B6HR: Extra Bathurst Notebook
WHEN we arrived home from the Bathurst 6 Hour, we noticed we had enough content to fill one more Bathurst Notebook. So consider this a belated Easter egg from us.
Easter eggs don’t expire, right? Here at The Race Torque, we have never allowed ourselves to be in a position to find out…
Pictures telling thousands of words…
One of the above images caused a stir on Facebook when we posted it in our Sunday gallery.
In this sequence, Nick Percat re-enacted his incredibly close call with the wall and an errant car through Reid Park, with the video clip below.
Tuck into a ball, close your eyes, and shoot the gap… a magic piece of driving.
Tree down!
Further to our report on the tree down blocking Barry Gurdon Drive, otherwise known as a spectator’s back road to the top of The Mountain, here is full coverage of the incident from the gurus at the Bathurst SES, who were quickly on the scene to save the day.
Commute in style
We thought we did well here at The Race Torque, commuting to Bathurst in a Mustang GT.
As it transpires, we were completely gazumped by this helicopter, which landed on property near the first hump on Conrod Straight.
Well played, you win this round…
TRT: Chicken dinner
As pointed out by editor Craill in this week’s On the Grid Podcast (listen below), this year’s race is the first for a driver repping TRT to be on a Bathurst enduro podium.
Thank you and attaboy to Brett Parrish, who claimed Class D honours with Jay Robotham and Mich Wooller in the BPRO Toyota 86.
Fashion faux pas, part two
Back in December at the 1000, we reported on the rather red flavoured ensemble provided to the officials, with the Repco corporate colours easily confused with the red of the red flag.
This time around was somewhat worse, with the MRF tyres red even more red, if it is at all possible.
This snapper has always been warned off wearing red trackside, because a bobbing around red-clothed person could be a serious distraction to a driver.
Anyhoo…
Kudos to the officials who were able to make it to The Mountain, like every other corner of society at the moment, resources were absolutely stretched, but they did a tremendous job, as always.
A bridge too far
This is the view from within the bridge over Conrod Straight, heading over to the Rydges Resort.
The bridge was originally constructed in 1982 as a partnership between the Bathurst City Council, the ARDC, and Amatil, the makers of JPS cigarettes, who paid for its construction with a ten-year naming rights deal, which clearly didn’t go the distance, with Bridgestone taking over from 1987.
The original plan was for it to take pedestrian traffic to a spectator area from 1984, however, this never occurred until 1988, when the new viewing area opened up at Caltex Chase.
Speaking of overhead things
Further back up the circuit, this over-track billboard sits above the first hump in Conrod Straight.
Whoever erected this piece of rigging for an overhead camera has subsequently decided it is too hard to disassemble, and thus it has become a permanent fixture.
Fogged out
In the long-legged history of motorsport, can anyone ever recall a warm-up session that has started under a safety car?
That was exactly what happened on Sunday morning, after the early preliminary races were held exclusively under safety car with the pea soup fog lifting just in time for the commencement of the feature classes.
For the production car warm up, after a few laps, the safety car retreated to the pits, and serious warming up could commence in earnest.
If you can remember a practice session ever kicking off in this manner, shoot us a line on the socials @theracetorque, we’d love to be enlightened!
Pushing stuff uphill
It’s a hard grind to push a car up the hill from Murray’s Corner, as depicted above.
Here’s the view of the Quinn/Denyer Mustang at the end of the warm-up session, although it would ultimately have a more auspicious race.
Garage selection at Bathurst is a quandary: if you are pitted at the pit exit end of the lane, you have more time to react to a last-minute box call, however, when things go properly wrong, you would prefer to be at pit-in end.
Resident access
Over time we’ve had a fascination with the access granted to local residents around the circuit, with the above images showing the lane constructed in 2002, granting those inside the track freedom to the outside world ahead of the inaugural 24 Hour race.
Accessible via the Chase tunnel, this road allows those on Conrod Straight, to the left of the photo, and Mountain Straight, on the right, free movement during race events.
The road further forks towards The Mountain, curving around to the back door of the Bathurst Light Car Club clubhouse, and to the right, directly onto Griffins Bend, as shown below during non-race times.
Digging holes
On driver’s left exiting The Cutting is the old quarry.
This is the view from the floor of the quarry looking back up to the race track – note the recent reinforcement work that has been carried out, preventing the circuit from tumbling down to Griffins Bend.
This area is now accessible thanks to the recently added pedestrian footpath from Griffins Bend to Forrest’s Elbow.
Thank you, Kathleen
As spotted at the John Hinxman Vista.
We thank Kathleen – Mount Panorama by any other name just wouldn’t stir the emotions the same.
Take the squad to work day
When you see a track walk at a Supercars event, it is typically a drivers and engineers only affair.
At the Six Hour, it was more a case of everyone grab some hi-viz and saunter off for 6km of fun times and banter.
Parting pics
We love farm life on The Mountain.
Left are sheep, on the driver’s left-hand side of Conrod Straight, meanwhile on the right-hand side of Mountain Straight are these alpacas, or are they llamas?
How do you tell alpacas and llamas apart?
Once again, please post your answers through to @theracetorque on social media – we’re big fans of this genre of animal, but we have no idea how to tell them apart…
Bathurst 6 Hour Content Wrap
Mark Walker (administrator)
A vastly experienced Motorsport Public Relations operator, journalist, commentator and photographer, Mark brings his unique angle to The Race Torque in both words and imagery. As well as serving as our key photographer on the ground at major events around Australia (and overseas), Walker will often chime in with his unique and pin-point sharp viewpoint of the racing world via the keyboard too.
