Allan Moffat

At mid-race, Moffat was forced to slow in order to free a jammed gearbox but battled back to only be six-tenths of a second behind Jane at the finish.

By his own admission, Moffat did the wrong thing and turned his wipers on which only made the situation worse as it smeared the oil over the window, and with the race only being 13 laps long he was forced to carry on.

This turned out to be fortunate as it allowed him to avoid the Bill Brown rollover going over Skyline which blocked the track and took out approximately a quarter of the field who had no warning of the impending disaster.

Peter Brock won the race that year for arch-rival manufacturer Holden after wet weather and brake dramas hobbled the Fords.

Moffat ran the Mustang in Sports Sedans in 1973 and 1974, though he refused to follow the trend at the time of moving the engine back in the cabin, later stating in a 2004 interview he "was never going to contaminate such a jewel", though he did replace the bodywork with fibreglass to avoid damaging the cars sheet metal.

He won his second consecutive ATCC title in 1977, backed up brilliantly by new teammate Colin Bond who had switched to Ford after driving the previous eight years for the Holden Dealer Team.

This was the third ATCC win of his career, but this performance was overshadowed by the victory for Moffat and his new co-driver, Belgian Formula One driver and then four times 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx in the 1977 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 at Bathurst.

He also drove at the 1980 24 Hours of Le Mans, sharing a Porsche 935 turbo with future Indycar legend Bobby Rahal, where they were forced to withdraw whilst in fourth place.

Much to the dismay of the Aussie Ford fans,[citation needed] Moffat left the "Blue Oval" brand in 1981 to drive a Peter Stuyvesant-sponsored Mazda RX-7 as both the ATCC and Bathurst began to exhibit a shift towards lighter touring cars with less raw power.

In 1982 he again competed at Le Mans in a factory RX-7-based sportscar, finishing sixth in class alongside Japanese co-drivers Yojiro Terada and Takashi Yorino.

He eventually finished in an easy third place behind teammate Gregg Hansford in the team's second RX-7, and race winner Peter Brock in his HDT Commodore SS to claim the ATCC by just six points.

Unfortunately the fuse for the overheating warning light had blown and Moffat's race only lasted until the hairpin on lap one before his rotary engine expired, handing an easy win to Brock.

He then won at Wanneroo in Perth, before crashing out of the championship at Surfers Paradise when his Mazda was hit while lapping the XD Falcon of Gary Willmington at high speed going under the Dunlop Bridge at the end of the main straight.

Due to the wet conditions the Mazda slid off the road at high speed, took out an ABC television camera cable and slammed head on into a bush that was hiding a tree stump.

In what was his biggest crash since rolling his XA Falcon at Phillip Island in 1973, Moffat suffered a fractured sternum and broken finger in the accident, while the RX-7 was a write-off.

Despite suffering from the flu, Moffat put the RX-7 on pole and he and Gregg Hansford went on to win the Valvoline 250 from the XE Falcon of ATCC winner Dick Johnson.

In 1985 he took his own RX-7 that he campaigned previously in Australia to Daytona for the 24 Hour race, sharing the car with Australian drivers Gregg Hansford, Kevin Bartlett and Peter McLeod.

While Moffat made the RX-7 a regular race winner on the shorter and generally flatter Australian tracks, he believes the extra weight in the car was what made it impossible to match the V8's at Bathurst With Mazda not interested in Group A racing (he tested a Mazda 626 at Calder Park but it proved to be uncompetitive), Moffat was forced to sit out the 1985 Australian season.

Moffat then quit the team and purchased the brand-new Holden VL Commodore SS Group A that Brock had intended to take to Europe to compete in the World Touring Car Championship.

Although Moffat left the HDT still on good terms with Brock, he purchased the car through a middleman to avoid any friction with having his former employer knowing the true buyer.

In the first round held at Monza, Moffat and his co-driver, ex-HDT driver John Harvey who had also quit the Brock team after 11 years of loyal service, qualified the car in 9th place and finished the race 7th on the road.

The car was then a DNF at the next two rounds at Jarama and Dijon before Moffat and Harvey drove the Commodore to a sensational fourth place outright and a class win at the Spa 24-hour race.

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 Niedzwiedz 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 pair drive Moffat's Sierra (with Ruedi Eggenberger again on hand to engineer the car) in the InterTEC 500 km race at the Fuji Speedway in Japan.

In a significant partnership, car builder Eggenberger and ace driver Niedzwiedz joined Moffat at Bathurst every year from 1988 to 1992 excluding the 1991 race when they were not available due to other commitments.

However, with new sponsorship from Cenovis Vitamins, the team was able to carry on running the Sierras (which by this stage were only seen at Sandown and Bathurst) until they and other turbo cars (such as the 4WD Nissan GT-R) were banned by CAMS at the end of 1992.

Andrew Miedecke was again lead driver and qualified the aging EB Falcon in 16th place but co-driver Mark Noske never got a drive with the car retiring on lap 16 with engine trouble.

Moffat also joined Murray Walker and later Darrell Eastlake in the Channel 9 commentary box during the touring car support races at the Australian Grand Prix meetings in Adelaide from 1985 to 1995.

In 2019, it was reported that Moffat was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and had been moved to a specialist healthcare facility, with his friends and Bathurst legends Fred Gibson and Larry Perkins ensuring his will instructions to be carried out.