THIS week marks 30 years since Tony Longhurst and Paul Morris’ infamous barney after a crash in a two-litre touring car race at Winton.
Their BMWs were the class of the first standalone Australian season for what soon became known worldwide as the Super Touring category, with Longhurst and Morris winning the first four races between them.
While a couple of those could have been described as more ‘scripted spectacles’ than genuine races, the gloves were off between the pair when it came to the third round at Winton.
A small mistake from Morris in the opening race allowed Longhurst a comfortable win, but the two E36-model BMWs had lapped the rest of the field.
The second 23-lap race followed 10 minutes later, and this time Morris beat pole-man Longhurst to the first corner and spent most of the race fending off his teammate’s advances.
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That was until the penultimate lap.
Longhurst lunged at Morris in the middle of the Esses and loosened the Diet Coke BMW up, allowing him to range up on Morris’ outside as they charged onto the old front straight to begin the last lap.
Moments later they touched wheels, the contact breaking the steering on Morris’ car and sending both of them crashing into the wall just past the start-finish line.
What happened next has lived on in highlight reels, YouTube, social media – even the late Bert Newton’s 20-to-1 TV show – for the next three decades.
Longhurst – believing Morris had intentionally driven them off the road – had already undone his belts and flung the door open before his #25 car had even come to rest, and quickly made a beeline to a still-dazed Morris.
Upon arrival at the driver’s door of the #23 car, he threw three punches – a right, then two lefts – at Morris’ helmeted head through the half-open window, before being ushered away by a trackside marshal.
The vision made news and sports headlines around the world. The incident also caused the race to be red-flagged, which ironically led to Morris being declared the winner.
Longhurst was excluded from both races, fined $10,000 and given a suspended six-month ban.
There were those who found humour in the incident though, including the pair’s mentor.
Frank Gardner ran BMW’s Australian touring car operations through the 1980s and was responsible for recruiting both Longhurst and Morris at formative stages of their careers.
By 1994, Longhurst, Gardner and the Morris family were partners in the race team, which fielded factory-backed BMWs in two-litre rounds, as well as a pair of five-litre V8 Holdens in the Australian Touring Car Championship.
Gardner had largely taken a step back from the coal face and was not at Winton, but made an appearance at the final ATCC round at Oran Park a month later.
“After that display at Winton, I thought I had better come along and straighten the boys out,” Gardner told Motorsport News.
Long before his decorated career in motorsport, Gardner was also an amateur boxing champion in his teens, amassing a record as sharp as his laconic wit.
“If they’re going to start swingin’ punches at each other like that on national television, we’re goin’ to have to teach them some technique,” he joked.
“It was a bloody disgraceful display; no style at all!”
Longhurst went on to recover the points lost through his Winton exclusion in the very next round at Lakeside, where a Race 1 clutch failure also sidelined Morris for Race 2.
The title battle went all the way down to the finale at Oran Park, where Morris won the round but fell eight points shy of beating Longhurst to the title.
