the history of this car before - and after - the '04 Darwin event?
HRT 048 was actually built in mid-2003 as the team's first ground-up VY Commodore (rather than a converted VX model) and debuted in Todd's hands at the Queensland Raceway round of that season.
It was driven by Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst in the Sandown 500 (as car #2) where it became the first HRT car powered by Holden Motorsport's new engine (introduced in 2003 as part of 'Project Blueprint' in place of the existing Chev 18-degree unit).
This car became the team's 'lead' #1 entry for Bathurst where it was driven by Skaife and Kelly and ran second until the closing stages, when Skaife was black-flagged for a loose rear door after contact with John Bowe.
Kelly retained this chassis for the remainder of the 2003 Championship (including taking the first V8SC pole of his career on the Gold Coast) and then again for the single-driver events in 2004, before it became the high-profile #05 entry of Peter Brock and British touring car ace Jason Plato at Sandown and Bathurst.
While HRT 048 was officially the last car Brock drove at Bathurst, history will show the legend did not get to turn a wheel in the race.
Plato slid off and clouted the wall at Murray's Corner during his opening stint. As he limped back to the pits, an unsighted John Cleland - another ex-British Touring Car Champion - ploughed into the back of the slow-moving Commodore.
The Scot's OzEmail Falcon launched onto its roof at the exit of the Chase with both cars sustaining major damage.
HRT parked the badly damaged chassis for the final rounds of 2004 before it was rebuilt and transferred to the satellite HSV Dealer Team (formerly Kmart Racing) for 2005 and driven by Rick Kelly to pole position for the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.
Initially it raced with a near-identical livery to its HRT cousins before it was rebranded in 'Team Buick' livery for the historic round at the Shanghai International Circuit in China, and also the preceding round at Eastern Creek.
Tim Leahey and Mark Noske shared the car in the enduros where another revised livery featuring more prominent HSV branding was introduced.
It then reverted to Kelly for the final rounds, finishing third overall at Symmons Plains and third again at Phillip Island.
It was then sold to Tony D'Alberto Racing to run in the Dunlop Series (then known as the Fujitsu Series) in 2006, with backing from GMAC.
D'Alberto finished sixth overall for the season and, in a fitting tribute to Brock in the wake of the legend's passing in September of that season, raced with a giant mural of Brock and his greatest race cars on the bonnet of HRT 048 at Mallala and Bathurst.
D'Alberto retained the chassis as a spare for his title-winning 2007 DVS campaign before it sat idle until 2010 when the team set about restoring the car to its Bathurst 2004 specification and livery as driven by Brock and Plato.
The immaculate restoration was complete in late 2010, and two years later the car was sold to its current owner, car collector Dean Montgomery.
The car appeared at Bathurst in 2012 where it took part in the 50th Year race celebrations and was a popular addition to last year's Geelong Speed Trials event where Terry Wyhoon - owner of Dunlop Series squad Image Racing, who provide preparation and maintenance of the ex-HRT car - got behind the wheel for a number of fast runs.
Saturday Sleuthing will take a break next weekend as the V8 Supercars return to Hidden Valley, but look for it on Saturday June 28 to have a bit of 'Townsville flavour' as we count down to the Castrol Townsville 500.
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