Advantage Racing
The team continued under the direction of Alan Gow under the banner of Advantage Racing, with continued support from Mobil, but without the assistance of Holden, new automotive partners had to be found. Frank Gardner had retired and shut down the JPS Team BMW. The team bought the JPS team assets and became the official team for BMW Australia but by 1988 the BMW M3 was no longer competitive and Brock, Jim Richards, David Parsons and emerging talent Neil Crompton found themselves fighting for scraps against the onslaught of the Ford Sierras. By the 1989 ATCC season Brock was forced into the unthinkable and spent the next two years racing Ford's Sierra RS500s, supplied in kit form by Andy Rouse. Rouse also supplied the team with the latest technical information for the cars and also became Brock's co-driver at Bathurst in 1989 and 1990 with the pair finishing 5th in 1990. Limited budget forced the team into a merger with Miedecke Motorsport in 1990, the merger made all the more easier as Miedecke also ran Rouse supplied Sierra's.
The venture with Ford was not without success. Brock won his first ATCC race since the 1986 ATCC when he stormed to victory in the final round of the 1989 series at Oran Park to claim 3rd in the championship. He then went on to claim Pole Position for the 1989 Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst but a rear hub failure caused the 05 car's retirement on lap 81 while the teams second Sierra driven by Brad Jones and Paul Radisich finished in 9th place. The team was again a force in the 1990 ATCC although they suffered a setback when Andrew Miedecke rolled his Sierra in at Mallala for Round 6. Consistent placings and a win in Round 7 at Wanneroo saw Brock finish 2nd in the championship.
Budget constraints again forced the team into a technical alliance with Larry Perkins and Perkins Engineering for the 1991 Australian Touring Car season, bringing with it a return to Holden, running the VN Commodore Group A SS, however this coincided with the highpoint for Nissan with their all wheel drive, twin turbo GT-R which left everyone in Group A behind, leaving Brock and Perkins again scrabbling for points rather than podiums. The 1991 Tooheys 1000 saw mixed results for the return to Bathurst of the Brock/Perkins partnership for the first time since 1984. Both cars qualified in the top 10 but mechanical failure put the Perkins/Tomas Mezera car out on lap 65 while the Brock/Miedecke car lost a number of laps with an electrical problem but eventually finished 7th, 14 laps down on the winning Jim Richards/Mark Skaife Nissan GTR.
Perkins would later claim that as part of the contract with Brock and his sponsor Mobil that he wasn't allowed to beat Brock on the race track unless it was unavoidable, although he did out-qualify Brock twice during the Touring Car Championship.
The alliance with Perkins lasted just a single season, and Advantage continued through into the beginning of the V8 Supercar era with Commodores with modest success until he reconciled with Holden and was invited to join Holden's new official racing team, the Holden Racing Team in 1994. At this point Advantage disbanded, the last remnants of the Holden Dealer Team going separate ways.
Read more about this topic: Holden Dealer Team
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