Patrick Watts

The replacement was also down on power, and despite Wilhoy helping him with lines and braking points around the circuit, Tiering could manage only 17th.

Patrick Watts completed the main field in 18th for the Mazda.

The 323F was apparently handling reasonably well, but Watts was still waiting for the more powerful engine Mazda had promised for later in the season.

Greg, quite a contrast within Toyota there.

Kieff O'Dore missed a gear coming out of paddock and began dropping backwards through the field.

At Druids, Ray Bell was nutted into a spin under braking by Bobby Verdon-Rowe.

Andy Middlehurst then had nowhere to go in the second Nissan and ploughed into the stranded BMW before Patrick Watts then joined the accident in his Mazda.

Welcome to the Patrick Watts Sympathy Corner.

But I knew still it was going to be quite a job to get in the team and to, you know, try and get one of the two drives.

At that time they had Patrick Watts.

The other driver was Eugene O'Brien who was struggling a little bit.

So obviously that's...

I remember finally getting the new car, new tyre run, which was quite a thing.

And you could really feel the difference between new tyres.

And then Patrick Watts went out afterwards.

And amazingly, he didn't go as quick.

So like you go back to that 97 two-litre shootout, eight of the 10 drivers had never done a Bathurst 1000 shootout and four of them never did another one after that.

Jeff Brabham, John Cleland, Alain Menu and Patrick Watts.

So most of them ended up running, well, all of them did except for Patrick in subsequent years, but they were co-drivers.

So they weren't called up for battle on the Saturday shootout.