MOTORSPORT: Olympic spirit at Bathurst

The Olympic Games motto – Citius, Altius, Fortius, meaning faster, higher, stronger – may well be the theme at Bathurst over the next few days.

The second year of the new-generation V8 Supercars in Australia's premier race, the 1000km of Bathurst, almost certainly will produce faster lap times, higher top speeds and the cars will need to prove stronger to go the distance at the greater pace.

The 6.213km Mt Panorama circuit was resurfaced after last year's event and the greater grip that will give the 26 cars through the 23 corners is expected to slash lap times by 2 seconds or more a lap.

All the key records – Craig Lowndes' outright best lap in a V8 Supercar of 2 minutes 6.8012 seconds in 2010, Greg Murphy's 11-year-old qualifying "Lap of the Gods" of 2:6.8594 and Jamie Whincup's race-lap best of 2:8.4561 in 2007– are expected to tumble.

Many of the cars – the 25 that regularly run in the V8 Supercar Championship plus the wildcard Ford Falcon entered by New Zealand's new Super Black Racing – could top 300kmh consistently down the long Conrod Straight.

And, if it's a fairly clean-run Great Race on Sunday – the early weather forecast is favourable – it ought to see a race time that betters last year's record 6 hours 11 minutes 27.9315 seconds.

The weather bureau predicts partly cloudy conditions for practice on Thursday and Friday, a sunny Saturday with a top temperature of 24 degrees and an even higher 25 on Sunday – but with the possibility of a shower.

Even if a few drops of rain slowed the race time it would add extra spice, especially if it came towards the finish.

Ford Performance Racing is the defending champion team at The Mountain but its gun driver, Mark Winterbottom, has a new co-driver this year – Steve Owen.

Winterbottom has lost significant ground on the championship points table over recent rounds as Holden's factory-backed teams Triple Eight Race Engineering and Holden Racing Team have come on strong.

Triple Eight and HRT won the eight Bathurst 1000s before last year and go into this weekend with the strongest driver line-ups.

Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell won for Triple Eight at The Mountain two years ago and are last-start victors from the first of this year's enduros, last month's Sandown 500.

Craig Lowndes has been joined in the other Triple Eight – or Red Bull Racing – Commodore this year by Steven Richards, who partnered Winterbottom in the Ford triumph 12 months ago.

That pair have made a combined 41 Bathurst 1000 starts and can boast eight victories between them.

HRT's combinations are James Courtney-Greg Murphy and Garth Tander with Warren Luff, who partnered Lowndes in winning the first Enduro Cup last year.

While five makes are now represented in V8 Supercar racing, Holden remains the dominant manufacturer – and favourite for Sunday.

Another victory by Holden would be its 30th in the Great Race and its 50th win in the championship since the introduction of the new-generation rules last year.

Volvo, in its debut season in the category, already has two wins and seven pole positions to its credit – all through the driving efforts of its brilliant young New Zealander, Scott McLaughlin.

The other brands in the field since the start of last season, Nissan and Mercedes, have had only one win apiece – and Nissan's has an asterisk against it as it came in the only race in which the then newcomers were allowed to use E70 fuel rather than the normal E85.

Only the Volvo S60 of McLaughlin and Frenchman Alex Premat is likely to offer any serious challenge to the best Holdens and Fords on Sunday.

Garry Rogers, whose long-time Holden team has transformed into Volvo Polestar Racing this year, has a warning to rivals and watchers.

"Don't disregard us. We are extremely confident of a strong showing," Rogers said.

"We probably don't need any good luck but, as was the case at Sandown [where Premat was blocked in the pits and lost valuable time], we certainly don't need any bad luck either.

"We have a strong team all-round. We have good power.

"Our team seems to have a very good engineering grasp of what is required at Bathurst.

"The only weakness is that we haven't run this type of distance at race speed with the S60.

"I am sure that it will be fine, but that would be my only small seed of doubt."