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 recently restored 1997 Mobil Holden Racing Team Commodore VS that Brock and Mark Skaife drove in that year’s Primus 1000 Classic at Bathurst.
That race marked Brock’s last Bathurst as a full-time driver and the duo’s #05 Commodore VS proved to be the car to beat. Skaife grabbed pole position in his first Bathurst start for HRT and Brock led the entire opening stint and stepped out as race leader.
However, an under-bonnet fire with Skaife at the wheel in the second stint took the factory Holden out of the race and torpedoed their hopes of winning.
The car – chassis HRT 034 – has been the subject of a meticulous, multi-year restoration project by leading DUNLOP Super2 Series team Eggleston Motorsport, headed by husband-and-wife team Ben and Rachael Eggleston.
It’s set to make its first public appearance since being restored at Bathurst this year.
While it’s better known for its 1997 exploits, this car began its racing life the previous season as a VR Commodore.
The Supercar’s sister
The Holden Racing Team created quite a stir during 1996 with the debut of a brand-new VR Commodore for Craig Lowndes that was quickly dubbed the ‘Supercar’ by the specialist press of the period.
Featuring a radical roll cage design, it included a prominent bar that ran diagonally through the front passenger’s area. Rival teams were up in arms and serious questions over driver extraction in the case of an accident were raised.
The bar stayed in, however the team’s next new chassis – destined for Peter Brock for the ‘96 endurance races – had to have the ‘Petty bar’ chopped out before it was permitted to be raced.
The success of Holden in that year’s ATCC, namely Lowndes’ dominant season, prompted an aerodynamic change in a bid to level competition with Ford’s Falcons heading into the endurance races.
Brock’s new VR Commodore – and indeed all other versions of the car from all teams – had the front undertray of its spoiler trimmed by 125 millimetres prior to the Sandown 500, where he and Tomas Mezera finished third on their new car’s debut as Lowndes and Murphy blitzed their way to victory.
The #05 car was outpaced by the younger duo’s #1 car all weekend; Brock speared off the road at Dandenong Road Corner in qualifying when he caught the accelerator and brake pedals together and consigned he and Mezera to 13th on the grid.
They came home 38.5 seconds behind the winning sister HRT Commodore, not helped by a spin earlier in the day by Brock at Turn 4.
Brock and Mezera drove this chassis at Bathurst and it became Brock’s VS for the 1997 season, the first run under the V8 Supercars brand.
A first, final farewell
The 1997 season featured an off-track war resulting in two, 1000-kilometre races for Bathurst that October.
Brock competed in both; in the Super Touring race he shared a Triple Eight-run Vectra with Derek Warwick and a fortnight later in the V8 Supercar race he drove his usual #05 HRT Commodore with new partner Mark Skaife.
The long-time Gibson Motorsport pilot had been on HRT head honcho John Crennan’s shopping list for some years and, with the Gibson team devoid of sponsors and struggling, the door was open to secure a quality co-driver and successor to Brock.
Things couldn’t have gone any better at Sandown as the former Nissan factory ace promptly settled into the #05 car, punching out pole position for both Sandown and Bathurst.
The fairytale 10th win in each of the enduros for Brock wasn’t to be as a throttle cable issue delayed them at Sandown after Brock led the initial laps and left them back in 12th place by the finish.
A huge crowd headed to the Primus 1000 Classic at Bathurst to farewell the ‘King of the Mountain’, but the engine backfire issue eliminated he and Skaife from the race while running up front.
Though he returned to make one-off Bathurst starts in 2002 and 2004, it’s the 1997 HRT Commodore that so many fans identify as Brock’s ‘last’ Bathurst 1000 car.
A red-hot go
Brock reflected mid-race at Bathurst in 1997 to a makeshift press gathering, expressing how he felt in the wake of the #05 Commodore’s retirement from the 161-lap classic.
“If I’d been running around in the 2:14s or 2:15s, with Skaifey carrying the car, then I should have retired already,” he said.
“But when you’re running at the front, the car is running beautifully, you’re controlling the race, then you can say, ‘hey, that’s great’.
“I actually feel a sense of calm. I don’t feel let down, angry, disappointed, frustrated. Everyone in the team gave it their best shot.
“As I think I’ve said before, if I had an epitaph, it would be ‘He had a red-hot go’ and that’s what the team did today.”
The HRT 034 chassis was driven by Skaife – as car #50 – during the 1998 Australian Touring Car Championship and made a return to Mount Panorama for the media day promoting that year’s race.
This year’s Great Race will be its first time back at the magic Mountain in nearly 30 years.
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.
