Klaus Ludwig - 1987 James Hardie 1000 - Bathurst Top 10 Shootout

Klaus Ludwig's pole winning lap for the 1987 James Hardie 1000 World Touring Car Championship. Ludwig set a blistering time resulting in a final time almost 2 seconds faster than 2nd placed, Andy Rouse in the ANZ Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth.
All rights and credit goes to Channel 7 Sport, Australia.
For historic and educational purposes only.

[@davidewhite69]

Klaus Ludwig was one of the few internationals who said he didnt like Mt Panorama, he considered it dangerous, makes you wonder what he would have thought of the old track with barbed wire fences instead of armco and concrete barriers. The Eggenberger Sierras had a much more advanced engine management system, which allow Rudi Eggenberger to program custom chips for the engine for different tracks far more advanced than their competitors. He spent a good amount of time during practice evaluating recorded data from the car and came up with a custom chip just for the top ten that delivered 550HP instead (practice and race power spec was 460HP), it was a real one lap special, ie a 'hand grenade' setting, the other two Eggenberger cars in the top ten ran a lower spec chip with 'only' 490 HP

[@Holden308]

The Eggenberger show, despite the legality of the bodywork around the wheel arches, was F1 like in its professionalism, which in Group A at the time was a rare thing. Even Schnitzer came across as [dis]organised chaos at Bathurst in 1987. The closest Australia had was the HDT and probably Gibbo's Nissan crew. Dick Johnson will never admit it, but he and Neal Lowe kinda changed their way of doing things from 1988 based on what they observed Rudi's lot doing at Bathurst. They realised in the high tech world of Group A the time that they needed to be organised.

[@davidewhite69]

@@Holden308 well he sort of admitted it in an interview a few years back with Neil Crompton. he said: "in 1987 when we had the world touring car championship at bathurst, when we had all the Europeans out, the Eggenberger team, we had Rouse, and they made us look stupid, and I thought, you know, we got to do something about this"

[@byteoncomputerservices8054]

@@Holden308 DJ's pretty open about the thrashing he received from the Ford factory racing Sierra's in Europe and the lessons learned that in the end had him producing Sierra's that were faster than the Eggenberger Sierra's. Back in the day us Aussie's made pretty damn good Group A racing cars, even the Gibson Motorsport GTR showed the factory Nismo teams a thing or two in relation to how to build a winning Group A racer.

[@nnoddy8161]

@@Holden308 Don't forget the JPS team in terms of professionalism of the Australian teams.

[@Steveaustin007]

They Eggenberger cars ran standard body work WTC last round MT Fuji Japan and still won pole and the race beat everyone easily- Rudi used to say he could have won Bathurst on bicycle tyres in 1987 running 1.6 bar boost the engines will go 24 hours like they did when they won the Nurburgring 24 hours in 87

[@kahuwynyard4408]

Body panels or fuel?

[@scotty3da]

Probably both, but they weren't alone with the fuel. Didn't Gricey use it when he was in Europe, which gave him the power advantage over the HDT cars ?

[@secretRBRman]

magic race fuel

[@TouringCarsofAus]

In the end, the result was the guards were found to be illegal. Despite them been illegal at Bathurst, they raced at the Calder Park 500 a week later in Bathurst guise with no issues. The fuel was tested after the race and was found to be within the rules.

[@Steveaustin007]

No body asks the question how was Brocks car 10 ( which started 20th when it qualifies 27th) and 05 run 12” tyres (bigger than ALL the other Holdens in the race .

[@kahuwynyard4408]

Gricey also credits the Yokohama’s to his European stint

[@Steveaustin007]

Klaus was a freak - he actually stopped Racing at Lemans too because it was unsafe. Nice spoken guy -very good English ; very grounded and respectful of the Aussies.

[@Steveaustin007]

And boy does he go in the Sierra

[@forsakenoutcast]

“It was a total perfect lap” 1:31

[@ueberlicht_]

Klaus is a master

[@nnoddy8161]

Does anyone know if they were forced to refund the $20k from Hardie Heroes after being disqualified?

[@vince065us]

If he considered Bathurst dangerous,what would say about the long course at the Nurburgring?