Bathurst 1000: The Home of the Gods

The Bathurst 1000 celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend… It's been a hell of a ride…

Prologue…

How do you choose five greatest moments of The Great Race, that’s the task here? How can you pick a handful of legendary adventures, when every race of the last 50 years probably had 20 of them? And what makes the Bathurst 1000 The Great Race? Is it the track? Is it the drivers? Is it the fans? For this writer it’s all three. So this is a highly personal top five, let us know yours…

Formula One world champion Jackie Stewart once dubbed Germany’s awe-inspiring 154-corner Nurburgring ‘The Green Hell’ -- a reference to the daunting circuit’s daunting 22.8km tarmac path through the dense forests of the Eifel mountains.

So what would the King of the Mountain, the late Peter Brock, have called Mount Panorama? A home-away-from-home probably -- he won there so many times... Or maybe The Brown Hell.

At 6.2km and with only 23 corners, Mt Panorama doesn’t appear worthy of being compared to The Ring on paper, and yet that’s exactly how European drivers seeing The Mountain for the first time regard it: as a mini Nurburgring. It’s that tough a nut to crack.

THE MAN

The man who cracked it more than any other is Brock and he is the first of my Bathurst top five. With nine victories to his credit he still remains the most successful man to have raced at Bathurst, even though his last win was in 1987.

This year is also the 40th anniversary of Brock’s first win -- in 1972 in a Holden Torana GTR XU-1. Driving solo in a rain-marred race, Brock came of age in his fourth Bathurst, making the most of the slippery conditions in the light nimble six-cylinder Torana. It was an enthralling battle with Allan Moffat, driving (of course!) a V8 Falcon GTHO Phase III.

Brock had some luck; the rain, and an uncharacteristic spin and two, and one-minute pitlane penalties robbing Moffat of the chance to fight to the end. But, if ever there were a track where luck, as well as skill and daring, comes in handy, it’s Bathurst.

There might have been greater Brock moments at Bathurst (the unbelievable six-lap win with Jim Richards in a Torana A9X in 1979 is the most obvious) but for me, that first win in a car that shouldn’t have been competitive against the GTHOs is the one.

THE ROCK
Number two is Dick Johnson’s ‘Rock’ incident in 1980 and its aftermath. The wise-cracking Queenslander – who brought classic phrases like “slipperier than a dog on lino” to the lounges of Australia at 250km/h live via Racecam – had been a battler up to this point.

Johnson, his brother ‘Dyno’ Dave, and long-time mechanic, Roy, had built their XD Falcon after hours at Johnson’s servo and it was pretty much a last tilt at the Mountain for the in-debt team.

Johnson and veteran co-driver John French looked to have the race shot, at least on speed, after Johnson blasted off the front row of the grid and into a 40-second lead. Until lap 17, when car 17 hit a large rock that had been accidentally dislodged by a drunk spectator and rolled onto the track.

Johnson could not see the rock or the slow-moving truck that had been sent to collect it (these days there’d be a safety car period) and on the narrow track, with a split-second to react, it was either hit the truck, the earth bank, or the rock. He hit the rock and his car was wrecked.

The rest is history. Johnson’s emotional reaction tugged at heart strings around the country and dollars started flooding in after the visiting president of Ford, Edsel Ford II, agreed to match donations dollar-for-dollar. Dick Johnson’s career took off from there and he won Bathurst the next year and two more times after that (1989, ’94).

LP and THE ENFORCER

The history of Bathurst is littered with fight back stories but for me the best (and my third Bathurst highlight) is Larry Perkins (LP) and Russell Ingall’s last-to-first win in 1995 -- the first year of what would come to be known as V8 Supercar.

All eyes were on Ford driver Glenn Seton that year as it was the 30th anniversary of his father Bo’s win in a Cortina Mk I GT500. Seton was one of the favourites along with the Holden Racing Team’s new young star, Craig Lowndes. The latter had put his VR Commodore on pole. Perkins qualified third.

But when the flag dropped, the fast starting Perkins and Lowndes banged wheels before turn one, ripping out a tyre valve on Perkins’ car. He dropped to last in the 32-car field and had to pit for a new wheel. Then the drive of his life started.

Perkins already had four Bathurst crowns and he wasn’t going to let another one go without a fight. Renowned as one of the toughest drivers in the field and ably backed by the equally flint-hard Ingall (known nowadays as 'The Enforcer') in his first Bathurst, Perkins never said die.

A high attrition rate (only 15 cars finished) and safety cars helped and with 20 laps to go the pair were back on the lead lap and in the top five, with Perkins driving the wheels off his Commodore. In the pits Ingall was chewing his fingernails to the quick.

With 10 laps to go, LP was only seven seconds behind the leader, Seton, when the Ford driver’s engine (ironically, built by his father, Bo) dropped a valve and began to slow… By the end of the lap Perkins had hit the lead and Seton was out.

It was Perkins’ fifth win and Ingall’s first and the pair would repeat the performance in 1997.

THE MURPH
I watched all these great Bathurst moments on television but I began covering the race in 1996 and saw my number four pick from the pits. It was Greg Murphy’s ‘God lap’ in 2003.

Murphy was already an established star by this stage, the rapid Kiwi having won Bathurst in 1996 with Lowndes and in 1999 with Steven Richards. For 2003 he was paired with another young Holden Racing Team ‘discovery’, Rick Kelly.

The mercurial Murphy is mighty quick when he is on it but seems to go through moody periods when things don’t seem to gel for him; Bathurst 2003 wasn’t one of those times. He was always at his best in qualifying but this year was up against some of the best ‘one-lap wonders’ in the business, including Mark Skaife, Garth Tander and Marcos Ambrose.

Your scribe watched the top 10 shootout from the Brad Jones Racing pit of John Bowe. As Murphy went out on his warm-up lap, Bowe had pole in his grasp with a mighty 2:07.9556sec lap. JB was the only driver in the ‘sevens’.

Bowe, now in the twilight of his illustrious touring car career, watched Murphy’s lap intently on the monitor, waiting for the ‘split’ times that would show whether Murphy was on his pace – or better.

Murph was. It would be an anxious couple of minutes for Bowe, but when Murphy crossed the finish line in an incredible time 2:06.8594sec, the quickest lap ever at Mount Panorama, the look on Bowe’s face was one of sheer astonishment. He could only shrug and smile.

Bowe wasn’t the only person with his jaw on the ground. The Mountain erupted! Inside his car Murphy was just as amazed, considering (he later said) that he’d made a mistake and could have gone quicker!

I can’t remember ever seeing the whole pitlane give a driver a standing ovation but that’s what happened when Murphy idled back to his pit. It was an incredible time to be among that throng of excited people.

All teams rejoiced in Murphy’s Miracle. And then he and Kelly won the race. Perfection.

THE FANS
Lastly, I choose the fans, the legion of ‘Holden red versus Ford blue’ die-hards who have endured the weather, the conditions, the bad food, the changing face of the race, and each other for the last 50 years.

I have only been to Bathurst once as a punter and I’ll never forget it. It was 1985 and I went with a mate to camp on top of the Mountain. The plan was to stay for Hardies Heroes then make a bee-line back to Melbourne to watch the race on TV. Stupid, I know.

Things were a lot more uproarious up there in those days. It was like an outlaw community. The fans built huge tent towns, complete with kitchens, bathrooms, TVs, lounge suites and lots of fridges and Eskies. Plenty of eskies!!! It was like an alcoholic frontier encampment.

My friend planned to sleep in his car and had brought a tent for me, a novice camper. Only he forgot the tent poles and we had to rig it to a fence on one of the access roads.

I got no sleep for three days. It was bitterly cold and all night blokes were roaring up and down the road, firecrackers were being set off, and Volvos were being sacrificed to the god of fire. It was mayhem in a beer-fueled, good-natured sort of way but I always felt it could turn ugly.

I remember seeing utes packed with ‘slabs’, towing trailers piled high with even more slabs. Did these guys ever eat?

When taking alcohol into the camping grounds was banned, resourceful blokes turned up two weeks early and buried their stash of booze rather than be restricted to what they could buy over the counter!

That’s just one side of the coin, though... Bathurst has always been a family race, a traditional long-weekend getaway for mum, dad and the kids. Fans like the ‘Great Coat Family’, as I call them -- adults and kids who wear heavy green army surplus coats covered in racing badges, whether it’s 5C or 35C! I swear some have never been washed in 20 years. The coats that is...

The fans are knowledgeable, generally one-eyed, and so enthusiastic and they make the race what it is – a major international sporting event.

So, what makes The Great Race great? The track, the drivers and the fans. Here’s to the next 50 years.

Bathurst 1000: The Home of the Gods

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