In summary
- Prince Leopold von Bayern made his Bathurst debut in the 1984 James Hardie 1000 alongside 1967 F1 champion Denny Hulme in a JPS Team BMW 635CSi.
- After crashing at The Dipper during practice, exhausted from a long flight, their car was rebuilt overnight by the TAFE Smash Repair Team before qualifying.
- Hulme and von Bayern recovered to finish 15th outright and second in the Group A class, with the Prince also becoming something of a cult figure via an unexpected Racecam interview.
Among the many European-domiciled drivers to race at Mount Panorama over the last 50 years, one stands out for his impeccable pedigree out of the car – Prince Leopold von Bayern, an heir to the 800-year-old Wittelsbach dynasty, former rulers of the Kingdom of Bavaria, and a descendant of Austrian emperor Franz Joseph and King George II of Great Britain.
Prince Leopold was paired with racing royalty of a different kind for the 1984 James Hardie 1000, as the Prince lined up for his Great Race debut with 1967 Formula 1 World Champion Denny Hulme alongside as co-driver in their JPS Team BMW 635CSi. The duo was charged with driving the Frank Gardner-run squad’s second car in a bid to win the Group A class. The lead JPS machine, piloted by Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst, contested the outright division in what was the last Bathurst for Group C cars before the international Group A class took over as the top dog of local touring car racing.
No one realised it at the time, but Prince Leopold was something of a pioneer – one of the first marque-specific, factory-aligned drivers to tackle a Bathurst enduro. He was most certainly the forerunner for a long list of celebrated BMW works drivers dispatched to Australia, a practice that continues to this day.
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