Larry Perkins - 1992 Tooheys 1000 - Bathurst Top 10 Shootout

Larry Perkins' 1992 Tooheys 1000 top shootout lap behind the wheel of the Bob Jane T-Marts sponsored Perkins Engineering Holden VL Commodore Walkinshaw. This is Perkins Engineering chassis PE010, which has undergone a recent restoration back into this livery albeit in Sandown 500 winning guise.
All rights and credit goes to Channel 7 Sport, Australia.
For historic and educational purposes only.
This is the same chassis Larry Perkins and Tomas Mezera finished 3rd in the 1990 Tooheys 1000. Larry's qualifying lap for 1990 has been uploaded by us and can be viewed here: • Larry Perkins - 1990 T...
PLEASE NOTE
Due to copyright we are unable to upload the top 10 shootout laps of Tomas Mezera, Peter Brock and Tony Longhurst.

[@chrisstewart1273]

Pretty new under the bonnet, don't worry. I miss the LP days.

[@TouringCarsofAus]

We'll never see an engineer/team owner/racecar driver like him in Supercars again.

[@jackwilson8651]

Ha, classic Larry Perkins. Does this channel have any videos from 93 - 97?

[@TouringCarsofAus]

@@jackwilson8651 We don't have too much between that era, it's quite a mix of races from that time period. If all goes well (in terms of copyright), we should have some of them up here one day :)

[@cbj063]

He did a 2.22 in '88 the first time he drove a Walkinshaw Commodore. With the same model car 4 years later he takes 8 seconds off that time. Not bad.

[@darrenwalker6854]

And who can forget the race, when Walkinshaw’s mount arrived under secrecy with Pommy mechanics and failed early. Then Walkinshaw gets into the Perkins/Hulme sister car and stuffed it by over revving it.

[@johnbrooks9523]

@@darrenwalker6854 Upset a Pom in any way & he'll clobber you with his most destructive weapon: Jealousy! Euro Group A heirarchy was crawling with greed driven selfcentred Poms. These fanatics kicked off Group A at outset with cleverly hotrodded V12 Jags, V8 Rovers, stripped out Vauxhalls & later on... specially inhouse built Cosworth Sierras. Mainland European teams started building their own versions of tweaked Sierras, learned how to outfox those Poms, stretched the rule book, got all sneaky & secretive, commenced flogging Pommy built cars & relegated all those early Group A Pommy cars to also rans. Australians were doing exactly the same... Dick Johnson perfected this madness in Australia better than anyone anywhere. His Sierras built in QLD were the best in the world. Dick Johnson had started out with Grey Motor powered Holdens in the '60s like everyone else. Australians had been developing family cars into supremely effective race cars since the very early 1950s & we'd built our own local/national industry devoted to just that by the mid '60s. Very few Australians could afford an imported high performance car like a Triple Carb Jag. Wealthy Aussies like Ron Hodgson & Bob Jane imported shiny new Jags while Leo Geoghegan was bolting hot heads & multiple carbs onto dirt cheap old used Holdens. Suddenly, the commoners were roaring around in savagely quick hotted up Aussie cars & giving the pedigreed royalty Jag drivers the big hurry up. Royalty wasn't happy about any of this. Larry grew up on one of thousands of Aussie farms where in the shed amongst the tractors sat at least one modified family car. He came from local competitive Aussie DNA since his old man was invested in rallying. Walkinshaw grew up in Pomgolia where sedan racing royalty flouted their expensive Jags. Walkinshaw signed on with Holden to replace Brock's HDT & snatched up a couple of then latest model VLs, took them to his JEALOUSLY guarded facilties back in Pomgolia & set about finding ways to make them race faster. I personally found all this rather discusting. Our Holden 5.0L V8 was our own unique local product, had been brilliantly designed here in Aust, had regularly clobbered 350 Chev Camaro Sports Cars along with everything else the entire world could throw at us at Bathurst since 1974 & we (Australians) had done all the race R&D to make it a good thing. Gifting all our hard work to some crafty "foreigner" seemed a bit of a let down to me regardless of whether or not the foriegner might add one or two teency candles to the scrumptious birthday cake we had toiled away at to bake in Aust since the Holden V8 had hit showrooms in 1969. Jealous Pom ran off with prized local Aussie product. Takes fat wad of Holden money with him. Hides it in secret Pommy "Wind Tunnel". Bolts fool injection to it using internal 8 trumpets sneakily hidden inside plennum & twin throttle body arrangement. Sticks weird array of plastic wind tunnel trickery to body work. Waits until last minute with entire book of likely excuses down his shorts knowing local fairly honest teams have no hope of catching up before Bathurst. Employs Larry. Soaks up as much as he can from Larry's massive experience in building, tuning & racing Holdens & especially Brock HDT cars since inception. Let's Larry build at least one "local" version of a "new" secret squirrell "Walkinshaw" homologation special. Airfreights his "Batmobile" VL in from Secretsville Pomgolia Walky Skunkworks just in time to haunt Bathurst. Gets only a few laps into Australia's annual premier Tour Car Endurance Racing event & Pommy car croaks... Has catastrophic rear suspension failure caused by neurotic Pommy fiddling with thoroughly proven Aust Commodore racing rear trailing arm back axle locater control arm brackets. Abandons his wacky failed "experiment" after embarrassing himself & a whole troop of Holden executives who'd buried him under a pile of cash by smoking both back tyres into bodywork until they exploded in clouds of appalling smoke. Pulls rank... Commandeers proper car built in Aust by genuine genius Larry Perkins who actually loves Holden engines & Holden cars. Then... In a fit of discusting putrid jealous Pommy rage, deliberately sabotages locally built Holden by cruelly & massively overrevving the sweet engine Larry had lovingly toiled to build while he, Walkinshaw pretended to try to win the race. This was discusting destructive conduct. Larry had invested decades of very hard work, research & development in that car, only to have it snatched away & ruined by a greedy manipulative jealous zealot hellbent on making sure no Holden other than his wildly expensive Pommy Plastic flying saucer could win. Only 2 Holdens in that event had ALL the winning ingredients since the latest secret squirrell Walkinshaw tweaks were either not released to local teams in time for them to adopt them in time for Bathurst 1988, or not released at all. Larry had the better car because he set it up himself using everything he knew about race prepping a Holden. Walkinshaw took the premium money & produced a Pomgolian dud. Taking & deliberately ruining Larry's car in 1988 was about as Jealous Pom Putrid as you could get! The mother of my two children is Pommy.... I know a little bit about fiercely destructive Pommy jealousy. IT'S EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL! I learned to spot it from a mile away. It aint pretty & it aint nice. Larry was robbed in 1988. The car used by Grice to win the 1990 Bathurst event was actually the same car Walkinshaw "broke" early in the 1988 event. He basicly took it & jealously hid it after he broke it like a cat buries it's stinky turd. It sat around collecting dust for quite a time before it was rebuilt for Grice as a "new" car for the 1990 enduros. Walkinshaw contributed massively to Aust Touring Car Racing. The man was every bit a true champion & a giant within the sport. An extremely gifted & talented man driven to achieve excellence. His achievements massively outweigh his failures. However, his behaviour at Bathurst in 1988 was malicious & despicable & it wasted an entire year of Larry's undivided & capable devotion to the sport. Larry went on to demonstrate his brilliance where he actually did all the hard work himself while the Walkinshaws of this world did the massive money grabs & hired slaves. Larry was simply the best, all things considered. Larry loved Aust Holden V8s, Holden Cars, local motorsport & engineering more than he loved money. In 1993, Larry went to Bathurst with a real Aussie built Holden with a genuine locally cast Holden V8 & beat allcomers. Larry showed the entire world what Australians could achieve inhouse here in Australia. I see the globalists have since stripped their huge investments out of Aust vehicle manufacturing. We showed the internationals up as inferior time & again. They rewarded us by snatching away our manufacturing. Our stupid governments just obeyed. Now our premium motor racing category is based on plastic margarine tubs sitting on imported machinery. Jealousy eventually crushed us. The harder we worked, the more we succeeded, the more we beat them at their own games, the more they secretly hated us & the more destuctive they became... No more Aussie built cars. They snatched up their bat & ball & ran off... Jealousy on a global scale.

[@adams4134]

Can't explain why, but I always liked those white wheels. I met LP at Bathurst in his garage in the late 90s and asked for a photo. He was very gracious. Also was lucky enough to meet Glenn Seton the same year and he was just the nicest bloke. Took us around his garage. What legends those blokes were in their racing days.

[@wadedixon6780]

Larry in his prime. Back when the bloke behind the wheel also paid the bills. Don’t make em like that anymore.

[@TouringCarsofAus]

He was one of the last! Never will we see that again

[@jamieteal2107]

@@TouringCarsofAus well said 🇦🇺

[@mickpower9208]

Probably best looking commodore model of all time in my opinion

[@davconelectric]

Agreed , just a pity the rest of the car didn't match the looks

[@burnsiet]

@@davconelectric It did at Sandown.

[@davconelectric]

@@burnsiet I was more referring to the stock street going model

[@burnsiet]

@@davconelectric Ah, yeah. With you on that. I had a VN Grp A and apart from the rarity etc, they were a pretty average car. At the end of the day, it is a VN, the ZF box is crap to drive with, and they were just not quick. I good mate of mine finished a VL Walky replica about 6 years ago. He did it right. 4 bolt block from a VP GTS, VL TTB etc etc, but it has Bilstein coilovers and a set of Harrop 4 pot calipers from a VT-VY ish HSV. It is one hell of a car to drive. The factory should have made them like that!

[@no-namecrown5510]

Rumour has it that Larry's first cot as a baby was a hollowed out 308 block...

[@davidnguyen9409]

Larry is quite possibly the best ATCC/V8 Supercars driver of all time. Had the genius, the ingenuity, the engineering and the wit. Built and raced his own cars on a limited budget and showed the big boys where to shove their money. Legend.

[@adams4134]

Yep. Couldn't agree more. LP is the best of the best. Sure there have arguably been better drivers on bigger budgets, but in terms of delivering a complete racecar package he was unquestionably Australia's best. You nailed it.

[@davidmillerd7631]

Impressive lap considering in the1988 shootout he did a 2:22:47 in the Holden Racing Team VL Walkinshaw. He could build "em" and drive "em" . What a Legend : )

[@jamieteal2107]

Lean towards the fords a bit but always been a big fan of yours layback Larry great to see you throwing that beast of a Holden around the mountain 👍

[@colinstewart1432]

He's a one-of-a-kind legend that bloke. Doubtless a genius engineer ( they had to change the rules just to keep up with him ) a brilliant driver and just a great bloke all round. From back when racing drivers were allowed to have a personality, and not just be corporate robots.

[@VeecamsRevening]

One of LP's most entertaining laps. He can always say he out-qualified the fancied Nissan GT-R at Mount Panorama!

[@itsstubro]

How's the accusations because he was so quick. Love LP.

[@grantmiller6570]

ah the good old days of supercars

[@TouringCarsofAus]

This is even before "V8 Supercars" was a thing :)

[@The.Drunk-Koala]

And sporting the same glasses today since 1979.

[@frankiesultana376]

Imagine if racing car drivers had to build their own race cars and then race them Larry will be still be on the grid today

[@lot6129]

A phone call away from getting a full time F1 drive...

[@Steveaustin007]

In 3 years the HSV Vl was approximately 8 seconds faster thanks to Cams help with freedoms outside Group A international rules. Group 3A.

[@Wheeliebadatstuff]

All teams were give freedoms outside Group A international rules as it was pretty much dead at the end of 89.

[@ryanschacht_]

I always found larry the smart one. New or old didn’t matter what year it could’ve been just whatever was the best car aero wise he chose it. When a new spec car came out every team just went buy buy buy but Larry just ran his own race seeing what car had better performance out of the cars allowed in the comp. Never actually knew though how much horsepower the car had. How much horsepower did it have?

[@Drifterdan1]

Mid to high 400hp I think?

[@ryanschacht_]

@@Drifterdan1 oh alr cool thanks man👍🏻

[@stevenbeggs6322]

Just over 500HP

[@MAte925]

UNFORTUNITELY CONKED OUT DURING RACE!

[@peterbarber7613]

Why LP went from a VN back to a VL beats me

[@burnsiet]

More aero than the VN.

[@James-zj3ud]

VN had virtually no advantage aside from less aero drag in a straight line and the abillity to upgrade them to VP supercar spec.. VL had bodywork that actually produced downforce - most of it was drag but it certainly held the road better at top speed even if it was down a few clicks on the VN

[@19escort73]

Also too Brock’s advantage racing team owned the two VN’s from 1991 and took them with them when they parted ways with Perkins Engineering. So rather than try and build another brand new Commodore bodyshell into a Group A car for a few months when - throughout 1992 the rules were still being drafted together for the new V8 formula in 93 - it made sense from a cost point of view for LP to hold off on a VN build, stick with his already built VL for 92, wait and see how the 93 rules would unfold and then build up a brand new car under those rules, once they were set in stone and everyone knew what they had to build.

[@ryanschacht_]

“3 times Bathurst winner, Peter brock”😂

[@colinstewart1432]

I think he means he won 3 partnering Brock.

[@ryanschacht_]

@@colinstewart1432 ohh yeah maybe

[@phil4977]

Commentary nil substance-just dribble

[@MrSkeleton131]

To be fair that's most of sport commentary when you really listen to what they're saying. There's a reason people don't talk like this in everyday life

[@phil4977]

@@MrSkeleton131 that video was from 1992. Todays commentators for V8 Supercars are outstanding. They are incredibly knowledgeable and provide real meaningful dialogue

[@MrSkeleton131]

@@phil4977 I'm well aware Phil, don't you worry. I agree that Neil Crompton, Mark Skaife and the rest of the commentary team today do a great job, and are arguably better than this era. My point though is that all sport commentary is unnecessary and can be considered nonsense, so you can give these guys a break somewhat. There was definitely worse, go watch the 1993 Sandown 500 if you don't believe me

[@darrenwalker6854]

No worse than Phil Gould in rugby league