Bathurst 1000 Tickets

Officially known as the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000

Worldwide Ticketing provides the Bathurst 1000 tickets 2007
The Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 tickets sales - Click here to contact one of our consultants

The Bathurst 1000 (currently officially known as the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000) is a 1,000-kilometre touring car race held annually at Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst , New South Wales , Australia . It is almost always held in October between the 4 and 7 and has been run every year since 1960. It is known among fans and broadcasters as "The Great Race", and is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Australian motorsport.

The winners of the race receive the Peter Brock Trophy, inaugurated at the 2006 race in honour of the late Peter Brock who, with nine Bathurst victories, remains the most successful driver in the history of the race.

Since 1999, the race has been run exclusively by V8 Supercars and is now a points round of the V8 Supercar season.

The race has a long and colourful history, having been conducted for numerous categories such as production cars, Group C, Group A, Super Touring and currently the popular V8 Supercar category.

Although the Bathurst 1000 is today run by just two marques, Ford and Holden, makes as diverse as Mini, Jaguar, BMW, Nissan and Volvo have also tasted success at "The Mountain". Holden has the most victories at Bathurst with 25 wins, while Ford has 15 (or 16 if including the victory from the 1962 Phillip Island event).

Early years

The Armstrong 500, the event that would become the Bathurst 1000, was first held on 20th November 1960 at Phillip Island in Victoria over a 500 mile distance, It was created as a sponsoring tool for Armstrong, to test the durability of products they made at the time. Entry was limited to standard production saloons built or assembled in Australia and the cars could not be modified in any way. The race was won by Frank Coad and John Roxburgh in a Vauxhall Cresta, the only Vauxhall in a field of 45 cars.

In 1963 the race moved to Bathurst but kept the Armstrong 500 name. As the race's popularity grew, it became a means for car manufacturers to showcase their products as the cars on the track were identical to those in the showrooms of Australia . Of particular note was Ford's introduction of the Falcon GT and later the GTHO which, in the hands of Allan Moffat, won handily in 1970 and 1971.

In 1973, the race distance was changed from 500 miles to 1,000 kilometres as Australia shifted towards the adoption of the metric system. That same year, a new rule was implemented allowing modifications to be made to the cars.

Group A era

From 1985 to 1992, the race was run under international Group A rules. Imported turbocharged cars, most notably Ford Sierras, dominated the race during this period. Tom Walkinshaw Racing's Jaguar XJ-S dominated the 1985 race, with John Goss and Armin Hahne fnishing first.

In 1987, the race was a round of the short-lived World Touring Car Championship, and competitors in that championship raced against local teams. The resulting culture clash was considerable; local scrutineers, who had been applying the Group A regulations as written, repeatedly disagreed with European teams (notably that of Rudi Eggenberger) and the global organising body (FISA, the ancestor of the FIA) that were considerably more liberal with their interpretations. Eggenberger's cars finished 1st and 2nd, only to be disqualified months later due to bodywork irregularities, and the race was awarded to Peter Brock giving him his ninth and final Bathurst victory.

Local Sierra teams won in 1988 and 1989, losing in 1990 to the local favourite Holden Commodores after all the leading Sierras broke down. 1990 was also the year that Nissan, who had been running its Skylines in Australian touring car competition for a few years, introduced the four-wheel drive GT-R and while it suffered from mechnical problems in that year's race, it went on to win both the 1991 and 1992 races.

The 1992 victory was particularly controversial. Already disliked by the parochial Bathurst crowd, who saw the race as a contest between the traditional V8 touring car marques of Holden and Ford, the leading Skyline of Jim Richards and Mark Skaife was awarded victory after the race was abandoned following a huge thunderstorm that caused a number of crashes, including that of the winning car. As Richards had been leading the race in the lap prior to the cancellation of the event, his team was declared the winner. This was an unpopular decision with many fans, who booed Richards on the winner's podium, prompting him to call the crowd "a pack of arseholes".

V8 Supercar/ 2-litre Super Tourer era

Marketing executives from both Holden and Ford decided they needed a better platform to show off the local product and appease unhappy fans and it was decided that for 1993, a new touring car class would be created that would later be renamed to V8Supercar, with entry limited to only V8-powered Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores (with one exception; a weight limited BMW M3 driven by Tony Longhurst). This class replaced the Australian Touring Car Championship and effectively banned Nissan's GT-Rs from competition. Almost immediately, Nissan pulled out of Australian motorsport and within a few years ended car production in Australia completely.

In 1994, Australia also held a 2-litre Super Touring championship which was run by TOCA and these cars ran at Bathurst that year alongside the V8s, with a top placing of 10th outright. In 1995, however, the 2-litre cars ran only a support race at Bathurst as the 1,000km race was once again only for the V8s.

The V8 Supercar organisers, AVESCO, began a spending war with the Super Touring class, seeking to dominate Australian motorsport by out-promoting the 2-litre class at any cost. AVESCO began requiring more money from venues to host a V8 Supercar event and by 1997, the cost to have a V8 race at Bathurst was far in excess of what the Australian Racing Drivers Club could afford.

When the required fees were not met, AVESCO pulled Bathurst from the V8 calendar, leaving the organisers without an entry field for the 1997 race. TOCA filled the void with a 2-litre Super Touring field, featuring a number of British Touring Car Championship drivers including Alain Menu, Yvan Muller and Rickard Rydell. The race was won by Paul Morris and Craig Baird in a BMW 320i, however this team was disqualified as Baird had violated an endurance racing rule prohibiting drivers from driving more than 210 consecutive minutes in any one stint. The race was awarded to David and Geoff Brabham, also in a BMW.

This format continued for 1998, with Jim Richards winning his 7th Bathurst 1000 in a Volvo S40, beating his son Steven in a Nissan Primera.

In 1997 and 1998, the V8 Supercars did run a 1,000km race at Bathurst two weeks after the Super Touring race, called the "Australian 1000 Classic". Both races claimed to be the legitimate Bathurst 1000; the V8 Supercars' case was that they were the only truly Australian class of racing and the more popular of the two, while the Super Touring race was the official "Bathurst 1000" and was held on the traditional date of the first Sunday in October.

The fans voted with their feet and, due to a reducing number of competitors and spectators, the Super Touring class disappeared from Bathurst competition in 1999 and the race became exclusively for V8 Supercars.

Famous winners

The most successful driver at Bathurst is the late Peter Brock, whose nine victories (1972, 1975, 1978-80, 1982-84 and 1987) earned him the nickname King of the Mountain .

Jim Richards has won the race seven times (1978-80, 1991-92, 1998 and 2002) and also holds the record for the most starts (35) at this event. Larry Perkins is the third most successful driver at Bathurst , with six victories (1982-84, 1993, 1995 and 1997). Both Richards and Perkins have shared some of their victories as co-drivers with Brock.

Canadian-born Allan Moffat is considered by many to be Ford's greatest Bathurst driver, winning the race four times (1970, 1971, 1973 and 1977). The 1977 race saw Moffat and team-mate Colin Bond cross the finish line side by side after opening up an indomitable lead in the early laps.

Dick Johnson first rose to fame during the 1980 race when his privately-entered Ford Falcon hit a rock that had fallen (or been pushed; the subject is still debated to this day) onto the track. Thanks to public donations of over AU$70,000 - and a matching donation from Ford Motor Company - Johnson was able to rebuild his car and win the Bathurst race the following year. He went on to win twice more, in 1989 and 1994.

Although many Australian racing drivers have raced for both the Ford and Holden marques, only three drivers have won at Bathurst for both: Steven Richards, Tony Longhurst and Craig Lowndes.

Worldwide Ticketing provides the Bathurst 1000 tickets 2007

The Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 tickets sales - Click here to contact one of our consultants