Supercars: Reliving one of the most dramatic finishes to the Bathurst 1000 a decade on from the famous 2014 race at Mount Panorama
A decade on from one of the greatest Bathurst 1000s of all time, and one of the event’s most dramatic finishes, we revisit the day “everyone went to war with the mountain.”
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It was the day everyone “went to war with the mountain”.
The 2014 Bathurst 1000 is regarded as one of the greatest in the history of the iconic event, boasting arguably the most dramatic finish of all time to the Great Race.
It was a day of the weird and the wonderful, featuring a kangaroo hit, crashes, 10 safety cars, a disintegrating track, an hour-long halftime break for track repairs and an edge-of-your seat finish no-one could have scripted.
In unprecedented scenes, the race was red-flagged with 100 laps to go for an hour to repair a damaged section of new tarmac at turn two, which had been breaking up and contributed to a number of crashes.
After a day when the mountain threw everything at its combatants, Ford star Chaz Mostert and his co-driver Paul Morris emerged with a famous against-the-odds victory after starting from 25th and last on the grid.
In an extraordinary finish almost eight hours after the race started, Mostert etched his name into Bathurst history with an incredible last-to-first win after taking the lead from series champion Jamie Whincup on the final lap as the Triple Eight star ran out of fuel.
It was the first time a driver pairing had ever won the Bathurst 1000 from last on the grid.
A decade on, four key figures from the 2014 race share their stories from a day of high drama at Mount Panorama.
JAMIE WHINCUP, FOUR-TIME BATHURST 1000 CHAMPION
Seven-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup can recall the moment collectively the Triple Eight “hearts sank”.
It was two-and-a-half laps to go when the lights lit up like a Christmas tree on Whincup’s dashboard and on the screens in the Triple Eight garage – only this display wasn’t going to deliver any presents.
It was a warning Whincup’s Commodore had hit the reserve fuel tank and his bold quest for Bathurst victory number five was “all over”. What’s more, he was now going to struggle to make it to the finish line with Chaz Mostert breathing down his neck on the closing laps.
“All our hearts sank. It all flashed up at the same time. We all knew right then it was all over,” Whincup recalled of the moment he knew he had lost the win.
“The TV and the viewers at home didn’t know at that stage, but we knew. So it was a big moment and all our hearts sank.
“I think it was shared by the whole team, it was two and a half laps to go.
“We know for a fact that the reserve tank does two laps and when we hit that reserve tank and the light flashed up on the dash and all the screens lit up back in the pits with two and a half laps to go, it wasn’t until then – and it was exactly then – that we knew we’re not going to win this race.
“Our mentality changed to we need to finish this and score some points.”
As Whincup’s engineers delivered orders over the team radio for him to ease off his pace and conserve fuel in order to try and make it to the finish, they were initially met with silence as he powered on.
But the defending Supercars champion was eventually forced to swing from all-out attack to defence mode in a bid to hold off a surging Mostert.
As Whincup’s co-driver Paul Dumbrell watched anxiously from the garage, Mostert made the passing move on the series champion on the final lap at Forrest’s Elbow.
Whincup was able to nurse his spluttering car across the finish line to bank some points, but the shell-shocked champ knew what had got away.
“We did cross the line fifth and scored some points, which helped us, but it wasn’t the win,” Whincup said.
A decade on, Whincup said he had no regrets and would have attacked the final stint with the same aggression as he did in 2014 if he had his time again, rather than trying to conserve fuel earlier.
“I would have done the exact same thing,” Whincup said.
“I don’t look backwards, I don’t regret anything. The information I had at the time, I did the best possible job and I have got absolutely no regrets whatsoever.
“It’s do or die. That’s the way I’m wired. I don’t want to change my wiring because the way I’m wired has won me a lot of races and it’s lost me a couple, but it has certainly won me more than it has lost me.
“You have got to take the bad with the good, the classic saying summarises this situation well, I always went out there and did my thing and went flat out and you’re not going to win all of them and that 2014 Bathurst it didn’t get us the result that we wanted, but there are dozens of occasions where that same mentality and that same strategy got us over the line, so I wouldn’t change anything.”
Whincup was already a four-time Bathurst champion before that day, having won two years earlier with Dumbrell and a famous three-peat with Craig Lowndes in 2006-08.
Now the Triple Eight team principal, Whincup maintained the 2014 Mount Panorama battle “wasn’t our race to win”.
Whincup had started the race from 23rd on the grid after hitting the wall at the Cutting in qualifying, forcing overnight repairs and a tactical rethink for the start of the race.
He started against most of the co-drivers and, hellbent on making amends for his qualifying mishap, produced an opening stint for the ages.
Whincup charged through the field to be leading the race by lap 22 when he came in for his first pit stop.
He negotiated a damaged tailshaft early in the race, which was able to be repaired under the mid-race red flag and he also recovered from a drive-through penalty after a mistake at the Chase.
“It wasn’t our race to win, we almost stole it, but didn’t quite get there,” Whincup said.
“I had an incident halfway through the day, we were one and three quarter laps down, we almost went two laps down …. we were gone.
“It wasn’t our race to win. Somehow through pure teamwork, grit and determination we got to lead the race on the last lap. It was an unbelievable effort to try to steal that race away from everybody else, but it didn’t quite happen.
“Race day is never perfect but … we were battling all sorts of curve balls and challenges that day, but it was the same for everybody.”
Whincup has not tasted victory at Mount Panorama since then, but despite the prize that got away, he still considered that year to be one of the greatest Bathurst 1000s he ever raced in.
“I still think it is one of the greatest races that we have seen at Bathurst,” Whincup said.
“I’m glad to have been involved in it and I’m glad to have been a contributor to the Great Race and a great spectacle.
“Sometimes it has gone my way and other times it hasn’t, but I’m most proud of the fact that I have been in contention a lot of the time and I have contributed to the event whether it’s good, bad or otherwise.”
CHAZ MOSTERT, 2014 BATHURST 1000 CHAMPION
It was the moment a 22-year-old kid got “one up on the GOAT”.
Chaz Mostert was in just his second year as a full-time driver in Supercars when he pulled off one of the greatest against-the-odds wins in Bathurst history.
As many times as Mostert has watched and relived the final stages of the 2014 race, he still struggles to comprehend the finish that made him a Mount Panorama champion.
“It was just such a crazy day,” Mostert recalled.
“You could put lap one on and put it on pause from there and you could say ‘Hey, do you guys remember how this day went?’ and you just couldn’t.
“Even when you are watching the replay in the dying laps and you are coming second, you are still telling yourself ‘That guy is not going to get him. That is not going to happen, that guy (Whincup) is going to hold on’.
“Even though you know the outcome, you still don’t (believe it) and even when you’re in the moment of that race, you still didn’t know that was going to be the finish of the race.”
But Mostert’s miracle did happen and he did get that guy.
Having not led a lap for the entire race, Mostert surged past defending Supercars champion Whincup on the final lap to steal the lead and complete his Mount Panorama miracle from the back of the starting grid.
As Whincup literally ran out of gas, Mostert had several passing attempts over the top of the mountain covered before he finally pushed past the Triple Eight star at Forrest’s Elbow.
Just as Mostert stormed towards the finish line, there was one little loose moment that stood out for the then Ford Performance Racing young gun.
“That little slide that you have coming off the Chase was the fact that you just got past the reigning champion,” the now Walkinshaw Andretti United star said.
“That was more just getting one up on the GOAT, which as a young fella felt really cool.
“That was really cool pushing him to the limit.
Mostert and his co-driver Paul Morris became the first last-to-first winners of the Bathurst 1000, having started from 25th on the grid after Mostert was excluded from qualifying for ignoring red flags.
The now two-time Bathurst winner emerged from the day’s carnage to be among the cars fighting for the race in the final stint.
A message had been relayed to Mostert that the fuel equation for Whincup would be cutting it fine, but there were no guarantees it would be a race killer – so the Ford star had to throw everything at his pursuit.
“There was a message that it was going to be tight, but definitely no certainty that he wasn’t going to make it, that was more the messaging that I was getting,” Mostert said.
“My pace dropped a bit in the last stint, I think we ran out of tyres by the end of the day for how many pit stops we had to do.
“I was just trying everything I could do to go with him, but Jamie was so fast in that last stint. I don’t know if that was a tyre off-set or just a typical Triple Eight or Jamie element around there with how fast he was.
“But there were definitely moments when he gapped me in that last stint when I thought ‘There goes the opportunity of the win’, but I will just keep trying my hardest.
“Then the last couple of laps watching it (the gap) come back … and you go I’ve just got to send everything at it and try my hardest and race aggressively.
“I tried to stick it in at the Elbow and we obviously rubbed up a bit there and next I looked in the mirror after I came off the Elbow and I could barely see him and I just couldn’t work out what happened.
“I don’t know if he saved a bit more a bit earlier, if he would have made it …. no doubt he has probably had those thoughts in his head a lot, too.
“He gave it everything and I gave it everything, as a lot of the guys did.”
Mostert said it was unlikely the drama and storylines of the 2014 race would ever be repeated at Mount Panorama.
“To have the two cars right at the back of the grid fighting out for the win at the end of the day, it was a really unique year and I don’t know if any other year will ever replicate that again,” Mostert said.
“All the stories that unfolded throughout that day on that really edgy track, watching it break up – everyone went to war with the mountain that day.
“It was pretty cool to be involved in the story and obviously the story becomes more mine because I was able to win it.
“But I was just honoured to be in that race and racing legends like that and to be able to put your name on that trophy and on that race is what racing car drivers all want to dream about.”
PAUL MORRIS, MOSTERT’S CO-DRIVER
There is never a good time to crash in the Bathurst 1000, but co-driver Paul Morris continues to thank his lucky stars for the arrival of a perfectly timed “towey” in 2014.
The Supercars veteran was among a number of drivers to fall victim to the broken up tarmac at turn two at Mount Panorama, which caused myriad issues before hasty mid-race repairs.
After a safety car was deployed when Luke Youlden’s car was hit by a kangaroo on Mountain Straight on lap 45, Morris also found himself in trouble shortly afterwards when he ran into the patchy section of the track and found himself in the tyre wall.
Fortunately for Morris, a tow truck happened to be driving past at the right moment and was able to swiftly extricate Morris from the wall to save their race – and a memorable win.
“I had just come out of the pits after Chaz had got out of the car and it was under safety car and I wasn’t going that fast, but I just got up to that corner where the track broke up and drove through the gravel and just slid into the fence,” Morris said.
“It was one of those moments where I tried to get the car out of the fence and it was stuck on the tyres and if I had kept going I probably would have blown the gear box or something up.
“I thought ‘OK, I’ve got to chill out’. I looked across and one of the toweys pulled up and he stuck his head in the door and I said ‘Can you just hook on and pluck me out of here?’ and he did that straight away and I didn’t even lose a lap.
“I got pulled out of the fence, drove around and joined the safety car train.
“If that guy hadn’t been there and I hadn’t spoken to him, we wouldn’t have won the race. It was one of those crazy things that happened.”
Morris handed the car over to Mostert for the last three stints and he was confident the young gun had the pace to go after the win, saying he had been “in the zone all weekend” and immediately quick every time he drove the car.
As he watched on from the FPR garage, Morris had kept a close eye on the strategy of their Triple Eight rivals and he knew Whincup was in trouble with his fuel, based on his prior knowledge of the Commodore’s systems.
“They had done what Triple Eight do, they had the tortoise and the hare. They sent one car to bolt and then stop one car for fuel, so they had a bet each way,” Morris said.
“Had there been another safety car, Jamie probably would have been in the box seat, if there wasn’t, Craig (Lowndes) would have been in the box seat.
“Obviously when he (Lowndes) got tipped out, it left Jamie by himself and then obviously short on fuel. We pretty much knew where they were.
“I had driven a Triple Eight built Commodore the year before so when I saw the in-car of when the fuel alarm was on, I knew the systems in that car, so I knew he was in the pot, in the reserve tank basically and didn’t have enough fuel to get home.
“I was pretty confident then that he was not going to make it.
“I think Jamie’s strategy was to press on as hard as he could and I think he was hoping Chaz would probably crash trying to catch him. But Chaz broke the lap record trying to do it.
“(He was) like a lion chasing its prey.”
Morris won’t forget the collective roar in the FPR garage when Mostert passed Whincup.
“It was just a huge elation. It had been a long day, red flag stoppages, the car had been in the fence at some stage and we had to repair it, there had been lots of things happen,” Morris said.
“It was just one of those races that had everyone on the edge of their feet and on the edge of their seats for the team.
“You didn’t know until the last minute, so there wasn’t time to get anxious.”
Morris said his Bathurst win that year had been a “life-changing moment”.
“I had driven out of that place for 25 years depressed and upset and to walk away feeling good about it was a pretty good feeling,” Morris said.
“Everywhere I went for the next couple of months, people were talking to me (about it).
“I feel very privileged to have driven in it and really privileged to have had the chance to win it.”
ROLAND DANE, FORMER TRIPLE EIGHT TEAM PRINCIPAL
Looking back on the 2014 Bathurst 1000 a decade later, former Triple Eight owner and team boss Roland Dane can appreciate what a spectacle it was for motorsport fans, but in his role at the time “it was a very average one I can tell you”.
Not only did the team suffer the agony of having Whincup run out of fuel on the final lap after he was in the race lead, but the team’s other car, piloted by Craig Lowndes, also suffered late race drama when he was in the podium fight as well.
In another infamous Bathurst tangle, Lowndes bumped Mark Winterbottom at the exit of turn one with eight laps to go, not long after his Ford rival had surrendered the race lead to Whincup.
Winterbottom spun off the track and Lowndes was hit with a pit lane drive-through penalty and would end the race in 10th place, also opening the door for Mostert.
The team had its two cars on different strategies that day, but Dane said Lowndes’ incident had ruled out a foil had the Whincup strategy not paid off.
“We had two different strategies, two different approaches,” Dane said.
“You either have to stop and go flat out thereafter, which was the strategy that the Craig Lowndes car was on, or you have to save fuel immediately which was the one that Jamie was on.
“Unfortunately Craig got involved in an altercation after that restart and got a penalty so that took him out of the fight.
“Otherwise he might have been there to have provided a foil to Chaz Mostert in the case that the strategy Jamie was on running without stopping didn’t work.”
While the fuel alarm bells went off with less than three laps to go, Dane said the team had an idea earlier they would be on a “wing and a prayer” for Whincup to get to the finish.
“We knew sometime before the end that we were running on a wing and a prayer because we hadn’t saved enough fuel early on in the stint,” Dane said.
“Short of having an opportune safety car, we knew we were probably snookered.
“We were pretty sure half a dozen laps to go that we weren’t going to make it and then with three laps to go we knew that there was every chance that we were going to run out sometime on the last lap.
“But we knew that when you’re in that situation that you have to save fuel from the beginning and we didn’t save enough fuel from the beginning of the stint.”
So if the race was run again, would things have been different?
“Undoubtedly, but hindsight is 20/20 vision,” Dane said.
“Of course, he (Whincup) would have saved more fuel early on and Craig wouldn’t have got involved in an altercation with Mark Winterbottom and have gotten a drive-through and all these things are ifs, ands and buts, but they didn’t happen so Chaz won the race.”
Alongside his four victories at Mount Panorama, Whincup had also had his share of misses, but this race is the one that ate at Dane the most.
“He had missed out several times but from my point of view, which is not his point of view necessarily, but from my point of view that was the most disappointing one because I feel that we could have very easily had that win,” Dane said.
“So that was disappointing to me at the time.
“But all I can say in the counter to that is not only has Triple Eight won more Bathursts than everyone else, but it has got a 50 per cent win ratio pretty much over the last few decades.
“So you have got to accept that you are not going to win all the time.”
Dane said the mountain delivered a “real Bathurst story” that day.
“It was a unique day because there is not every day that you had a lunchtime break like that as we did,” Dane said.
“It’s not everyday that the winner has been in the wall at one point as well.
“It was a real Bathurst story that day. It was very memorable on a number of different fronts.
“It made for some interesting viewing early on, especially. It was pretty awesome watching Jamie that day coming through the field in the way that he did early on.
“That’s part of the magic of the mountain.”
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