Many are called but few are chosen. This week we’ll find out who the mountain chooses to hold aloft the Peter Brock Trophy, the most sought-after silverware in Australian motorsport.
The Bathurst 1000 isn’t like any other race on the domestic motorsport calendar. Nothing comes close to the prestige, nothing rivals it for hype.
This year 28 cars will do battle for the jewel in the Supercars crown. There will be heartbreak for some and disappointment for most, but two driver will summit the top step of the podium after 1000 gruelling kilometres of racing and make themselves immortals in the annals of Australian touring cars.
Watch every practice, qualifying and race of the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship live and ad-break free during racing on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >
This year’s great race will feature seven rookies, a radar loaded with rain and a championship to play for. Drivers have scores to settle and the Australian automotive brand, Holden, will embark on its racing swan song.
It’s all on the line in Bathurst this weekend.
THE CHAMPIONSHIP IS ON THE LINE
It might be sacrilegious to say it, but the Bathurst 1000 is one race in the championship calendar, just one chapter in a much bigger story.
It might be the season’s biggest racing event, replete with pageantry and its own special format, but it’s worth the same 300 points as every other weekend.
It could be a decisive 300 points in settling the title in Shane van Gisbergen’s favour for the third time in his career. It would certainly be a memorable way to win with two rounds to spare.
Only four drivers after Van Gisbergen are still in championship contention, but they’re clinging on by their fingernails at this point. Cam Waters, Will Davison, Anton de Pasquale and Chaz Mostert are all still mathematical possibilities, though with varying degrees of helplessness.
The headline figure is that Van Gisbergen leads the series by 525 points with three rounds remaining. He must lead by 600 points when the flag falls at Mount Panorama to claim the title.
The permutations are as follows. Van Gisbergen will be champion if:
– he outscores Waters by 75 points (roughly the difference between first and fifth);
– Davison doesn’t outscore him by more than two points;
– De Pasquale doesn’t outscore him by more than 69 points; and
– Mostert doesn’t outscore him by more than 178 points.
Each one of those drivers has something to prove this weekend.
Water has twice in a row finished runner-up at the mountain, both times by less than four seconds. He’d dearly love to delay Van Gisbergen’s coronation by taking the final podium step.
Both Davison and De Pasquale, meanwhile, will be representing Dick Johnson Racing in its 1000th start, an unprecedented achievement. It would be an auspicious victory, and both drivers are keen to assert supremacy in their intrateam battle too.
Mostert of course will be looking for the chance to go back to back, which would make three Bathurst wins.
It’s not a given, and Bathurst isn’t the kind of race you can show up to and dominate in the same way SVG has managed so often this year. Massive heartbreak is as likely as enormous joy.
But after having had such a handle on the season to date, it’s certainly in play.
HOLDEN’S LAST DANCE — AND A CHANCE TO LEVEL A SCORE
There’ll be a certain responsibility on Van Gisbergen’s shoulders and indeed the shoulders of all 36 drivers who will wear the badge of the famous racing lion.
This will be the final outing for the Holden name and Commodore marque at Bathurst ahead of the brand’s disappearance from the sport at the end of the year.
Holden will take its final bow at the mountain as the most successful brand ever to tackle the famous racing challenge.
GM will be represented by the Chevrolet Camaro from 2023 under new regulations.
Team Red has taken 35 wins to next-best Ford’s 20. It holds the record for longest winning spell, at seven years to next-best Ford’s three. And the Holden Dealer Team is most successful team ever to enter the race, with nine victories.
There’s really only one headline record it doesn’t hold: most poles.
Ford leads that count on 25. Holden is one behind on 24.
Can anyone ensure Australia’s most iconic car brand goes out with at least a neutral record for single-lap pace?
This year’s form guide suggests the odds are stacked against it.
Only eight of the season’s 29 poles to date have gone Holden’s way, a little over a quarter.
That said, Holden has claimed five of the last 10 poles at the Bathurst 1000, in line with the tight 25-24 score line.
Can anyone level the scores before it’s too late?
Farewell to an icon – Holden’s legacy | 02:47
KEY DRIVER PAIRINGS
Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander
Kings of the mountain in 2020, it’s hard to go past a winning combination like Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander when picking favourites.
But it’s not just the fact they’ve been there and done that. SVG is the undisputed number one of the season, and that’s not about to evaporate just because he’s sharing the car with someone else.
In fact having Tander as co-driver will likely enhance all the qualities that are making Van Gisbergen irresistible this season. He’s been working with the two-time champion this year as a driver coach, ameliorating what few weaknesses exist in his game and burnishing his strengths.
Together they’re not just a combination but the combination. There are of course no guarantees on Mount Panorama, but there’s no doubt that this pair has what it takes to get the job done with aplomb.
Chaz Mostert and Fabian Coulthard
Chaz Mostert is preparing to revisit the scene of his greatest career triumph to date: his seemingly unlikely, against-the-odds victory in last year’s Bathurst 1000 alongside Lee Holdsworth.
The hope was for Mostert to carry that winning momentum into this year, but he and the team have come up short against the spectacularly well drilled Triple Eight-Van Gisbergen combination.
A significant part of Mostert’s undoing has been form during the championship’s two-day sprint rounds, which now make up the bulk of the calendar. The onus is all on rolling out of the truck ready to go, but too frequently it’s taken Walkinshaw Andretti United too long to find the sweet spot.
Mount Panorama might be a difficult beat to tame, but with six hours of practice on the cards, four of them before qualifying, expect WAU to be closer to full strength.
With Fabian Coulthard alongside him this isn’t just a well-rounded line-up but a hungry one too. Caught without a seat for 2022
Jamie Whincup and Broc Feeney
The greatest of all time with the best of the next generation. What’s not to like about this pairing?
Jamie Whincup knows how to be quick in a Supercar — good luck coming up with a bigger understatement than that — and he’s wielded that nous to master the mountain four times, putting him fifth on the honour board. It’s pretty much the only statistic in the championship he doesn’t lead outright.
He’s also the co-driver who’ll need the least acclimatisation time. It’s been less than a year since he retired from full-time racing, and since then he’s run the team — fair to say he won’t have much learning to do.
Feeney, meanwhile, is the most highly rated rookie the series has seen in years, and the way he’s jumped into the deep end this season and kept his cool validates the hype.
His progress has been strong and steady so far in 2022, which is impressive considering he’d never raced at several of the tracks on the calendar.
But having won his Super2 title at Bathurst last year and with two Supercars wildcard entries under his belt, rolling out of the garage at Bathurst will practically feel like a homecoming for the 19-year-old.
THE WILDCARDS
Triple Eight: Craig Lowndes and Declan Fraser
Craig Lowndes needs no introduction, but he might want is a swan song. The modern day’s king of the mountain as the equal second most successful Bathurst driver of all time — alongside Jim Richards and behind only Peter Brock — could well decide to call time on his co-driver career at the end of this year’s event.
If he does, he’ll go out with a nice round number as the first driver in Australian Touring Car Championship history to clock up 300 starts.
Having sensationally won on debut in 1996, there’d be something poetic about him going out with a victory too, and racing for a stable as strong as Triple Eight, he’s in with a powerful chance. Really you can never rule this man out at the mountain.
Alongside him is rising star Declan Fraser, the current Suepr2 leader. He has the blessing of the T8 team, which his hoping to shuffle him into a main-game seat somewhere on the grid to keep its talent pipeline ticking over.
Fraser is well regarded in Supercars land, which lends this wildcard line-up a certain nostalgia. Lowndes of course made his championship debut alongside Peter Brock at HRT 26 years ago and went on to in many ways emulate the master.
Fraser now has the chance to learn from Bathurst’s modern champion in his bid to establish himself on the grid.
Who knows — we may look back on this pairing as a pivotal one in shaping the future forces of the series.
Erebus: Greg Murphy and Richie Stanaway
When Greg Murphy and Richie Stanaway take to the track for the first time this week, their primary emotion may well be relief.
This is the driver pairing that almost wasn’t.
Last year their wildcard entry was called off due to travel logistics due to the pandemic. It was pushed back to this year, when at least they’d have the benefit of a full-house crowd to cheer them on.
But the plans looked likely to be iced a second time last month when Will Brown was tipped into a heavy crash in Auckland that risked writing off the car. Brown would’ve had to take the third chassis, leaving Murphy and Stanaway with nothing.
Thankfully, however, the team dug deep to rebuild the badly damaged machine, with team boss Barry Ryan saying the entire rear of the car was cut off and replaced.
“Almost every tube in the back half of the car has either been torn, twisted or bent,” Ryan said at the time. “Items like our gearbox, fuel tank housing, drive shafts and suspension components also need to be repaired or replaced.
“We knew there had been substantial damage, though you always find more as you start to pull parts and panels off it.”
But once the satisfaction of getting the job done passes, Murphy and Stanaway will have their sights set on a strong result.
Murphy is no stranger to the mountain as a four-time winner and 28-time Supercars race winner, while Stanaway is a multiple junior single-seater champion tackling his fifth weekend at Bathurst.
Lowndes & Murphy on racing rust | 03:19
Matt Chahda Motorsport: Matt Chahda and Jaylyn Robotham
Matt Chahda leads the first genuine privateer entry in the Bathurst 1000 since 2015, but this is no jolly or one-time crack. The long-time Super2 fixture has his sights fixed firmly on graduating to the main game with his own team.
There’s one licence currently unfilled for the Supercars series given BRT continues to field only one car, and there’s no better shop window than the 1000 to sell oneself as a credible entry.
A top-20 finish would be respectable; and top-15 result would be superb. The team won’t be contesting the Suepr2 round this weekend to focus on achieving its maximum.
Chahda, who’s in his eighth Super2 season, will be joined by 2023 Toyota 86 and Super3 champion Jaylyn Robotham. The 19-year-old Victorian won on debut in this year’s Super2 series and will be one to watch next season.
HOW MUCH CAN GEN2 LOWER THE BAR BEFORE THE NEW REGULATIONS?
Bathurst just keeps getting faster and faster, and that goes for both qualifying and the race itself.
Cars have got better. The circuit is periodically resurfaced. Drivers have become more professional. It all generates lap time.
The first year of the current track configuration was 1987, when the Chase was added into Conrod. The pole lap that year was 2:16.969.
By 1998, just 11 years later, Mark Skaife brought the benchmark to below 130 seconds, to 2:09.895.
Greg Murphy’s ‘lap of the gods’ — fully 19 years ago now — reduced that to under 128 seconds, and the time continued tumbling to the end of the decade.
Resurfacing work in 2014 sped up the cars again, and last year Chaz Mostert took pole with a time of 2:03.374, the all-time record.
The same is true of the overall race time, which has been continuously chipped away at over the decades. It’s now regularly completed in less than 6.5 hours; the 2018 race was over in just 6 hours and 1 minute.
But that’s all going to change from next year, when the Gen3 cars are introduced. With significantly less downforce, they’ll be slower around tracks like Bathurst, suspending the relentless progression towards faster laps and quicker races.
Any records set this weekend could stand for some time yet.
WHAT’S THE WEATHER UP TO?
The Bureau of Meteorology is rarely definitive, but two of the four days at Bathurst, Friday and Saturday, are forecast to have a 100 per cent chance of rain. Thursday and Sunday are a mere 95 per cent chance of being wet.
And by wet, the bureau means wet. And in fact it’s set to get wetter as the weekend goes on.
Thursday will see up to 10mm most likely in the morning and afternoon.
Friday will see up to 25mm in the afternoon and evening.
Saturday could see as much as 30mm, most likely in the afternoon and evening, potentially interrupting the top-10 shootout.
Sunday will be the wettest of them all, with up to 35mm on the forecast. It’s also expected to be chilly, with a forecast top of just 14°C, down from around 18°C during the rest of the weekend.
It’ll be a real challenge for all drivers but particularly for the class of seven rookie taking the mountain for the first time in Supercars machinery after the field featured just one novice last year. Jaxon Evans, Matt Payne, Cameron Hill, Aaron Seton, Matt Chahda, Jaylyn Robotham and Declan Fraser will all have their work cut out for them to keep it on the road if the weather comes in.
The cold alone will greatly reduce grip before taking the rain into account, and the associated tyre warm-up difficulties will play a crucial role in strategy through the race.
Heavy rain will also slow down the race, and any significant number of safety cars could blow out the race time to sunset, which it at just after 7pm. The last substantially wet-weather race lasted more than seven hours.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
Every practice session, qualifying and race of the 2022 Repco Bathurst 1000 is live and ad-break free during racing and the top-10 shootout on Kayo and Fox Sports 503.
Thursday — live from 7:25am (AEDT)
Practice 1 starts at 11am and lasts for one hour. It’s open to all drivers.
Practice 2 is exclusive to co-drivers and will last an hour from 3:55pm.
Friday — live from 7:45am
Practice 3 starts at 10:10am ahead of practice 4 at 1pm. Both last an hour.
Qualifying follows at 4:15pm to set grid places 11 to 28.
Saturday — live from 8:10am
Practice 5 is at 10:20am followed by practice 6 at 1pm, each lasting an hour.
The top-10 shootout starts at 5:50pm.
Sunday — live from 7:15am
The 20-minute warm-up session is at 8am.
The Bathurst 1000, race 30 of the season, starts at 11:15am and lasts 161 laps.
