Harry Firth couldn’t believe his ears. After a lifetime of career-defining victories, the Old Fox was more accustomed to adulation than criticism, but here he was being heckled by a group of admittedly well-lubricated fans lingering outside the Holden compound at Mount Panorama. Worse, they were wearing red. And they thought the General’s general had just thrown away a certain Bathurst victory.
Two-thirds in, the 1973 Bathurst 1000 appeared to be the Holden Dealer Team’s for the taking. Peter Brock in the leading Torana XU-1 had matched the pace of arch-rival Allan Moffat’s Falcon Hardtop, forcing the Ford team leader into an uncharacteristic spin, and the six-cylinder Holden had the advantage of requiring one less stop before the finish.
What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, as it turned out. And, as is often the case in such circumstances, it was a combination of factors – airline strikes, business priorities, changed conditions, misjudgements, inattention, miscommunication, unfamiliarity, inexperience – that conspired to thwart a second successive victory for Holden, handing the trophy instead to Ford.
The headline cockup is that the HDT Torana ran out of petrol in a vain attempt to avoid a late-race splash-and-dash, leaving Brock’s new co-driver, 51-year-old Bathurst veteran Doug Chivas, to single-handedly push the car uphill to the pit entry line – invisible to all but the officials present – before the HDT crew could take over and push it into the pit bay.
Chivas’ agonising effort made for breathtaking television viewing, but it broke the hearts of Holden fans all over the country.
Not that the drama ended there. Brock was never going to give up that easily. After physically flinging the exhausted Chivas aside – “Disgraceful, really,” he confessed with a laugh – Brock leapt into the #1 Torana and put in what chief mechanic Ian Tate rated one of his best drives. Could he have caught Moffat? We will never know, thanks to an unnecessary late-race fuel stop ordered by HDT boss Harry Firth and then a freakish last-lap puncture. It just wasn’t meant to be.
In the meantime, Moffat serenely motored on to score his third Bathurst victory in four years. For all Holden’s pain, this was Ford’s delight.
Firth – never slow to deflect blame when things went wrong – pointed the finger in all directions for losing ‘what should have been an easy race for us to win’. He blamed Tate (for failing to consult him), Chivas (for trying to bump-start the car), Brock (for not reporting the fuel gauge had failed), Bond and co-driver Leo Geoghegan (for not driving fast enough), the lap scorer (for ‘ticking 0 instead of 1 on the first lap so we were already one lap out of phase’) and even timekeeper Robyn Bond, who he didn’t like. Harry for some reason accused Colin’s wife of insisting Chivas complete an extra lap!
Equally ludicrous, Harry also alleged that Chivas only did the extra fatal lap because the
