MOTORSPORT: Great Race destiny

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One apt and one skewed perspective on the Bathurst 1000
Even in this digital era, reading the printed official program for the Bathurst 1000 remains among the most worthwhile preparations for watching Sunday’s Great Race – whether that be trackside at Mt Panorama, in front of a television or via an app on a computer or mobile device.

It’s not that the program tells an Australian motorsport fan (read: V8 Supercar watcher) much if anything they don’t know; rather it’s a reminder, a perspective, a scene-setter ahead of the country’s most important car race of the year.

A couple of things struck this observer while flicking through the program last evening. One was something in the welcome message from James Warburton, now several months into his job as chief executive of V8 Supercars Australia – and to which we will come later. The other was a big, bold quote from the sport’s biggest name, Craig Lowndes.

After a precede reading “Bathurst is sacred ground for Craig Lowndes and every visit simply reinforces his passion for the iconic mountain circuit” comes this quote from the driver who to the Australian public is the face of V8 Supercar racing: “I have always believed that a Bathurst victory is better than a championship.”

It’s no great surprise hearing that from Lowndes. We’ve heard it before and no doubt we will again. Quite often probably. But it reminded this reader that that also is the perspective overwhelmingly of the fans and the broader public.

Fans of the sport will be glued to Sunday’s telecast of the Great Race if they aren’t on The Mountain, and lots of others who have little or no interest in other rounds of the V8 Supercar Championship will be tuned in too – if not for the duration then for parts of it, and particularly for the finish.

Lowndes will start his 500th Australian touring car race on Sunday and the Bathurst 1000 for the 20th time. He first won it in 1996, driving a Commodore for Holden Racing Team with Greg Murphy. Then in 2006, ’07 and ’08 came a hat-trick with Jamie Whincup in Triple Eight Race Engineering Ford Falcons.

In more recent times drivers who are teammates throughout the championship have been prohibited from racing together in the Bathurst 1000, but Lowndes was paired by Triple Eight boss Roland Dane with then semi-retired Mark Skaife for another victory in 2010 in a Holden Commodore.

Although he has seen HRT’s Garth Tander and Nic Percat and Triple Eight’s other combination (Whincup and Paul Dumbrell) triumph at The Mountain the past two years, Lowndes and co-driver Warren Luff are always a force in the endurance races.

And if the pairing are victorious this Sunday, the smile on Lowndes’ face will be wider than ever as he will equal Skaife and Larry Perkins as six-time victors in the Great Race. Only Jim Richards, with seven wins (and still racing in the Touring Car Masters at The Mountain this weekend), and Lowndes’ late mentor and “King of the Mountain” Peter Brock, with nine, would remain ahead of him.

As much as Lowndes (40 next year), still has a huge hunger for further success in this classic race, he can’t see himself matching or overtaking Brock’s record. Perhaps out of reverence for the venue and Brock he says he will be content to stand equal third or equal second, or second outright, on the list of multiple winners.

“For me every time I drive across the Blue Mountains and see that white rock Mount Panorama sign peak over the hillside I just get this indescribable feeling come over me, and it happened the first time I was there and it happens every time since without fail,” Lowndes says in this year’s official program.

“The rich history associated with it set it apart from anything else we have on the calendar. I have always believed that a Bathurst victory is better than a championship.

“It’s like a Le Mans 24-Hour or a Daytona 24-Hour – it’s the pinnacle and ultimate challenge we face. Without doubt I hold my five Bathurst wins as the highlight of my career.

“I guess people can argue the point that the championship showcases consistency across a whole season, but Bathurst is and always will be the big one, hands down.

“Any time you win Bathurst it’s an incredibly special occasion and I cherish all five of my wins, but the one that stands out has to be 2006. Winning the first Bathurst since the great Peter Brock’s passing was incredibly emotional but something I wanted to do.

“And then to stand at the top of the podium and be presented the trophy by Phil Brock [Peter’s brother] was just very, very special and a memory that will stay with me forever.

Bathurst is important to Whincup too. The reigning champ could draw level with Lowndes on five wins if he and Dumbrell repeat last year’s victory on Sunday. But for Whincup the V8 Supercar title is the major prize.

“Even if we can’t win this weekend, if we can score a lot of points it’s going to help in our championship run,” he said.

Lowndes, though, will happily live without having won a championship this century if he takes the chequered flag first on Sunday afternoon. And it’s not hard to sense that the fans and broader Australian sporting public share his sense of priority.

New V8SC boss Warburton quite rightly labels the Bathurst 1000: “one of Australia’s most iconic sporting events” in his welcome message in the official program.

“The Mountain is the Mecca of Australian motorsport and will always be,” Warburton says, again quite rightly. And he predicts that the “new-generation” Bathurst 1000, with Nissans and Mercedes-Benzes competing now (and Volvo next year) as well as Holdens and Fords, “the Great Race is going to be even greater”.

That may be. Hopefully so. And, if it is the case, even the Holden and Ford traditionalists may acknowledge that as a good thing – perhaps on the proviso that their beloved Lion or Blue Oval badge is doing the winning.

But what is disconcerting in Warburton’s welcome message is his statement that the Great Race, apart from being watched by one of the biggest television audiences in Australian sport (true, although not a patch now on the biggest games in AFL and rugby league), is the tired old line that it “will be watched by hundreds of millions of people across the world”.

Disconcerting because, coming from a background as a senior television executive (one-time CEO of the Ten Network and before that sales supremo at the Seven Network), Warburton knows that to be a fallacy.

The Bathurst 1000 is a magnificent Australian event. Attendance at Mt Panorama over these few days could be in the 150,000-200,000 range, the average TV audience in the five major state capitals on Sunday will be about 1 million viewers (give or take a few thousand) and the peak audience possibly twice that.

But, as much as we love Bathurst and there genuinely is some international interest in it, there is not the slightest skerrick of evidence that “hundreds of millions of people across the world” have watched it in years gone by – or will this Sunday.

TV ratings figures from Britain, one of the world’s strongholds of motor racing, generally show that the audience there for our Great Race is about 10,000 viewers.

The deal with what was Speed TV in the United States has taken V8 Supercar races to an audience in North and South America. An international TV expert has told us that on a good day a V8 Supercar race may get an audience of 60,000 in America, a country with a population of about 320 million – and NASCAR racing.

The American TV audience for NASCAR’s biggest race – the Daytona 500 - is less than 10 million, and the Indianapolis 500 open-wheeler classic runs second to that now. And even the biggest audiences for Formula One races is below 100 million viewers worldwide.

So to tell Australians -- via the official program for the Bathurst 1000 -- that our major race will be watched by “hundreds of millions of people across the world” is complete nonsense.

Warburton’s ridiculous utterance on the worldwide TV audience cannot be excused as the excitement of a new man in a new gig. He, better than anyone, is well placed to know the reality.

The Bathurst 1000 is wonderful, to us Australians a phenomenon even. And around the world there will be others watching – because they are fanatical about motor racing, know of this phenomenon that is Bathurst, know someone who is driving in the race, or working at it, maybe even spectating.

But hundreds of millions? Get real. Let’s keep things in perspective.

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