MOTORSPORT: Matt Clift is a regular in the Autumn Historics and his battle with Bob Sudall and Bob Heagerty in Group Nc will be as intense as in the past this weekend at Morgan Park Raceway.

Clift runs Morgan Park Performance so will be preparing not only his own but the cars of several rivals in this weekend's historics which start with practice on Friday.

All Group Nb and Nc drivers will be competing for the inaugural Don Thallon Cup. Don still races and his father was a driver in the original Australian Grand Prix at Leyburn in 1949.

Clift will be driving his Mazda RX2 and will be battling against Dunwich driver Bob Sudall and Bob Heagerty, of Cedar Grove. Sudall and Heagerty are also in Mazda RX2 cars.

Russell McDowell and Graeme Wakefield will be two of the big threats to Mazda domination in Falcon GTHO.

Historic Racing Car Club of Queensland vice-president Peter Walsh said eight GTR XU-1 Toranas will contest Group Nc.

"Group Nc will be one of the biggest of the weekend with 22 cars,” Walsh said.

"I expect most will set a personal best time on the new track. Matt Clift is usually one of the top five, it depends on the day who is the leader.

"The Autumn Historics are a great chance to relive the glory days of racing meetings where they was a big variety of cars with different performance levels.”

The cars in modern day racing in events such as the Bathurst 1000 or open wheeler races almost have matching specifications whereas all sorts were in the same races in the old days.

Walsh said some of the feature cars this weekend would be the sports sedans such as Jaguar XJF, Ford Escorts and TransAms.

"We have 145 cars coming from New South Wales and Queensland,” he said.

There is free admission on Friday. The weekend cost is $20 a day or $30 for two days, $15 for one day for concessional and $25 for two days. Children under 15 accompanied by an adult free.