FEATURE: ALLAN GRICE – BROCK BEATER

Allan Grice – Brock Beater

If Peter Brock had a nemesis in the mid-1980s, it was Allan Grice. In a succession of Commodores, Gricey had pressured Brock on speed, if not reliability.

After getting dumped by Frank Gardner in 1982, Grice excelled in a variety of privateer Holdens, often let down by his benefactor co-drivers.

With inspired-but-volatile car/engine builder Les Small, Grice took the challenge to Brock. Without factory backing, their downfall was reliability and, in the enduros, journeyman patron co-drivers like Alan Browne and Graeme Bailey.

In 1986, though, Grice was supreme, outclassing Brock in the European touring car championship and then finally triumphing in the Bathurst 1000.

Oddly enough, the season started badly for the former Maitland, NSW pastry cook, who’d organised a ‘Team Australia’ assault on the ETCC backed by Foster’s and Qantas. Or so he thought.

“The plan was that I would go over with one car and a spare, and compete in every round of the ETCC,” Grice said. “People like Alan Jones, Vern Schuppan, Allan Moffat, Peter Brock and Colin Bond would go over and do one or two races at a time, with me doing all of them.”

The car would race in the green and gold national sporting livery and Grice even received Australian government permission to be branded as the Australian Motor Racing Team.

Then Brock announced his ETCC campaign, torpedoing Grice’s project.

“Foster’s was very keen and Qantas was quite keen,” Grice recalled. “It was sold with all those names in it. But at the second last minute, I got ‘Brocked’.

“He announced that he and Moffat would go to Europe with the backing of Holden and, understandably, Foster’s and Qantas said ‘What the ****’s going on here? Your selling us a deal with these names and these names aren’t in it’.

“So those sponsors dropped out, understandably, because, with all good intentions, I was telling them pork pies. I was ‘Brocked’.”

To read the rest of the story, pick up Auto Action #1785. Out now.

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