The descent from Mount Panorama, Bathurst’s highest point. The cars are on the brakes all the way through The Esses, and someone’s locked them here. And no, this isn’t immediately post-safety car – the racing is often this close.
Not the Bathurst 1000, but a ute support race, which followed a ute drift display. Where else but Oz?
Heading through The Esses and down towards The Dipper. The optimum racing line requires the drivers to be perilously close to the walls. Some get too close.
Australian air traffic control goes into meltdown.
Inside the Jim Beam Racing garage. The team’s also known as Dick Johnson Racing, and the man himself has spent decades driving or running Fords – YouTube ‘Dick Johnson, Sierra Cosworth, Bathurst’.
It’s the pit straight, but that doesn’t stop the utes drifting the wrong way down it
Drivers pair up for the endurance rounds of the V8 Supercars series, of which Bathurst is one. It’s big pressure for the so-called co-drivers: they can’t be full-time V8 Supercar drivers, but a mistake from them will affect the main driver’s entire season.
It’s Ford versus Holden at the moment, but new rules in 2012 are designed to encourage other manufacturers. Could be a good thing, could dilute the purity of a very easy to grasp rivalry.
Fans camp out on Mount Panorama (aka The Mountain, aka Feral Mountain) and, while it does get rowdy, we didn’t spot any rifle-toting hoons.
A Holden Commodore scorches towards The Dipper. Looks like a production car, but it’s actually chopped between the B- and C-pillar to make it shorter.
A Holden takes a Ford on the inside going into Forrest’s Elbow, the final turn before the 1.9km-long Conrod Straight, where speeds reach 300kmh
Running over the top of Mount Panorama, and through Quarry Corner, Reid Park, Frog Hollow, Sulman Park, McPhillamy Park and Skyline
For the last two years V8 Supercars have run on an 85/15 mix of sugar cane-based ethanol and regular petrol
Some say he has asbestos fingers. The Stig says he’s actually a normal man called Ben Collins.
There’s still a vacancy, apparently
50 years of Falcon was celebrated at this year’s race.
Steve had his work cut out, but he was getting on well
The post-quailfying press conference with Mark Winterbottom’s Falcon on pole. Craig Lowndes (far right) and Mark Skaife (sitting alongside) won the race.
Promo girls everywhere at Bathurst, and we took just the one shot to illustrate this fact.
