 Early on in the race Brock had battled for the lead with Tom Walkinshaw and Jeff Allam in their TWR Jaguar XJ-S V12's which had been brought to Japan despite not having raced since winning the 1985 James Hardie 1000.While the top level teams such as HDT and Roadways (Grice) moved to the VL model Commodore in early 1987, a number of private teams, including Larry Perkins, who claimed his was the fastest Commodore in the world until forced to switch to the VL after crashing at Bathurst, continued to use the VK due to the increasing costs of running the newer cars with VK's last seen in the ATCC in 1990.Driving his Lansvale Racing Team Commodore, Sydney based privateer Trevor Ashby gave the VK Group A SS its last major race win when he won Heat 2 of Round 1 of the 1987 AMSCAR series at Amaroo Park on 27 March 1987.