The year’s Repco Bathurst 1000 features a special tribute to nine-time race winner Peter Brock, including a range of cars from his incredible career set to be on-hand at the track in ‘Peter’s Pitlane’ for fans to enjoy.
Set to be part of the display of significant cars from his career is the #05 Mobil 1 Racing Group A VN Commodore that Brock famously drove in 1991 during a spectacular Top 10 Shootout lap on the Saturday.
The memories of Brock sliding the Aussie V8 across the top of McPhillamy Park live long in the minds of race fans nationwide and this year’s Great Race is the first chance for fans to see it up close since its full restoration to Group A, 1991 Brock/Mobil specification.
This piece of Bathurst history has been restored by Jack Perkins over the last 18 months for its private collector owner.
Perkins will return to the Mountain this year for his 21st Bathurst 1000 start, sharing the #11 Objective Racing Mustang with Jackson Walls.
An early chassis swap
Brock returned to the General Motors fold in 1991, albeit without factory backing, in something of a marriage of convenience that re-united an old winning combination.
Brock had Mobil sponsorship and former Bathurst-winning partner Larry Perkins had cars and engineering expertise but no backer.
The 1982, 1983 and 1984 Bathurst-winning pilots pooled their resources and joined the touring car trail in ’91 in a pair of brand-new Mobil-backed VN Commodores run out of Perkins Engineering.
Brock started the year in the first Perkins-built Mobil car (PE chassis 012), but Perkins accidentally ‘dinged’ it during a test session at Calder just after the opening round of the championship at Sandown.
Perkins simply moved Brock into the car he’d driven in the season opener (PE 013) for the next Australian Touring Car Championship round in Tasmania and it was this Commodore that the nine-time Bathurst winner drove for the remainder of the season – the very car that will be at Bathurst this year.
The mob on the hill loved it
The 1991 ATCC was dominated by the turbo-charged Nissan GT-Rs, occasionally upset by Tony Longhurst’s rapid 2.5-litre BMW M3.
The heavy V8 Commodores weren’t really a match in the shorter sprint races but the fans loved seeing Brock and Perkins back together again as teammates.
For Bathurst it was decided to pair Brock with his former Sierra teammate Andrew Miedecke in the famous #05 while Tomas Mezera teamed with Perkins in the #11 car.
The #05 entry scored a berth in the Top 10 Shootout and Brock completed a spectacular lap, sideways across the top of the Mountain impressing the fans no end!
On race day things proved a struggle. The car died on Miedecke during his first stint, leaving him stranded on the run up to the Cutting.
Ingeniously, the pit crew went to Channel 7’s compound and, working with Racecam engineers, used what they could see on the in-car camera to relay the right information to Miedecke to allow him to kick the Commodore back into life.
Electrical issue overcome, Brock and Miedecke ploughed on for the rest of the day and recovered from 32nd place to finish seventh, though 14 laps down on the winning Nissan.
There’s no doubt this #05 VN Commodore isn’t remembered because of race day at Bathurst in 1991 though; it’s very much what it did in the single lap Shootout on Saturday that sticks in the memory bank.
The very same chassis was taken by Brock to a race win in the opening 1992 ATCC round at Amaroo Park, marking the first win for Holden in the championship since Brock had won at the old Surfers Paradise circuit in 1986.
That race win, as against the odds as it was, will however always be overshadowed by the Bathurst Top 10 lap from the previous October.
Perhaps no better reflection of that is the car appearing at Bathurst this October has been very deliberately restored to how it ran in the 1991 Bathurst Tooheys Top Gun Shootout, rather than its 1992 Amaroo-winning livery and specification.
Pedal to the metal
The Channel 7 broadcast team for the 1991 Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst featured former Brock HDT teammate John Harvey, who was ready and waiting with a microphone to get Brock’s reaction to the wild Top 10 Shootout lap.
“I had the brakes adjusted for a full tank of petrol and as soon as I touched the brakes it went into oversteer,” Brock exclaimed.
“I thought ‘oh Brock, what are you doing?’. [The fans] loved it because I kept the pedal to the metal and drove out of there.”
He also opened up post-race on just what brought the car to a standstill mid-race.
“I had my electronics guy in the Racecam area,” Brock explained.
“They were driving the Racecam, looking at the wiring loom, telling Andrew how to fix the electronic fault in the car parked up on the Mountain. I thought that was astonishing.
“But it was one of those ridiculous things that happen, it was an electronic component that actually vibrated apart, it wasn’t a bad connection, it simply broke.”
The Repco Bathurst 1000 will be held at Mount Panorama on October 8-11. Tickets are on sale now.
In collaboration with V8 Sleuth, Supercars.com is highlighting Peter Brock, who will be honoured at the 2026 Repco Bathurst 1000. The nine-time Bathurst winner will be celebrated via a series of tributes, with several of his famous cars on display at the Mountain. The Peter's Pitlane exhibition is outside the National Motor Racing Museum between Thursday October 8 and Sunday October 11.
