This year's Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 at Mount Panorama will be the 45th anniversary of the first running in 1963 of Australia's 'Great Race'.
2006 Crowd: 193,647
Circuit length: 6.213-kilometres
Circuit direction: Anti-Clockwise
Average speed: 172km/h
Maximum speed: 295km/h
Fastest Point: Conrod Straight
Slowest Point: Forest’s Elbow
Brief description of the circuit: One of the classic road courses, the first race was held on the circuit in 1938 after it was initially built as a ‘scenic road’ to make use of funds being offered to help ease the problems of the Great Depression!
10 Fast Facts
1. Defending Peter Brock Trophy winners Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup return to the Mountain after breaking Holden’s seven-year Bathurst stranglehold last year. The 2005 Bathurst pole sitter, Lowndes’ car (including when his co-drivers have performed the qualifying duties) has never missed the Top 10 Shootout since his debut in the 1994 race. In five visits to Bathurst, Whincup has never qualified his entry.
2. There are a range of important milestones being racked up in Bathurst history this year. It is 40 years since the debut of the Falcon GT in 1967 which won on its Bathurst debut with Harry Firth and Fred Gibson driving. It’s the 30th anniversary of the Allan Moffat/Colin Bond 1-2 Ford form finish in 1977 and the 20th anniversary of the last victory in the race by the late, great Peter Brock in the underdog Mobil #10 VL Commodore. It is also 10 years since Larry Perkins and Russell Ingall took victory in their Castrol Commodore – the win being Perkins’ final of six that sits him third on the all-time winner’s list in the ‘1000. It sits as Ingall’s second – and most recent – Mountain success.
3. Five drivers will make their Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 debuts in 2007, however only one of them is yet to race at Mount Panorama. Jay Verdnik, Andrew Thompson and Chris Pither all have Fujitsu V8 Supercar experience, while David Reynolds has been successful at the Mountain in Carrera Cup. Team Kiwi Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen has never raced at the Mountain.
4. Mark Skaife will be back on the grid at Bathurst after missing the recent Just Car Insurance Sandown 500 due to an operation to remove his appendix. The last time Skaife was missing from a Championship round grid was during 1997 when his Gibson Motorsport team lacked a budget to complete the full season. Prior to that, the last round he missed that he was supposed to compete in was the 1995 season opener at Sandown, as he was recovering from injuries sustained in a massive practice crash at the Triple Challenge meeting at Eastern Creek. Ironically enough, when he returned for round two at Symmons Plains he was back with a vengeance and qualified on the front row of the grid.
5. Three of Holden’s top drivers – Todd Kelly, Garth Tander and Jason Richards – all rack up their 10th start in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 in 2007. Kelly, the 2005 winner, debuted in 1998 and was a retirement but has finished the race every year since. Tander, the 2000 winner, was a retirement in the very same race, while Kiwi Richards – the 2005 runner-up – debuted in the two-litre Super Touring race in 1997 in a BMW 320i.
6. Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom has a real point to prove at Bathurst this year. Amazingly, in four assaults on the Mountain since his debut in 2003, ‘Frosty’ is yet to even finish the 1000-kilometre race. He is paired with two-time winner Steven Richards, the only man to win Bathurst in a Ford and a Holden in the V8 Supercar era.
7. There is just one all-international combination in the race – the TeamVodafone Falcon of Irishman Richard Lyons and Dane Allan Simonsen. While there have been six international drivers that have won the race (not counting New Zealanders such as Jim Richards or Greg Murphy), no all-international duo has managed to win since the race began in 1963. Both have solid Aussie links, with Lyons based in Queensland while commuting to race in the Japanese Super GT Championship and Simonsen with a Melbourne base in between his Le Mans Sportscar racing commitments. They finished in 12th at Bathurst last lap and ended up on the lead lap.
8. John Bowe will line up for the final time this year in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000. Bowe is starting his 23rd Great Race and is a two-time winner (1989 and 1994) and, amazingly, a four-time runner-up (1987, 1988, 1992 and 1996). His former team-mate Brad Jones was also to have lined up for his 23rd start in the event, however a persistent back injury has left Albury’s finest to withdraw and give Christian Murchison a drive. Murchison, who filled in for Jones at Sandown, made his Bathurst debut in a Castrol Perkins Commodore in 2000 with Luke Youlden. He has since been competing for his country of birth - Singapore - in the A1 Grand Prix series.
9. Things are definitely getting harder in the V8 Supercar era of Australian touring car racing. No combination has been able to do ‘the double’ and win Sandown and Bathurst in the same year since Craig Lowndes and Greg Murphy in 1996. In fact, that same year was just the second time a driver – in that case Lowndes - had won the Championship, Sandown and Bathurst in a season. Peter Brock in 1980 remains the only other.
10. Since grid positions were first determined by qualifying times in 1967, just three cars have won the race after starting outside the all-important top 10. The last was Greg Murphy and Steven Richards in 1999, who qualified 12th. Last year’s winners Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup started from sixth on the grid.
