32 Years ... To Be Precise

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday April 3, 1997

By Tony Davis

Among many acts marking the end of an era, the hair-raising Bridgestone team is

making its final lap at the Showground. By Tony Davis.

Among the animals, vegetables and minibuses departing the Sydney Showground for the last time at the end of this year's Royal Easter Show is an automotive icon.

The Bridgestone Holden Precision Driving Team - comprising a bunch of blokes who have raised the hair of virtually every living Australian at some point or other - will stage its final leap at the RAS tonight.

There could be a teary eye because, although the Precision Driving Team will be back at Homebush for next year's show, 1997 represents its 28th (and last) consecutive Easter appearance at the RAS Showground.

Indeed, since 1970 the team has jumped, twisted and turned at every single Royal Show held in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne.

In between it's done about 5,500 country shows, perfecting such things as the "four-way cross-over" and its number one party trick, lapping dirt ovals on two wheels. In standard Commodores with everyday road tyres.

Team founder Lloyd Robertson says that tipping the car on two wheels isn't too difficult, providing you persevere for long enough - and stick to wide expanses of flat bitumen. Lapping a muddy showground, however, adds a whole new level of challenge.

"It usually takes about a year to master two-wheel driving," he says. "The endless practising can be pretty frustrating, but we find that one day you wake up and you can suddenly do it. Don't know what it is."

Robertson and his fellow Precisionists have rallying backgrounds but insist that many of their manoeuvres require vastly different skills.

He admits he started the two-wheel learning process with training wheels strapped to the side of the car.

"There's no science to two-wheel driving," adds team leader Stewart Reid, "it's seat-of-the-pants stuff and everything you normally do has to be done the other way around."

That includes turning left when you want to go right and vice versa.

For most of its existence, the country's most famous team of "automotive equestrians" has fronted up in the latest model Holdens. It hasn't always been like that. The team started off in 1965 in VW Beetles.

GM came to the party in the late 1960s and the squad ran as the Monaro Precision Driving Team. Now the drivers are in VS Commodores fitted with V8 engines, manual transmissions and no airbags.

When the team swaps to VT Commodores later in the year, it just might have to discover what effect crashing down on ramps has on a supplementary restraint system.

Reid reckons he and his men are smooth enough to avoid any unwanted deployments.

The team boasts that no precision driver has ever been injured in the course of the job. That's pretty impressive when the standard manoeuvres leave open the potential for a head-on accident with a combined speed of 200 km/h.

It could manage a pretty fast "tail-on" too. Reid reckons a bent-eight Commodore VS manual can reach just over 75km/h in reverse before the rev limiter comes into play.

Fifteen drivers have been involved in The Precision Driving Team since day one - every one a male. Only because a woman with the right mix of skills has yet to knock on the door, Reid insists.

Robertson remains in the chief's seat but he no longer drives, leaving the duties to Reid, Rod Browning, David Eadie and Peter Mapstone.

These four have the knack of belting along barely a centimetre apart. And they do it forward and in reverse, seemingly without any contact. Robertson let us in on a secret: "These wonderful new plastic bumper bars mean the cars can touch without leaving a mark."