Article: 1985 Bathurst 1000 - Group A Comes To Australia

[Mark Petch]

Steve, yes I was, however Petch sold his interest in the LHD car I think after the 2nd round of the '86 ATCC and John Sheppard assumed control of the team known as Volvo Dealer Team. He obviously brought in some of his own troops but the majority of the guys left. With the withdrawal of Volvo support the rest of the team went their own ways. In retrospect while a a good team manager it was his way or the highway and there are numerous references to the difficulties Robbie had with him. Petch then had the ex Rouse Sierra and while it performed reasonably well here in NZ it was not up with the play at Bathurst in '86. Then came the CeeBeeEmm M3 followed by an ex Wolf Racing Sierra known as the Whittakers Peanut Slab Sierra. Volvo Sweden as I understand it pulled out of GrpA and ordered the cars back to Sweden. The spanner man I was trying to recall in a previous thread was Guy Trigaux and the Petch Volvo was a GTM built car in Belgium raced by Michelle Delcourt...Post by Frosty5.


I can't quite be sure on this as it was a long time ago, maybe Frosty5 can confirm it or not but I seem to recall Mark Petch initially contract Les Small of Roadways to manage and run the 1986 car, and it won on it's first outing at Symmons Plains. It was either after that success or the following round that the team was sold and Les Small went back to building customer Commodores. There was quite a bit of disharmony in the Volvo Dealer Team that eventuated when Sheppard took over

A few years late I know but just to set the record straight, Les Small helped me in 1985 and we ran the team out of Les workshop in Melbourne for Sandown, Symonds Plain's, Adelaide and Perth. We then moved the team down to by factory in Sydney and at that point we employed Wayne Eckersley, and Tony Fraser, who moved down from Melbourne we he had been working for Les.

There is a lot of misinformation about what happened in 1986 when I pursuaded Volvo Australiam with the invaluable help of Bob Atkin's, to back the formation of a Volvo dealer Team. John Sheppard had nothing to do with the formation of the team and was suggested to me as an ideal person to run the team on a day to day basis as the Team Manager. John in theory was supposed to report to me but soon learnt that he could bypass me, and on the 10th July 1986 I resigned, and Volvo Australia paid me out. The rest is pretty much history.