Gibson Motorsport was an Australian motor racing team that competed in the Australian Touring Car Championship from 1985 until 2003, though the team had its roots in Gibson's "Road & Track" team which ran a series of Ford Falcon GTHOs in Series Production during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The name of the team was also the name of Fred Gibson's automotive business in Sydney. As Gibson was also a driver for the Ford Works Team, his team was sometimes a pseudo-works team when the Ford factory did not enter.
History
Group C The Nissan Motorsport Team was established by Howard Marsden in 1981 as a factory Nissan motorsport operation after Nissan decided to change from rallying to touring car racing. It made its debut in the 1981 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst. A limited campaign in the 1982 Australian Touring Car Championship was followed by a more concerted effort in the 1982 Australian Endurance Championship, with Nissan winning the Makes title in that series. This was followed by full campaigns in 1983 and 1984. The 1.8-litre Bluebird turbo was fast but fragile, although George Fury did finish second in the 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship (without taking a round win) and took pole position in the 1984 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst with a lap time that would stand as a record until 1990.
At one point of 1984, Marsden had gone to Japan to discuss Nissan's plans for the new Group A category, and when he returned he joined the team at a test session at Melbourne's Calder Park Raceway where lead driver Fury was substantially faster than ever before and had broken the existing touring car lap record on the 1.6 km circuit. Fred Gibson told the story that the normally placid Marsden went into a rage and threatened to fire the entire team on the spot when he found the Bluebird was fitted with a 2.0 litre turbo engine and not the 1.8-litre unit it raced with.
Fred Gibson, who gave the Bluebird turbo its first race win in Australian touring car racing during the 1983 AMSCAR Series at Sydney's Amaroo Park, retired from driving at the end of 1983 and in 1985 and accepted an offer from Howard Marsden to take over as team owner/manager, which included the Gibsons moving from their long time home in Sydney to Melbourne where the team had been based. He inherited next to no staff as most jumped ship at the prospect of working for Fred. Gibson later described the Bluebird Turbo as "a shithouse little car". One who did stay was a young apprentice mechanic and race driver named Glenn Seton who had joined the Nissan team in 1984 as Christine Gibson's co-driver in the Nissan Pulsar EXA turbo for Sandown and Bathurst. Glenn was later joined at the team by his father Barry Seton, a renowned Sydney engine builder, the 1965 Armstrong 500 winner and Fred Gibson's former team mate and co-driver in their Ford Works Team days. Bo, as he is known, joined Nissan as the teams chief engine builder.
Group A
1986-1987 After sitting out 1985 while Nissan sorted out the homologation of its first Group A car, Nissan reappeared in 1986 with two Nissan Skyline RS DR30s, one driven all year by longtime team driver George Fury, and the second shared between Gary Scott and Glenn Seton, with Scott claiming pole position for the 1986 James Hardie 1000 (Seton partnered Fury who qualified 3rd). In 1987, Seton drove the second car all year to 2nd place both in the 1987 ATCC and at the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst which was also a round of the inaugural World Touring Car Championship. Seton's Skyline was co-driven at Bathurst by twice Australian Drivers' Champion and 1986 Volvo team driver John Bowe.
After Fury took four round wins in the 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship and finished an unlucky runner-up in the series to the Volvo 240T of Robbie Francevic, the Peter Jackson sponsored team scored its first big win when Fury and Seton led Scott and new team driver Terry Shiel to a 1–2 win at the 1986 Castrol 500 at Sandown Raceway, the traditional warm up event for the Bathurst 1000. Fury, partnered by Shiel, would back up to win his second Sandown 500 in 1987.
The Nissan team also raced a Nissan Gazelle in the 1987 Australian 2.0 Litre Touring Car Championship for 20-year-old Mark Skaife, who had previously shown good form finishing second in the 1985 and 1986 Ford Laser series held at Amaroo Park. Skaife, who had joined the Nissan team as a mechanic in 1987, went on to win the 2.0 Litre championship, winning three of the four rounds of the series to break the stranglehold that Toyota had on the baby car class. He was joined at Bathurst in the Gazelle by Adelaide Hills Nissan dealer and sports sedan driver Grant Jarrett. During qualifying, Jarrett was having trouble making the class cut off time and it looked as if the Gazelle, which due to the race being an FIA WTCC race was forced to run in a higher engine class than it did in Australia (putting it in the same class as the BMW M3), would be a non-qualifier. However, late in Friday qualifying Jarrett managed to make the cut. During the time Jarrett was on his qualifying run, Skaife was reportedly nowhere to be seen in the Nissan pits. When the car returned to the pits it was driven straight into the garage and the doors closed. Both drivers emerged a short time later, with Skaife having damp hair and a flushed face while Jarret looked more like he had just got out of a shower than a touring car. This led to speculation it was Skaife and not Jarrett who had just been in the car for its final qualifying run. The pair finished the race in 19th place after numerous mechanical problems which had started within the first 10 laps. Despite the speculation that he had not driven his fastest qualifying laps, in the race Jarrett proved his critics wrong and would be credited with a faster race lap than he recorded in qualifying. However, in a magazine interview almost 20 years later, Fred Gibson admitted that it was indeed Skaife who qualified the car using Jarrett's driving suit and helmet.
1988-1990 For 1988, the new Nissan Skyline HR31 GTS-R was introduced. The new car featured a 2.0 Litre turbocharged Straight-six engine which produced approximately , almost more than the outdated DR30's turbocharged 4cyl engine. Also, the HR31 featured front and rear spoilers which helped with high speed stability, something the old car lacked with team drivers reporting the cars as being frightful to drive on the high speed Conrod Straight at Bathurst where they were reaching speeds up to in 1986.
Unfortunately for the team parts for the car were late in arriving as Nissan also had to supply to teams in Japan and Europe (the European Nissan team was in fact run by Howard Marsden). This saw the car not debuted until Round 5 in Adelaide in the hands of Seton. Seton and Fury alternated driving the car while the team built its second, and it would not be until Round 8 at Amaroo Park before that second car appeared. Despite the new cars tendency to be unreliable, especially with its transmission, Seton and Fury showed enough speed in the ATCC to give hope to an end of the Ford Sierra domination, though in reality the team was playing catch-up all year having to develop the car as they raced it. The car was also homologated with only a small capacity turbo which limited its power output, with power peaking at around in 1990.
At Sandown for the annual Sandown 500, the Fury / Skaife car had led for a number of laps (after all the leading Sierras except Allan Moffat's had retired or been delayed with mechanical problems), and Skaife was holding a 30-second lead over the Larry Perkins / Denny Hulme Holden Commodore V8, before retiring while in the lead on lap 94 with differential failure. The Seton / Anders Olofsson car (which Seton had qualified 3rd, though almost two seconds slower than Dick Johnson's pole winning time in a Sierra) had retired on the third lap of the race with the same transmission failure that would put it out within seconds of the start of the Tooheys 1000 a few weeks later. Until the homologation of a proper racing 5-speed Getrag gearbox from 1989, the GTS-R's biggest drawback was its production based transmission.
The team suffered a setback in August 1988 when Seton rolled the #15 Skyline during a media day at Bathurst. This would set the tone for a disastrous Tooheys 1000 campaign which saw both Skylines out by lap 17, with Seton's car destroying its gearbox as the green flag was waved to start the race (he made it only as far as the pit exit gate), while Fury's car was out with overheating after the fan belt flew off the engine at close to on Conrod Straight. Against a flock of the all-powerful Ford Sierra RS500s, Fury managed to qualify the Skyline in 10th place at Bathurst. He would use Seton's car in the "Tooheys Dozen" shootout as co-driver Mark Skaife had crashed the #30 car during practice and it was still under repair. Fury (10th) and Larry Perkins (8th), driving one of the new Holden Commodore VL SS Group A SVs, were the only non-Ford Sierra drivers to qualify in the Top 10 at Bathurst, though they were joined by the non-Fords of Peter Brock (BMW M3) and Nissan Europe driver Allan Grice (Commodore) in the shootout. 1988 was also the only year the shootout would not decide the top 10 grid positions for the race.
In 1989, title sponsor Philip Morris, who was dissatisfied at being given secondary status behind Nissan for their signage on the Skylines throughout 1988, offered its sponsorship dollars to Glenn Seton who had left to form his own team, Glenn Seton Racing. Twice ATCC champion and triple Bathurst winner Jim Richards was hired as a replacement. The team expanded to three cars for some events with Mark Skaife driving. Wins were achieved at the Winton ATCC round (Fury) and at the Sandown 500 (Richards/Skaife) with a 3rd and 4th placing at Bathurst. Driving the HR31, Richards was the only non-Ford Sierra RS500 driver to qualify for the Tooheys Top 10 pole runoff at Bathurst.
For 1990 the team reverted to two cars for Richards and Skaife with long time team driver George Fury let go by the team. At round 7 Skaife debuted the 4WD, twin-turbocharged Nissan Skyline GT-R at the Mallala Raceway. After qualifying 3rd, Skaife then showed what the previously dominant Sierra runners feared when he stormed to the front and was pulling away from the field before the car suffered a hub failure mid-race. Richards then moved into the GT-R for the last two rounds to win the series at Barbagallo and Oran Park. After finishing 4th in a quiet race in Perth, Richards won the race at Oran Park and secured the first ATCC win for both Nissan and Gibson.
The GT-R was favourite to qualify in pole at Bathurst, though brake dramas saw Richards only set 11th best time. In a move that was actually illegal (though it was not known until years later), after discovering problems with the GT-R following Saturday afternoon's final practice session, that night Gibson's team covertly swapped to their spare car (the ATCC car), including putting the Channel 7 Racecam unit into the car so that no one would be any wiser. Using the 'illegal' car, Richards started the race and stormed to the front in less than 10 laps, and despite long pit stops to replace brake pads, would remain a challenger before failing with drive-train failure, though the team was able to get the car back on the track and Richards and Skaife would finish 18th outright, 15 laps down on the winners.
1991-1992 In 1991, the team dominated winning all but a handful of races. Richards and Skaife completely dominated the Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst, easily claiming pole (Skaife), fastest lap (Skaife in the team's second car) and winning in race record time. Due to the demise of Group A in Australia after 1992, Skaife's pole time of 2:12.630 at Bathurst remains the fastest recorded Group A time on The Mountain.