Monaro First Race Win to be Celebrated at VACC Historic Sandown

The 40th anniversary of the first major race win by a Holden Monaro will be celebrated in style at the VACC Historic Sandown race meeting on November 8-9 this year.

Appropriately, around 40 Monaros of all models are expected to be on track or on display at the meeting to mark the historic victory at Sandown on September 15, 1968 of the then-new HK Monaro GTS 327 in the Datsun 3 Hour production car race.

1970 Australian Rally Champion Bob Watson, who co-drove the privately entered Monaro to victory with its owner, the late Tony Roberts, will be a guest of honour of meeting.

Watson, who has chronicled his pivotal role in the chassis development of the Monaro in his forthcoming autobiography In Control which will be launched at Historic Sandown, will be on hand to meet Monaro enthusiasts.

As well as signing copies of his book, he will do a victory lap of the circuit in the similar Warwick Yellow GTS 327 of Sandown Regularity entrant, Keith Riddell.

Back in 1968, the Monaro GTS 327 was the brainchild of Holden executive John Bagshaw as the answer to Fords new Falcon GT and Watson, a Holden suspension engineer, was amongst a small team given the task of making it race-worthy.

Ironically the Datsun 3 Hour was the first proper motor race for Watson and Roberts, who were both rally drivers, but they took the chequered flag ahead of F1 World Champion-to-be Alan Jones and Clive Millis in a similar GTS 327. They finished with absolutely no brakes even the metal backing plates had fallen out so they had to be slowed by their pit crew after their victory!

It was the beginning of a racing legend, with another HK GTS 327 privately crewed by Bruce McPhee and Barry Mulholland, taking victory at Bathurst a few weeks later, with Watson and Roberts third this time behind the Jim Palmer/Phil West Holden Dealer Team entry, giving the new Monaro an unprecedented 1-2-3 result at Mt.Panorama.

The Sandown Three Hour race in 1968 was part of a big day of racing that saw Peter Brock win the Sports Sedan race in his Holden powered Austin A30 and Norm Beechey debut his new Improved production Monaro GTS 327.

Watson and Roberts came into the race with plenty of practice under their belt. In his engineers role at Holden, Watson has done many hundreds of kilometres on the ride and handling course at the companys Lang Lang Proving Ground, developing the Monaros suspension in a bid to make it a match for Fords new Falcon GT.

Then after purchasing one of the first Monaro GTS 327 cars to be built a Warwick Yellow coupe with black trim registered KBM 327 Roberts invited Watson to join him in a successful record-breaking attempt at Sandown as a shakedown for the Datsun 3 Hour, just two weeks away.

While fuel consumption and brake pad wear were both higher than expected, they set 16 new endurance records in 24 hours and gave themselves some much-needed practice on the Sandown circuit.

An entry of around 300 racing, sports and touring cars spanning eight decades will take part in the annual Historic Sandown meeting, which is being supported by Shannons, with highlights including an expected entry of 28 Formula 5000s for the VACC Formula 5000 races and capacity fields for both Group N Touring Cars and Category S Production Sports Cars.

And I am going to be there. I know Keith Riddell and his car is a nice personalised version of the breed. I cant wait to get a copy of Watsons book. Great input into this forum Leith.

Mike.