Bathurst 1982 and Allan Grice sets the first ‘100 mph’ lap of Mount Panorama in practice in the Re-Car Commodore he shared that year with Alan Browne. The record had eluded all the stars for several years.
Starting from pole, Grice led the race for 10 laps until he spun at Murray’s Corner. He and Browne still managed to finish second. Grice won Bathurst for the first time in 1986 when he shared Graham Bailey’s Chickadee Commodore.
The first 100 mph average lap of Bathurst had been set way back in 1967 by Kevin Bartlett in a 2.5-litre Coventry Climax-powered Brabham. Grice has a connection with that achievement, because Grice raced the ex-Bartlett Brabham the following year.
This was in the days before Allan Grice the touring car star, back when Gricey was still trying to make his way in openwheelers. He raced that Brabham in the Singapore Grand Prix in 1968, and might have won but for mechanical failure.
Fast forward back to the '80s, and a few years after Gricey became the first man to lap the Mountain in a touring car at 100 mph average speed, he became the first driver to do it in a Group A touring car, in the Chickadee Commodore VK in 1986.
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