D'Arcy Waldegrave: The insane performances of Bathurst

The greatest spectacle in racing? Nope, that’s the Indy 500. The race that stops a nation? Nah, that’s the Melbourne Cup. The great race? Yeah, that’s it – the Bathurst 1000.   

The magnificence of the mountain is back. The 1000km Supercar squirt around Mt Panorama just outside the NSW town of Bathurst gets its rev counter red-lining tomorrow afternoon just before 2. Six hours of man and machine savaging the circuit, originally built as a sedate mountain drive for tourists.   

This will sound a bit a bit geeky, so be it. 

A constant source of fascination for me is the astonishing propinquity of the lap times across the field. 

Consider this. Qualifying yesterday threw up this: over one lap, 6.213 kilometres, the first six cars were separated by one tenth of a second. Brodie Kostecki’s provisional pole position time was 0.0064 of a second quicker than the number 2 placed driver Broc Feeney.  

Six and four-tenths of a thousandth of a second. Over 6.2 kilometres.   

Different cars. Different teams. Different set ups. Different lines. Different drivers. Separated by essentially a click of the fingers.   

Get on your phone and try to start and stop your stopwatch to the same nth. I’d hazard a guess you can’t.  

It’s insane. It amplifies the how the teams wring every last millisecond of performance out of the equipment, the track, the driver, and they can’t really be split.  

Then they do it for over six hours through rain and shine, tyre wear, equipment failure, and the odd errant marsupial.  

Mental.   

It’s all the fun of the circus, or a leisurely drive in the country, which was what the road was built for.

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