Adult entertainer Renee Gracie reveals truth about Bathurst Supercars bid

Former Supercars driver turned adult entertainer Renee Gracie has revealed more about her bold plan to conquer the Bathurst 1000.

The Bathurst 1000 is the crown jewel in the Supercars season – and former driver turned adult entertainer Renee Gracie wants back in.

Gracie has already had two starts in the great race alongside Simona de Silvestro in 2015 and 2016. The 2015 race was a disaster as Gracie hit the wall at Forrest’s Elbow, but the pair improved from their last-placed finish that year to come 14th in 2016.

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Having left Supercars due to funding issues after three years in the second tier Dunlop Super2 series, the now 26-year-old has made more headlines in recent times as one of the top earners of subscription site OnlyFans.

Earlier this week, Gracie revealed to The Daily Telegraphthat she was looking to fund her own Supercars team in a bid to return to Bathurst.

Previously she said “racing cars is not my passion anymore” but the desire to get back behind the wheel has returned in recent months.

Speaking to news.com.au, Gracie admitted her grand Bathurst vision was for future seasons – don’t necessarily expect her to line up this year – but she had been stoking the fires to get back into competitive racing.

Gracie wants to return to the track. Photo: Mark Evans

“Maybe six to nine months ago, I had a look and put feelers out and didn’t get a very good response,” she said. “I knew I was going to need to give myself more time so I put it on the backburner a little bit.

“I’m back go karting now and I think it’s just lit the fire once again to really try to make a go of it and to do it properly by doing media releases and getting interest and getting the right people on board and giving myself the time to do that.”

Gracie admitted she had been given “offers” but said it was not at the Supercars level just yet. Supercars took a hard line stance when she revealed her career change last year.

“They’ll be the tough one to crack,” she admitted. “I have had lots of other people, team owners, people who own cars in all different categories, from GTs to Trans Ams and Porsche jump on board and recognise, ‘Hey if you’re interested, come and have a chat and let’s talk further’.

“When I left racing, I had lots of people making me offers and stuff but I felt like that wasn’t genuine, maybe because I was the only female and they wanted to keep me around. This time I feel like it’s a bit different because I’ve been away from it and everything I’m doing now, I keep hanging around, I’m still in the media, still talking about it so I feel like people can make their own decisions off their own opinions.”

Gracie with Simona de Silvestro at the 2016 Bathurst 1000. Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Truth about Gracie’s comeback bid

While Bathurst is the clear goal, Gracie said she would be looking at select races rather than returning for a full season. And even though winning is nice, Gracie’s comeback would have a very different motivation behind it.

“Bathurst is the main one and I know they allow wildcards at some other races so to consider wildcards at a few other rounds they do throughout the year would be the ticket items I’d be looking at,” she said.

“I don’t know if I would achieve much, I’m not there to win races. I’m there just to do it for the memories, for the experience, for the opportunity.

“Bathurst, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, it’s such a crazy thing. You literally just have to survive and you can do well. I think that’s also another good thing about it, you don’t actually have to be the best to end up on top and that’s been proven time and time again. It’s just survival. It’s the people who are smart, clever, have a great team on board, strategically run the whole weekend well. That to me would be enough.

“For me it’s more a celebration and I want it to be fun. I lost my passion for racing because racing was such a small side of it. All the other s*** was just getting in the way and it would do my head in. Appearance, what I looked like, just meeting people and getting scrutinised for absolutely everything that I did, racing was such a small thing.

“So for me, all I want it to be is a fun, enjoyable, amazing event that is something I can tick off and store in my memory bank for years to come.”

Gracie has the urge to race at Bathurst again.

The haters are always going to be there

Having previously revealed she didn’t make a profit from her professional motorsport career, Gracie earns “six figures a month” as a top 0.1 per cent earner on OnlyFans,

She added: “It’s a flex to say that this industry has been around longer than most industries, continues to stay strong even in the toughest times and will be around long after we’re all gone.”

OnlyFans made waves in the last week, announcing it was banning adult content as of October, before backflipping on the decision just days later.

But Gracie wasn’t concerned, as the platform had threatened to do similar previously.

Asked about how she feels when people try to downplay her motorsport career in light of her new career as an adult entertainer, Gracie said she’s used to people try to put her down.

“It doesn’t really bother me, I don’t look into it too much,” she said. “It’s like anything, when I did go-karting and I did well in go karting and was sponsored by Fujitsu, I had people telling me, ‘The only reason she’s got Fujitsu is because her dad owns it’.

“If you did you research, Fujitsu isn’t owned by one person, it’s a Japanese company, it’s got board members, it’s a corporation and not one single person owns it. People make stupid statements like that all the time that don’t make any sense.

“No matter what I do, especially since I’ve been in motorsport, all people ever try to do is discredit what I do. Even in motorsport, people only talk about the bad results I had but no one person who’s ever hating on me will ever admit to the fact that I actually had some decent results. They only bring up the time I spun out and crashed and didn’t finish.

“News flash — every kid on the grid has crashed and not finished. The greatest of the greats have crashed, so I kind of laugh when people say, ‘But you crashed there’. Yeah, everyone’s crashed there.”