Tony Longhurst | |
---|---|
Nationality | Australian |
Born |
Sydney, New South Wales |
1 October 1957
ATCC / V8 Supercar | |
Years active | 1985-2007 |
Teams |
JPS Team BMW Tony Longhurst Racing Longhurst Racing Stone Brothers Racing Rod Nash Racing Holden Racing Team Perkins Engineering Team Dynamik |
Starts | 191 |
Wins | 5 |
Best finish | 3rd in 1991 & 1992 Australian Touring Car Championship |
Previous series | |
1983 1986-91 1994 |
Alfasud Series AMSCAR Australian Super Touring |
Championship titles | |
1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1994 2001 2009 |
AMSCAR AMSCAR Bathurst 1000 AMSCAR AMSCAR AMSCAR Australian Super Touring Bathurst 1000 Bathurst 12 Hour |
Tony Longhurst (born 1 October 1957 in Sydney, New South Wales) is an Australian racing driver and former Australian Champion water skier. He is most noted for his career in the Australian Touring Car Championship and V8 Supercar series.
Longhurst is a two-time winner of the Bathurst 1000, winning the event in 1988 with Tomas Mezera and in 2001 with Mark Skaife, and is one of only four drivers to win Bathurst in both a Ford and a Holden (the others being Craig Lowndes, Steven Richards and Jamie Whincup).
He has raced internationally in the 1987 World Touring Car Championship and 1993 FIA Touring Car Challenge, both times for BMW. He also won the Australian Super Touring Championship for BMW in 1994.
After four years of service to the Frank Gardner run JPS Team BMW from 1984–87, Longhurst started his own touring car team in 1988 named Tony Longhurst Racing which based itself on the Gold Coast behind the Longhurst family owned Dreamworld. For sponsorship reasons the team was known by various names during its time including Freeport Motorsport and Benson & Hedges Racing. Initially running the powerful Ford Sierra RS500 from 1988–90, the team then began using the evolution model BMW M3 (1991–93), before running a Holden Commodore VP supplied by Perkins Engineering in 1994. In 1995, Longhurst sold out to fellow shareholders Gardner and Terry Morris and formed Longhurst Racing to compete in the V8 Supercars series with a Ford Falcon EF.