Perkins Engineering was a team contesting the Australian V8 Supercar Championship Series, operating as an active racing team between 1986 and 2008. From 2009 onwards, the involvement of Perkins Engineering in the championship was wound back into a supply relationship with the newly formed Kelly Racing.
Team history
At the end of 1988, Perkins and Hulme went on to stage a one-two victory in the Group A support race at the 1988 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide in November. After the leading Dick Johnson Racing Sierras of Johnson and John Bowe suffered fuel pick-up problems, Perkins and Hulme had a fairly comfortable second half of the race.The 1988 South Australia Cup (Group A) Adelaide
1990s The Moffat/ANZ rumors did not come to fruition, and the team built a new plain white VL Commodore SS Group A SV for the 1990 season. Aside from some minor sponsorship from longtime supporters such as Castrol, the car's main "sponsor" was "Perkins Engineering", and it ran the entire 1990 season this way. A few other minor sponsors were picked up for the endurance races, where Tomas Mezera co-drove. After a good showing at the 1990 Sandown 500, the pair pulled off a third-place finish at Bathurst after narrowly missing the win after a safety-car mix-up when Perkins was held up in pit lane (the win went to the HRT Commodore of Allan Grice and Win Percy). The pair picked up a win a few weeks later at the newly opened Eastern Creek Raceway in the 1990 Nissan Sydney 500. Perkins showed the speed he was getting out of the now two-year-old model Commodore by qualifying the car second behind the Nissan GT-R and in front of the leading Sierras.
In 1991, Perkins entered a deal that saw Peter Brock close his Mobil 1 Racing team and bring sponsorship to Perkins Engineering to race two VN Commodores. Early results were slim, and despite some mechanical issues, Perkins and Brock generally became the fastest of the Holdens on track during the 1991 Australian Touring Car Championship and into the late season endurance races. While Brock would finish the championship in 6th place, Perkins could only manage 11th. The team's biggest problem was the lack of quality Bridgestone rubber early in the season. The 1991 Bathurst 1000 saw little joy for the team, though both cars easily qualified in the top 10. After a race plagued by electrical issues, the Brock/Andrew Miedecke car finished 7th while the Perkins/Mezera car retired after 65 laps with no oil pressure. Perkins would later attribute his personal lack of success in 1991 to the contract with Brock's team and sponsor Mobil, claiming that the contract actually prevented him from finishing in front of Brock on the race track.
At the end of 1991, Brock and Perkins decided to go their separate way which saw the two VN Commodores sold to Brock's Advantage Racing. Perkins Engineering was again left without a sponsor, so the plain-white 1990 VL Commodore returned – (albeit painted red, after having been leased to Sydney-based veteran Graham Moore in 1991) – once again, with "Perkins Engineering" as the initial primary sponsor. A number of other sponsors became the "main" sponsor periodically during the season. In NSW-based events, the car was known as the "Statewide Roads Commodore", and in Western Australia, and South Australia, it was the "Kreepy Krauly Commodore". Everywhere else, it was again "Perkins Engineering" on the car.
However, for the endurance races and the Australian Grand Prix support races, Perkins Engineering picked up significant sponsorship from Bob Jane T-Marts, and the car was painted yellow and blue, the colors of the T-Marts. Driving with Steve Harrington, Perkins proved there was life in the older model VL Commodore which won first time out in Bob Jane colors at the 1992 Don't Drink Drive Sandown 500 after a late race battle with the BMW M3 Evolution of Tony Longhurst and Paul Morris. Perkins then sensationally put the Commodore onto the front row for the 1992 Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst, but alternator and tire problems in the rainstorms that marred the race (and eventually caused its early finish) saw them eventually finish in 9th place. While driving the older VL, Perkins also pointed out during the top ten runoff at Bathurst that the only 'old' thing about the car was its superseded body shape. The speed of the Perkins VL at Bathurst raised questions about the legality of the car, though Perkins' qualifying time of 2:14.08 was only 0.74 seconds faster than he had qualified in 1990. Also, in that same time period other cars such as the Sierras and the 4WD, twin-turbo Nissan GTR had also improved their own lap times at Bathurst by around 2–3 seconds per lap.
Castrol, a long-time ancillary supporter of Perkins Engineering, came on board in 1993 as major sponsor, flushing the team with more funding than it was used to and rivalling the Mobil dollars of 1991. The team were still in the midst of building a new Holden VP Commodore for the season, so the old 1990 car was once again repainted, this time into the corporate colors of Castrol.
With the new car making its early debut at the Phillip Island round of the championship, after damaging the VL in a rollover at Symmons Plains Raceway, the team spent most of 1993 developing the VP into a race-winning package. Even after an engine failure at the Sandown 500 the team fronted at Bathurst, full of confidence that the car was fast enough to win. The Perkins Castrol Commodore, with its Holden V8 engine as opposed to the Chevrolets run by the other leading Holden teams, was the fastest in all but one session during practice and qualifying. Perkins then cut a near perfect lap to claim his 2nd pole position in the race (Peter Brock set the pole time in 1983), and won after a race long battle with Jim Richards and Mark Skaife. Former motorcycle racer and longtime Allan Moffat co-driver Gregg Hansford had joined to team to co-drive at Sandown and Bathurst.
After the domination of the two Ford teams in the 1993 championship (which despite making up only four of the 14 current-shape models on the grid won the first seven rounds of the championship consecutively) the aerodynamic package for both the EB Falcon and VP Commodore was re-homologated for the 1994 season. Although this allowed Mark Skaife to win the championship, it is possible that by increasing the amount of downforce and drag on the Commodore over Falcon relative to the year prior, that the 1994 specification VP was less suited to the endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst. Both races were won by Dick Johnson and John Bowe in their Shell Falcon while Perkins and Hansford finished in third position as the second placed Holden on both occasions.
Preparing for 1995 with a new Holden VR Commodore, Perkins Engineering had been asked by Castrol to increase its presence to two cars. Perkins resisted saying he wasn't ready to expand the team. Had the team expanded at this point it would be almost certain that Gregg Hansford would have driven the second car. Hansford, who had matched Perkins lap times in the 1994 Tooheys 1000 where the pair finished 3rd, had driven the 1994 car in the season-opening Winfield Triple Challenge, and Greg Crick drove the car at Sandown, with a view to purchasing the car, but this was all the team was prepared to do at that stage.
A few weeks later, Hansford was killed in a Super Touring race at Phillip Island and the team was left without its preferred endurance race co-driver. Perkins himself was said to be devastated at Hansford's death.
Eventually, then England-based Australian, Russell Ingall was chosen to fill the vacant endurance seat. After a forgettable Sandown 500, Perkins and Ingall won the 1995 Tooheys 1000 after being in last place after one lap following a flat tyre off the start line when Perkins and the HRT car of Craig Lowndes touched which ripped the valve out causing the tire to instantly deflate. The car then went a lap down after 50 laps. The pair charged back to the front to take the lead with nine laps remaining, helped by safety cars periods and also by the race leader Glenn Seton blowing the engine of his Falcon on lap 152 while holding a 10-second lead over Perkins.
In 1996 Castrol employed John Clarke who came with many ideas on how to build the Castrol team. His intuition to pick a moment in time to build the Castrol racing team and the Castrol Cougars for women racers was a head of its time. In 1997 John made a pact with Larry Perkins. Perkins role was to beat Brock in his retirement year. Larry and Russell did it. With increased money from Castrol and John Clarke who encouraged associated sponsors to get on board, Perkins Engineering finally expanded to two cars. Peter was a great supporter of the Cougars. For the record they came 13th in two Bathurst 1000 assaults.
After finishing sixth at Bathurst in an older VP Commodore, an experiment to work around the convoluted aerodynamic rules of the time, the team prepared itself for an all-out assault on the 1997 championship.
The 1997 season turned out to be one of the best for the team from a championship perspective with Ingall finishing second and Perkins fourth. They dominated the Melbourne Grand Prix support races and the Phillip Island races with one-two results before once again winning the Bathurst 1000 for Larry's sixth and Ingall's second time. The team also ran a third car as part of the "Castrol Cougars", shared between female drivers Kerryn Brewer and Melinda Price, who is the sister of former racer, Drew Price, and the aunt of future Perkins Engineering driver, Shane Price.
1998 saw the team initially starting in a pair of VS Commodores, as well as fielding the Castrol Cougars entry at selected races throughout the season with Brewer and Price sharing the seat. Ingall, along with HRT's Craig Lowndes, established themselves as the drivers to beat. Perkins debuted a new VT Commodore mid-season before handing it over to Ingall for the remainder of the season. The championship went right down to the final round, however a bad start by Ingall after tangling with Tony Longhurst saw him lose too many points to Lowndes, and second place in the championship was all that could be salvaged.
Perkins and Ingall then went on to win the Tickford 500 at Sandown before eventually finishing second to the Stone Brothers Racing EL Falcon of Jason Bright and Steven Richards at the FAI 1000 at Bathurst.
Future dual Supercars championship winner Marcos Ambrose tested for Perkins Engineering in 1999 but was not employed as his wage demands were more than Perkins was prepared to meet for someone who at that time was relatively unknown.
1999 saw Perkins Engineering end the Castrol Cougars program and enter into a relationship with Wayne Gardner to prepare and run a Coca-Cola sponsored Commodore for selected races during the year. This meant the team had three cars to look after at the workshop and at the race meetings giving them more engineering data than they could get from two cars. Gardner had run his own team (Wayne Gardner Racing) previously but with reduced Coca-Cola money did not have the resources to run it himself any more or even attend a full season.
2000s The 2000 season saw more expansion for the team. Previously, although running two cars in the championship, the endurance races were now included in the championship – (they weren't previously), so the team needed to run both cars at the endurance races, whereas they had previously run only one. Christian Murchison and Luke Youlden ran the No. 8 car in the endurance races. Perkins and Ingall finished 11th at Bathurst.
The deal with Wayne Gardner completed, Perkins Engineering again ran two cars for Larry Perkins and Russell Ingall in 2001. The team finished 8th at Bathurst, and 2nd in a controversial finish to the Queensland 500. Adam Macrow and Luke Youlden drove the No. 8 car in the endurance events.