page_title: Allan Moffat
section_title: Return to Ford
hierarchical_section_title: Allan Moffat / Racing career / Return to Ford
caption_attribution_description: 1987 Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth Group A race car. Driven by Allan Moffat, Andy Rouse and Thierry Tassin at Bathurst in the 1987 James Hardie 1000. The car was entered by Rouse Enterprises, and the original race number was 9. Major sponsor was the ANZ Bank. 1987 was the first and only time the James Hardie 1000 was included in the World Touring Car Championship. It was also the last year of sponsorship by the James Hardie company. Taken at Shannon's Eastern Creek Classic 2010, held at Eastern Creek Raceway Sydney.
context_page_description: Allan George Moffat OBE is a Canadian-Australian racing driver known for his four championships in the Australian Touring Car Championship, six wins in the Sandown 500 and his four wins in the Bathurst 500/1000. Moffat was inducted into the V8 Supercars Hall of Fame in 1999.
  Moffat and his long-time friend and rival Peter Brock are the only drivers to have won The Great Race at Bathurst in both its 500-mile and 1000-kilometre formats.
  In October 2018, he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
context_section_description: This also proved to be the Commodore's final race as Moffat, realising that to be competitive at Bathurst he would need one of the new, powerful Ford Sierra RS500's, completed a deal to lease the Andy Rouse run Sierra for the Australian rounds of the championship which was backed by new major sponsor ANZ Bank. This deal also left Harvey without a drive for the rest of the year as Rouse and his co-driver Thierry Tassin would share the driving with Moffat. The deal proved a disaster for Moffat as the car was retired at both the James Hardie 1000 and the Calder 500 before Moffat got his turn to race.
  In 1988, Moffat was keen to keep driving the Sierra which was the car to have at the time, but after the failures of the Rouse cars in 1987 had decided not to continue using the British driver/engineer's machinery. In a 2014 interview with Australian Muscle Car magazine, Moffat told that he was livid following the failure at Bathurst after finding that the Getrag gearbox that broke in the Sierra had been the same one Rouse had used at the Spa 24 Hours and had done some 36 hours of practice and racing, well past its rebuild point. Instead he managed to do something that very few had managed to do. He persuaded Swiss touring car tuning ace Ruedi Eggenberger to build him a customer Sierra RS500 that was identical to the works Fords that the Eggenberger team was using in the renamed ETCC. The deal was rumored to have cost Moffat around A$300,000. Moffat and former Mazda co-driver Gregg Hansford campaigned the car in the 1988 ATCC in a low-key run while his team after years of racing rotary Mazda's and V8 Commodores and Falcons, got to know the sophisticated turbocharged car.
  Moffat and Hansford went on to win the 1988 Enzed 500 at Sandown in what was Moffat's last ever win in Australia. They then almost pulled off an upset at the Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst where Eggenberger himself joined the team and along with his Ford Europe driver, German ace Klaus Niedzwiedz. With Eggenberger waving his 'magic wand' over the Sierra, and Niedzwiedz leading the driving, the pair turned the car into one of the fastest on the track, qualifying 4th and winning the $40,000 "Tooheys Top Gun" run-off, which for the only time in its history wasn't for pole (Moffat's fastest time in practice was some six seconds slower than the German and eight seconds off the pole time set by Dick Johnson). The car ultimately was a DNF after head gasket failure on lap 129 of 161 with Hansford at the wheel. Neidzwiedz had taken the lead from the Sierra of Tony Longhurst on lap 29 when Longhurst lost a lap with a throttle problem, and the car remained in the lead for 100 laps before a vapor lock (caused by the car cooling down too much during a safety car period) led to the car's failure. Moffat later claimed that the 1988 Bathurst was the "one that got away", and with a one lap lead with just 32 laps remaining and ace driver Neidzwiedz up against Longhurst's slower co-driver Tomas Mezera, not many people were disagreeing with him. In a pit interview moments after the car was officially retired, a glum but remarkably composed Moffat said that the engine of the Sierra basically had a "heart attack". The team would later find that it was a blown head gasket and a cracked block.
  This race was also significant in that it was the last time Moffat raced at Bathurst. He did enter and qualify for the 1989 Tooheys 1000, but decided not to actually race as the lead team car driven by Neidzwiedz and fellow German Frank Biela had a chance at victory, and since they were much faster than he was in the car (approximately 6–8 seconds per lap in qualifying) he felt it best to leave them to it. Ultimately the Moffat lead Sierra would finish second behind the Sierra of Dick Johnson and John Bowe.
  Other than his four wins at Bathurst, Moffat also won the Sandown Endurance race six times, being the only driver to win it under three different national regulations, these being Series Production (1969, 1970), Group C (1974, 1982, 1983) and Group A (1988).
  Moffat's last race, and indeed last race
caption: Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth Group A race car - Moffat/Rouse/Tassin 1987 James Hardie 1000
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