Gold Coast Bathurst champion Paul Morris raring to line up for the GC600 with Ford star Chaz Mostert
GOLD Coast Bathurst champion Paul Morris will savour the moment at the GC600 starting line.
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THE cruel memory of Bathurst 1997 still burns for one of the Gold Coast’s most successful families.
It was the year Gold Coast motorsport diehard Paul Morris first won the holy grail of V8 motor racing — only to have it snatched away when officials deemed his co-driver narrowly breached a rule limiting stints at the wheel to three hours.
Paul, who’d qualified in pole position, was devastated, as were his parents and biggest supporters Terry and Lurleen, who’ve built an empire around direct mail orders, wine, property and pubs, and been right behind Paul’s motorsport passion, including since his first appearance in Bathurst’s gruelling 1000 kilometre race in 1991.
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As Lurleen says: “(Motorsport’s) my life, it’s been our life.”
So when Paul finally won it again a week ago — this time as a co-driver and mentor to Ford’s tearaway 22-year-old Chaz Mostert — it wasn’t just his own dream that came true.
Terry and Lurleen are savouring the dramatic win as much as anyone.
Gathered this week at Paul’s Performance Driving Centre at Norwell, it is a super sunny Wednes-day and the mood among the trio is just as bright. They’re looking forward to letting it sink in that night over a quality bottle of red from the family winery Sirromet just up the road at Mt Cotton.
But ask Terry if he was filthy about what happened 17 years ago, he coolly says: “Still filthy.”
Paul: “I don’t know if anyone who has won that race is going to enjoy it as much — people don’t realise what I’ve been through at that place.”
His partner Belinda Gavin, who admits she was on her knees praying during the final stages of the Bathurst win, adds: “On Sunday night Paul kept saying to me ‘I feel like they’re going to take this away from me’. I said ‘They can’t take this one away from you, babe’.”
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When newly crowned Bathurst champion Paul Morris says “this place has been beating me up for years”, he isn’t exaggerating.
Sure, Morris had a successful first outing at Bathurst’s Mount Panorama track in 1991, winning the C Class in a Toyota Corolla. But his bid a year later was marred by tragedy. Morris, then just 24, didn’t set foot in the car. His co-driver, the Kiwi ex-Formula One champion Denny Hulme, suffered a huge heart attack on track and was later pronounced dead in hospital.
“It affects me now when I look back. But there were a lot of people hurting more than I was. Family, people directly involved.”
In 1994, Morris was the victim of one of sport’s greatest dummy spits when he and teammate Tony Longhurst collided during a Bathurst Touring Car race.
Longhurst ran out of his car and threw haymakers through the window at Morris, still in his helmet.
Then came Bathurst 1997.
Morris, racing for BMW, won alongside Kiwi co-driver Craig Baird. The pair even went through the ceremony on the podium, raising the trophy and spraying supporters with champagne.
Disqualification came soon after.
Terry had already left for a business trip to America but Lurleen and Paul were still at the track.
“Paul came back to the motorhome and said ‘I have to leave’.”
The drive to the Gold Coast takes 12 hours and Lurleen recalls it was bucketing down: “But he just had to get out of there, he was so emotional — and I was having a fit because we were in the motorhome driving home in the rain.”
Morris admits: “We were so dominant that year. I just thought we’d go back the next year and get it again. I was that confident. It’s ended up taking 17 years.”
Away from Bathurst, Paul was involved in a horrific smash at Oran Park, Sydney, in 2000.
Paul had run up the back of another car and stopped when Mark Larkham’s vehicle ploughed into him at an estimated 140km/h.
Paul’s Commodore erupted in flames and the fire extinguisher behind his driver’s seat slammed into his back, breaking three vertebrae.
At the time, Paul said it was like being hit by a 10-tonne bowling ball.
He still doesn’t have all the feeling in his right foot while Lurleen has been too anxious to watch him drive since: “I don’t like seeing the car with him in it going around.”
Consequently, she didn’t see many of his 60-plus laps at Bathurst, saying the only time she tuned in was when Mostert was driving.
“As soon as Paul gets out, I watch the race. If he gets back in, I walk away and just listen. When he had that big horrific smash at Oran Park, I just ran away and hid in the toilets and people had to come find me.”
Meanwhile, Paul’s Bathurst frustration mounted. In 1999, driving for Holden with Mark Skaife, he finished third.
In 2004, his team Paul Morris Motor Sport was leading with fewer than 20 laps to go when a loose wheel nut did him in and the car went into the fence: “But everyone has a hard-luck story, no one’s really interested. It’s that kind of place, full of hard-luck stories.”
By 2009 and without a Bathurst to his name, Paul quit driving to focus on running his own team which included stars like Kiwi V8 heavyweight Greg Murphy.
“I thought I’ll retire from full-time driving and concentrate on getting those guys going — that’s my best chance to win. That was my strength, doing the strategy. I forgot about the V8 Supercar Championship and was like ‘we’re just going to win Bathurst’.”
Paul says his experience and strategic focus was why Ford asked him to co-drive at Bathurst with young star Mostert, who sits seventh on the overall series ladder.
“Chaz has only been twice, last year he was super quick but crashed. They just wanted someone who could put an old head on young shoulders and do a fair bit of his thinking for him so at the end of the race he could do his thing.
“You can’t hold a guy like Chaz back. The plan was to let him off the leash at the end. But to do that you’ve got to get to the end of the race.”
Terry adds: “What people don’t understand is Paul is probably one of the smartest strategists in that form of (endurance) racing in Australia. Paul’s driving around at the back conserving fuel.
“He’d looked at the track and said there’s going to be accidents because the surface is too slippery, there’s going to plenty of safety cars. When the safety car comes out the field all bunch up again.”
Terry and Paul acknowledge plenty of the drama went their way — Shane Van Gisbergen was romping to victory with 11 laps to go when he stalled in the pit lane and couldn’t get started.
Craig Lowndes ended his hopes and Mostert’s Ford teammate Mark Winterbottom when he clipped him.
Series leader Jamie Whincup, who drove sensationally from the back to lead the field, ran out of fuel on the 161st and final lap, allowing Mostert to pass.
Lurleen was with Paul’s son Nash, 11, in the motorhome, screaming at the live coverage on TV. Terry, who’d left a corporate box where he was hosting the Premier to be with Paul in the pits, says: “We both knew it was a big moment. We hugged each other and said ‘At long last’.”
Paul says son Nash was pretty excited: “He was like ‘Dad, you just won Bathurst’. It was good to have him there. It’s funny to watch him...Chaz has become his hero.
“I’m now half cool because I get to drive with Chaz,” Paul laughs.
Paul’s moment on the podium tasted especially sweet — the champagne was from family winery Sirromet, which inked a deal to supply the plonk for the V8s this season.
Asked if he’d ever wanted Paul to give the sport away and concentrate on the family businesses, Terry gives a clear “no”: “I’m 75 and I count myself lucky to be healthy, have a great family and be commercially successful but the greatest thing is having a passion I can indulge. And out of motorsport we’ve created a couple of businesses that go all right.”
Paul’s partner Belinda says the win is a family dream come true: “Life is done now. It’s all they ever wanted. Paul can sit back and do a bit more fishing now. He really worked hard this year for Bathhurst.”
Series leader Whincup says plenty of people have tried so hard for years to come up empty-handed at Bathurst and he calls the Morris-Mostert win a “great story”.
“There were so many who thought they should have won the race but didn’t, me included. Someone had to take it. Good on Chaz, he did a great job, and good on Paul. He had so many haters, armchair experts, writing him off. I’ve no doubt he checked out all that social media stuff — and got fired up about it.”
Morris says he was aware of the “keyboard warriors” giving him a “really hard time” when his pairing with Mostert for Ford was unveiled.
“It was pretty good to be able to sit back after and just say ‘Well, there you go’.”
As for defending the title, he says he’d love to be offered another co-drive with Mostert but will take his time decide what he wants to do himself over Christmas.
More immediately, he turns his attention to the Gold Coast 600 this week: “It’s going to be pretty good to walk on to that circuit as the reigning Bathurst champion … it’s something I’m sure going to savour for a long time.”
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