VR-VS Commodore: The Racing Reject That Became A Champion
Holden’s VR Commodore and its identical VS twin rank among The General’s most successful competition cars, with two Australian Touring Car Championships, two Sandown 500s and three Bathurst 1000s between them. However, during the early stages of its development, the VR also triggered a year-long political war which threatened to rip touring car racing apart.
At the core of the controversy was Holden’s planning for its second 5.0 litre V8 touring car challenger based on the then-latest VR model, which was due to replace its existing VP for the start of the 1995 season.
The VP had served Holden well in the first and second seasons of Australia’s new Falcon vs Commodore V8 touring car category (renamed V8 Supercars in 1997), with Larry Perkins/Gregg Hansford nailing a popular Bathurst 1000 victory in 1993 followed by Mark Skaife’s 1994 Australian Touring Car Championship triumph with Gibson Motor Sport.
Holden and its special vehicles partner Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), which owned the factory-backed Holden Racing Team, wanted to ensure the VR would be a superior weapon. Using lessons learned from racing the VP against Ford’s EB Falcon, Holden planned major changes in chassis design to stay one step ahead of Ford’s impending EF Falcon.
However, Holden’s ambitious plans were on a collision course with Ford, the sport’s governing body CAMS and particularly the Touring Car Entrants Group of Australia (TEGA). The burgeoning entrants’ group, formed by race teams to protect their interests, was adamant that Holden would create significant and unnecessary cost burdens on a new touring car category created with cost containment as one of its primary goals.
This drawn-out battle was a pivotal moment in Australian motor sport. It was the first time that an entrants group was able to impose enough influence over a governing body and a car manufacturer to change its design plans, to ensure the long term health of a racing category at the expense of self-absorbed manufacturer interests.
The Battle of the VR
In February 1994 Holden Motor Sport boss John Lindell sought feedback from major Commodore teams to establish what they wanted to achieve with the new VR. These discussions were far reaching with the primary aim, according to an Auto Action report, to “emulate the Falcon’s ride height and suspension performance.”
In mid-March, wind tunnel testing with a 30 per cent scale model commenced in the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) wind tunnel, with Lindell assisted by Holden designer Mike Simcoe, former British Aerospace aerodynamicist Trevor Hird and HRT staff.
According to Lindell, the primary goal of the VR’s new aerodynamic package was to increase downforce at the front of the car to improve turn-in, along with better overall balance and tune-ability. Lindell’s team had studied aero packages used in Germany’s high-tech touring car series (DTM) at the time, including those on the GM-linked Opel Calibra coupes plus Mercedes Benz and Alfa Romeo rivals.
Lindell and his team spent four days in the wind tunnel with the scaled-down VR Commodore, testing four front spoilers, four front under-trays, three sets of side skirts and three rear wing configurations. Holden was keen to move away from the VP’s side-mounted rear wing (like the Falcon) to a centre-post wing on the VR. After working through a multitude of combinations, a base aero specification was established.
Work had also been progressing on the VR’s body-shell, which Holden and TWR had envisaged would be more specialised in racing terms than the VP, with significant changes to improve suspension geometry and centre of gravity height. In late May, Holden invited CAMS’ Bruce Keys to inspect a prototype of its proposed VR racer, which was flatly rejected on the grounds that its modifications were too radical.
According to an Auto Action report in early September, the prototype body shell was built to Lindell’s instructions by either HRT or TWR. Walkinshaw was infamous for his creative interpretation of rule books, particularly touring car racing in which TWR boasted a formidable record of global success.
Walkinshaw publicly dismissed industry fears that the VR was a radical design that would be too fast for the new EF Falcon in 1995. However, Ford, CAMS and TEGA had already shown the way forward, with agreement that the existing EB Falcon race car would only be cosmetically updated with EF front and rear panel sets and minor revisions of the front spoiler and rear wing to suit.
Therefore, costs for teams to update to the new model would be minimised and any tweaking needed by CAMS’ Performance Review Committee (PRC), to balance the performance of the new Falcons and Commodore once they started racing, would be simplified by focusing only on aerodynamics.
“CAMS and TEGA rejected Holden’s plan to make major under-the-skin changes to the VR, ruling that the alterations were too extreme,” wrote Mark Fogarty in the AA report.
“According to several sources, the proposed VR race shell featured a wildly lowered body and radically re-tubbed front wheel arches. One rival says the transmission tunnel on the VR inspection shell is so high that ‘it’s like a huge arm rest’.
“Walkinshaw claims the rejected VR body shell was ‘built to Holden’s instructions’ although he admits HRT also believed it complied with the regulations. ‘John Lindell (Holden’s motor sport manager) supervised it,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he got it wrong, but CAMS do.’”
CAMS Motor Racing Manager Tim Schenken added: “We’re very conscious of trying to contain the performance of the 1995 cars and hold them initially to the 1994 level.”
Between June and October, Holden and TEGA worked together on a less radical version of the prototype with ongoing input from Bruce Keys who made several more informal inspections.
In October Lindell and his aerodynamics team stepped up to the full-size Monash University wind tunnel in Melbourne with HRT’s No.015 VP Commodore, in which Brad Jones and emerging star Craig Lowndes had recently finished a gallant second at Bathurst.
The Commodore was initially tested in VP trim to establish a baseline, after which VR panels were attached to commence aero testing of the new model. Working 10-hour days for four days straight, a succession of spoilers, under-trays, side skirts and rear wings were trialled to confirm earlier scale model findings. Lindell was particularly proud of what was achieved with the new centre-post rear wing, claiming excellent downforce without excessive drag.
However, in late October, Schenken inspected the prototype and expressed reservations about the VR’s new rear suspension pick-up points with longer trailing arms. CAMS was also concerned about changes to the front suspension strut towers, but Lindell was adamant there would be no more diluting of the original design and Holden would present the VR to CAMS Recognition Committee as it was.
On November 1 Holden officially lodged the VR’s homologation papers - but on November 4 CAMS officially rejected them! According to AA Lindell was incensed, describing the rejection as “staggering” and that his response to CAMS was “unprintable”. However, CAMS and TEGA stood their ground. With the long term future of the category at stake, they couldn’t afford to back down.
“CAMS wants Holden to present a re-skinned version of the existing VP racer, employing the current floor-pan, suspension pick-up points and mechanicals,” AA wrote. “It is believed that the longer upper (rear) arms can provide greater traction and more progressive suspension travel.
“It is believed CAMS has basically adopted the TEGA position of minimising changes and, therefore, cost to competitors. If touring car teams simply transfer existing mechanicals to new shells (or update their existing VPs with new panels) the cost is reduced and the chances of having ‘new’ cars on the grid from the first round of the 1995 Shell Series (ATCC) is greatly enhanced.
“One TEGA member estimated it would take between three and four weeks to re-skin a VP (with new VR panels). However, he said converting from VP to VR with the rear suspension changes as proposed by Holden would be significantly more difficult, time-consuming and expensive.”
Finally, in late December, CAMS approved the VR Commodore for competition use from January 1, 1995. Holden had finally relented, after accepting sound arguments put forward by CAMS and TEGA on the over-riding need for cost containment to ensure healthy competitor numbers and the category’s long term prosperity.
“The differences between Holdens old and new is all aerodynamic, following a titanic arm wrestle between the three parties to maintain existing chassis performance,” AA reported in its final 1994 issue.
TEGA has prevailed on the issue of front and rear suspension location, meaning existing race cars can be converted easily to 1995 specifications. CAMS’ seal of approval brings the VR to the end of a long and rocky road.”
1995: Ford wins ATCC, Holden wins Bathurst
The 1995 ATCC was a close-fought battle, although the most intense rivalry was between the EF Falcons of John Bowe (Dick Johnson Racing) and Glenn Seton (Glenn Seton Racing), which showed superior pace to the VR Commodores in qualifying and racing.
The 10-round title fight was not decided until the final at Oran Park, where Bowe won both races and sealed his first and only ATCC crown ahead of Seton, with Peter Brock’s HRT VR Commodore the first of the Holdens in third.
Bowe and Seton had both scored four round wins each, with Mark Skaife and Larry Perkins only winning one a piece in their VR Commodores. To address this imbalance, the PRC trimmed the Falcon’s front spoiler under-tray before for the annual endurance races, which Ford teams said created too much understeer and front tyre wear.
Even so, the Falcons were still fast, with Bowe and Dick Johnson teaming up to win the Sandown 500. And at Bathurst Bowe was closely duelling with Seton for the race lead before their Falcons touched; the DJR car hitting the wall and dropping out of contention.
Race leader Seton would later suffer the agony of an engine failure less than 10 laps from the finish, handing victory to Perkins and co-driver Russell Ingall. This was in stark contrast to HRT, which suffered the humiliation of both cars retiring early with mysterious engine failures. And the Skaife/Richards Gibson Motor Sport Commodore, which was showing race-winning speed with remarkable fuel economy before snapping a tail-shaft.
1996: Craig ‘The Kid’ Lowndes and the Youth Revolution
Let’s face it. 1996 was all about the VR Commodore and a lightning fast kid called Craig Lowndes. After impressing HRT with his raw speed and growing maturity as a co-driver in the 1994 and 1995 endurance races, Lowndes was elevated to a full-time drive alongside his idol and mentor Peter Brock in the two-car factory team.
After six years of political infighting and sporadic results, HRT finally got it all together. Lowndes claimed a stunning ATCC title win at his first attempt, winning six of the 10 rounds. He finished well clear of shell-shocked EF Falcon drivers John Bowe and Glenn Seton, who had dominated the championship battle only 12 months before.
The Lowndes/HRT juggernaut continued into the endurance races, with Lowndes and fellow young gun Greg Murphy from New Zealand teaming up to win the Sandown 500/Bathurst 1000 double in convincing style. HRT and the VR Commodore were demonstrably superior in 1996.
1997: Ford’s ATCC but Holden Rules The Mountain
After two seasons the VR Commodore was ‘updated’ to the latest VS model designation, but it was a change in name only as the race cars were identical to the existing VR. Ford was in a similar position, with only minor cosmetic changes required to update the EF Falcon to the latest EL model.
With Lowndes heading to Europe to race Formula 3000, his vacancy at HRT for 1997 was filled by Greg Murphy. The young Kiwi’s celebrated team-mate Peter Brock, who had finished fourth overall in 1996, announced his retirement from touring car racing, during a season in which HRT was plagued with unreliability issues that derailed its defence of the ATCC title.
Seton in his Ford Credit-backed EL Falcon won his second championship ahead of John Bowe’s DJR Falcon, with Russell Ingall the highest-placed VS Commodore driver finishing third overall.
After a character-building season in Europe the homesick Lowndes returned, focused on a future with Holden. Lowndes and Murphy were reunited for the 1997 endurance races and enjoyed instant success by winning the Sandown 500.
Mark Skaife had departed the sponsor-starved Gibson Motor Sport mid-season to take up an offer from HRT to co-drive with Peter Brock in his final Sandown and Bathurst appearances. Although Skaife took pole position and set fastest lap at Sandown, the 05 Commodore was delayed by throttle problems and finished 12th.
Lowndes/Murphy could not repeat their 1996 Bathurst triumph, after Lowndes got offline lapping a slower car across the top of the Mountain and crashed out on lap 39. Skaife meanwhile had claimed his second pole for HRT but the 05 Commodore’s engine failed after only 52 laps, to the groans of Brock supporters around the country. Even so, Perkins and Ingall raced to their second Bathurst 1000 win for Holden, which when combined with HRT's 1996 victory meant three wins from three starts for the VR-VS Commodores.
1998: VS Commodore wins ATCC (with a little help)
Many expected Skaife to outpace Lowndes in their first full season as HRT team-mates. However, Lowndes immediately showed Skaife he was still the man to beat, piling up five round wins in his VS Commodore. He then switched to the all-new VT Commodore for the final two and wrapped up his second national title in fine style.
The introduction of the VT was the beginning of the end for the VS as Holden’s front line strike fighter, with Perkins and Ingall winning the Sandown 500 in the latest model. However, the new cars were out of luck at Bathurst, handing victory to young guns Jason Bright and Steven Richards in a Stone Brothers EL Falcon.
1999: Last Hurrah for the VS
Although most of the leading Holden teams had updated to VTs for the start of the 1999 season, Garry Rogers Motorsport had only completed one of the new cars for Jason Bargwanna, with a second VT for team-mate Garth Tander due to join the battle as soon as it was completed.
Tander certainly made good use of the trusty VS, which he drove in nine rounds of the 13-round Shell Championship Series (aka ATCC). Tander scored a win, two seconds and a third, which proved how competitive the superseded model still was against the VT and Ford’s all-new but disappointing AU Falcon.
HRT also had to rely on Lowndes’ old VS after the reigning champ suffered a fearful car-destroying crash in his VT at Calder Park’s round eight. Lowndes had to miss the following round at Symmons Plains due to a knee injury incurred at Calder, but returned to the VS at Winton’s round 10 before his new VT was ready.
So how valuable was the VS Commodore’s contribution at Winton? Given that Lowndes was able to narrowly defend his championship title in 1999, his winning margin over Russell Ingall was only 114 points – and 94 of those were scored at Winton!
So the VS played a decisive role in yet another Holden championship win, five seasons after the VR’s debut in 1995. The VR/VS may have caused Holden plenty of financial and political heartache during the early stages of development, but after so much success the pain had been well worth it.
