at bathurst also proved controversial for the team with the two Sierra's excluded from the results of Hardies Heroes when they failed a post runoff fuel check. While the fuel was found to be a lower grade and actually produced less power, the rules had been broken. But the year ended well, with Johnson again winning the Group A support race in Adelaide at the Australian Grand Prix in November. Johnson, who was suffering fuel feed problems late in the race, just held on for his first win in the RS500 from the fast closing Nissan Skyline of George Fury. In 1988 John Bowe replaced Hansford in the team and began an eleven-year stint as the driver of DJR's second car. With the team having overcome the reliability problems of the previous year and team manager Neal Lowe having come to grips with the engine management system earlier than his Australian counterparts (to the point where Lowe and the team were the first in Australia with the expertise to burn EPROM chips for the Sierra's), Johnson and Bowe finished an easy first and second in the 1988 and 1989 championships. Dick Johnson would later claim that he and his team were on a mission in 1988 after having been embarrassed at 1987 World Touring Car Championship round at Bathurst by the Ford Europe backed Eggenberger Motorsport Sierra's which not only proved faster but far more reliable (the Eggenberger cars would finish 1–2 on the road at Bathurst but would later be disqualified for technical infringements). He would also claim in the interview with Australian Muscle Car magazine in 2015 that another part of his motivation was that he had originally tried to buy an EPROM chip burning machine from British Sierra expert Andy Rouse in 1987, but Rouse had refused to sell one and that a chance meeting with one of the engineers involved with the Ford RS200 rally car project led to the purchase of the machine as well as Lowe travelling to the United States to learn how to use it. After the differential failure which had put the No. 17 Johnson car out of the 1987 Bathurst 1000 on just lap 4, Johnson took it upon himself to solve the problem of the Sierra's weak drive train. In April 1988 after working with Melbourne-based Harrop Engineering (run by former racer / engineer Ron Harrop), DJR successfully homologated