The team's first time at both the Sandown and Bathurst endurance races with anything other than a Holden were forgettable. Although Richards qualified the lead M3 in 4th at Sandown, his time was over 3 seconds slower than Dick Johnson's pole time in his Sierra. After oil problems in the race for both cars, the No. 05 M3 of Brock, Richards and Parsons eventually finished in 8th place at Sandown while the team's second M3 failed to finish. For the Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst, the nature of the track and the improvement from the Sierra's (plus the introduction of the new Holden VL Commodore SS Group A SV and Nissan Skyline HR31 GTS-R turbo) saw the M3s even less competitive than they had been previously. Richards qualified the No. 56 M3 (running in Class B saw the team forced to give up using No. 05 for 1988) in just 16th place, some 6 seconds behind Johnson. The Brock/Richards car had a new BMW Motorsport engine for the race as well as a newly homologated 6-speed gearbox. Unfortunately however the race proved to be something of a disaster. The No. 56 car only lasted 89 laps before retiring with engine failure, while the No. 57 car (which had qualified 24th) was out on just lap 68 with similar problems. Brock finished off 1988 by driving his M3 to 4th place in the Group A support race at the 1988 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide.