JPS Team BMW was a former Australian motor racing team that ran from 1981–1987. The team's main focus was touring car racing but also ran in sports sedans and GT cars as well. The team, under the management of former British Touring Car Champion and Formula One racer Frank Gardner, was based in the Sydney suburb of Terrey Hills and completed almost all of their testing at the old Amaroo Park circuit with Gardner himself doing most of the test miles in the various BMW's the team raced.
Australian Group C
1981 The team was born out of Allan Grice's Craven Mild Racing which had run Holden Toranas and Holden Commodores in the mid to late 1970s and into 1980. In 1981 CMR became the factory operation for BMW Australia running a Group C version of the 3.5 litre, 6cyl, BMW 635 CSi. The car would have a new paint scheme as well with the red, white and gold of Craven Mild replaced by the black and gold of John Player & Sons. Over the next seven seasons the black BMW's would become one of the most recognisable cars in Australian Touring Car Racing, with the 635 often used in adverts by both BMW Australia and sponsors JPS in the days before the government ban on Tobacco advertising in Australia.
For 1981, Allan Grice was the team's lead driver in the 635 CSi. Grice finished 2nd in the Amaroo Park based AMSCAR Series for cars with a maximum engine capacity of 3.5 litres (which excluded the V8 Commodores and Ford Falcons), and then went on to finish 7th in the crash shortened James Hardie 1000 partnered by British sports car driver David Hobbs. The relationship between Grice and Gardner had deteriorated during their six-year association which led to Gricey's removal from the team at the end of 1981 (most of the animosity was from Gardner allegedly not having a high opinion of Grice's aggressive driving style with Gardner preferring a more sensible approach. However, in many ways Grice's style was ahead of its time in Australia). Grice also claimed that Gardner used his influence to steal his long-time backer Craven Mild. Gardner then signed triple Bathurst 1000 winner, New Zealander Jim Richards, who would remain the team's lead driver until Gardner shut down operations at the end of 1987. This also left Grice without a drive and he later admitted he contemplated retirement until he was thrown a lifeline by Re-Car team owner Alan Browne in mid-1982.
1982 Despite CAMS upping the 635's minimum weight from 1280 kg to 1420 kg, JPS Team BMW scored their first podium when Richards finished 3rd in the final round of the 1982 Australian Touring Car Championship at Surfers Paradise (the only round of the ATCC contested by the team who again focused their efforts on the AMSCAR series which by now was open to all Group C touring cars). Richards then finished a disappointing 11th at the Castrol 400 at Sandown in the traditional lead up to Bathurst, but Bathurst produced a better result. Richards and David Hobbs would finish in a fine 5th place in the 1982 James Hardie 1000 after starting from only 19th position on the grid (the car actually finished 6th on the road but the 4th placed Dick Johnson / John French Ford Falcon was disqualified for illegal engine modifications).
The Richards / Hobbs 635 was the second BMW built by the team, which also entered their original car in the race for New Zealand's Formula One World Champion Denny Hulme (a long time friend of both Gardner and Richards) and Western Australian driver Stephen Brook. After qualifying 38th, the second car was retired after just 96 laps following a crash in The Cutting by Brook who ran wide while being lapped and hit the outside wall.
1983 After getting nothing in the annual 'concessions' handed out to various competing makes by CAMS, the team opted not to compete in the 1983 ATCC, instead Richards drove in the AMSCAR series and Gardner developing the car for the Australian Endurance Championship later in the year which would suit the BMW more than the sprint races. The testing and development, mostly carried out by team manager Gardner at Sydney's Amaroo Park, paid off as the BMW started to show its potential not only with improved reliability, but with extra horsepower giving much needed added speed. The horsepower came largely through the homologation of a 24-Valve head for the engine which boosted power from to a reported . The power boost put the BMW's speed on par with the leading V8 Commodore's and Ford Falcon's, though the car was handicapped by poor front tyre wear and handling due to its 3.5 L straight-6 engine, which unlike the V8's hung partly over the front axle of the car. Richards finished seventh in the opening endurance round at Amaroo, but only managed 17th in the next round at Oran Park. The combination then came good Sandown's Castrol 400 where Richards finished second behind 1983 ATCC winner Allan Moffat in his Mazda RX-7.
At Sandown after the latest homologation period, the BMW was the only one of the top 5 outright makes which was not protested over the weekend, mostly because they were not seen as a true threat. Mazda, Ford, Holden and Nissan were all embroiled in some form of protest over the legality of parts, and Frank Gardner cheekily requested the JPS pits be moved away from the other top teams so they could get work done in peace due to the constant arguments going on around them. With Richard's second behind the dominant RX-7 of Moffat in the race and the failure of the leading Commodore, Falcon, and Nissan Bluebird turbo teams, suddenly JPS Team BMW were being talked about as a dark horse for the 1983 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst.
Team manager Frank Gardner temporarily came out of retirement to partner Richards at Bathurst with the team only entering the one car in 1983 (the 52-year-old Gardner explained to the press that he had never lost his skills behind the wheel and had done all of the cars testing so he knew the 635 better than most, and that he would also only drive the lunch time stint. Though many believe the cunning Gardner saw a good opportunity to win the race himself, especially after the V8's with their homologation updates had failed to make an impact at Sandown, the traditional warmup event for Bathurst). The black BMW carried a RaceCam unit that had a periscope lens poking through the roof of the car. The 635's speed was shown on the 6.172 km Mount Panorama Circuit when Richards qualified fourth for the Hardies Heroes Top 10 runoff, and managed to maintain the position after the runoff which was cause for great optimism for the race. The race however was a complete disaster from the team. After a good start Richards suddenly started falling back on lap three and came straight into the pits. It was found that metal filings had somehow made their way into the fuel system of the car which would have meant a total strip, clean and rebuild of the entire fuel system just to get back into the race. The team did manage to get the car back onto the track, but it managed only another three laps and was sadly retired after completing just six laps.
Gardner would later claim that he believed the car had been sabotaged although he did not know by who and wouldn't speculate on the reason, though the car not being Australian made and its cigarette sponsorship were popular theories at the time. However, as the cigarette sponsored Holden Dealer Team (Marlboro) and Allan Moffat's Mazda team (Peter Stuyvesant) who finished Bathurst in first and second respectively were not targeted, some felt the car being European was a more likely reason. At the time, the long-held Holden and Ford V8 domination of Group C touring car racing in Australia was under serious threat with factory-backed teams from foreign manufacturers the likes of the European BMW, and Japanese marques Mazda and Nissan, and this was unpopular with not only the fans, but some within the sport itself (Moffat's ATCC win was the first by a Japanese car, while George Fury put the Bluebird turbo onto the front row at Bathurst. There were also claims from high-profile drivers such as Allan Grice that the Mazda RX-7 was a sports sedan and not a touring car and should not have been allowed to race). The claim of sabotage is actually disputed by Jim Richards and the team's chief mechanic Pip Barker who believe that the dirty fuel could have been a combination of things.
Following the James Hardie, Richards went on to finish 11th at the Surfers Paradise 300, and 9th in the Humes Guardrail 300 at the Adelaide International Raceway. All this gave Richards second place in the Endurance Championship with a total of 67 points, only five points behind winner Peter McLeod in his Mazda RX-7. Between the Surfers and Adelaide races, Richards drove the car in the 40 lap support race at the 1983 Australian Grand Prix meeting at Calder Park. The race, which included a compulsory pit stop, saw Richards finish 4th.
1984 JPS Team BMW competed in its first full Australian Touring Car Championship in 1984 with Richards finishing in fifth place with a best of third again at Surfers Paradise. Richards also scored the team's first ever pole position during the championship when he qualified fastest for Round 6 at Lakeside in Brisbane.
Tony Longhurst joined the team as Richard's co-driver for the Castrol 500 at Sandown and the last ever James Hardie 1000 for the local Group C Touring Cars (Australian touring car racing was adopt the FIA's international Group A rules from 1 January 1985). Unfortunately both races were a disaster for the team. After starting 6th at Sandown, the BMW was a DNF with a broken diff on lap 72.
The team again expanded to two cars for the James Hardie 1000 and alongside the Group C Car, entered a Group A spec 635 for Denny Hulme and Bavarian Prince Leopold von Bayern. The team's progress was hampered during race week at Bathurst when the Prince crashed the Group A car at the top of the mountain, a legacy of going too quick too soon on cold tyres and an unfamiliar mountain circuit. The effort into fixing the car put the Group C challenger about a day behind schedule, though Richards still managed to qualify the car sixth in Hardies Heroes with a time two seconds quicker than he had managed in 1983. Despite BMW's touted reliability it would be a short race for the Richards/Longhurst car which suffered a blown engine on just lap 39, again leaving Longhurst without a drive after he also missed out at Sandown. The Hulme/von Bayern car fared much better though, qualifying 49th (third in class, but 5.3 seconds slower than the Group A leading TWR Rover Vitesse and 12 seconds slower than Richards). In the race the car's only problem was a flat tyre and Hulme and von Bayern had a steady run to finish second in class and 15th outright. The Group A car also carried a Racecam unit from TV broadcaster Channel 7 which was mounted in the headlight of the car, with both drivers able to talk to the TV commentators while driving in the race. For the normally quiet Hulme who had a career dating back to the early 1950s in his native New Zealand, it was the first time he had ever talked on television while actually driving in the race.
Bathurst would be the last Group C race for the team. With no chance of winning or placing in the 1984 Australian Endurance Championship, JPS Team BMW decided to skip the final round at Surfers Paradise. The team did race in the Australian Grand Prix support race at Calder (which was the final competitive Group C race on the Australian mainland), but it entered the Group A BMW for Richards to drive with an eye firmly on developing the car for 1985.
Group A
1985