Jim Richards has won the Great Race seven times. The only driver with more Bathurst wins than that is Peter Brock. And three of Brock’s nine wins were shared with Richards.
Richards joined Brock at the Holden Dealer Team at Bathurst in 1978. It was the New Zealander’s first experience with a factory team – not that Jim Richards in the late ’70s was some kind of undiscovered talent. Four years earlier he’d finished third on debut at Bathurst in a shoestring-run privateer Torana L34 (inset below), and from there made a name for himself at the wheel of the Sidchrome Mustang and then Big M Falcon Hardtop Sports Sedans. At the same time he was fielding his own touring car effort, a Falcon XB GT Hardtop (below) backed by Melbourne Ford dealer, Melford Ford.
But Richards soon discovered that touring car racing at that time was a far from straightforward exercise. Finding the required funding was only one of a number of hurdles that had to be overcome for anyone who wanted to be a front runner in Group C.
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