Bathurst 1000: What makes the Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout so special and what makes a great hot lap around Mount Panorama
The Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout isn’t just an entree to the biggest race of the year, it’s one of the season’s best spectacles in its own right. We ask some of Supercars biggest names what makes the Shootout so special and what makes a great lap of Mount Panorama
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One lap and one driver on the “absolute edge” around 6.213km of some of the most famous racing tarmac in the world.
The Top 10 Shootout at the Bathurst 1000 isn’t just an entree to the biggest race of the year at Mount Panorama, it’s one of the season’s best sporting spectacles in its own right.
In the ultimate man versus mountain battle, the fastest 10 drivers each get a one-lap shot to “throw it all on the line” around the iconic circuit to determine the starting order for the first 10 spots on the grid for the Great Race.
Even before a lap has been raced in anger each year, the shootout delivers some of Bathurst’s greatest moments.
Who could forget Greg Murphy’s famous ‘Lap of the Gods’ in 2003 when the New Zealand star left everyone in awe with his then unmatched 2min 06.8594sec lap?
Such is the iconic status of Murphy’s Top 10 Shootout lap in Supercars it has been viewed 2.3 million times on YouTube.
The Lap of the Gods title had been reserved for Murphy’s performance until fellow Kiwi ace Scott McLaughlin earned his own LOTG 2.0 tag with his stunning pole lap in 2017 when the Ford ace became the first driver to crack the 2min 04sec barrier.
Most recently, Walkinshaw Andretti United star Chaz Mostert blew the field away with his 2021 2min 03.3736sec lap record in a then ZB Commodore, which stands as the qualifying benchmark at Bathurst.
Mostert said there was nothing in Supercars for a driver like having the Mount Panorama circuit “all to yourself” with the chance to have “one last little dig” at the rest of the field by securing pole position.
“To know that you have the best track in Australia all to yourself for one lap, it is a real test of the driver,” Mostert said.
“You feel like this is your opportunity to put the perfect lap together.
“You always leave that lap knowing that you lost a little bit of time here or there, but you’ve given it your all and you have wrestled that car around the mountain and then hopefully it is a really nice last little dig at the rest of the competition if you can get the pole there.
“You know that you are one of the fastest cars going into the big race, which doesn’t always seem to do you that well around there – not very often the fastest car wins that race – but it’s nice to know that you have got yourself a shot for that race.”
Seven-time Supercars champion and four-time Bathurst 1000 winner Jamie Whincup said Mount Panorama’s standing among the great racetracks of the world elevated a hot lap of the circuit above all others.
“It’s a top-five track in the world. It is the most unbelievable bit of road in the world to race a car on and to have the track to yourself on the Saturday afternoon of the biggest weekend of the year, that’s what is special,” said Whincup, who claimed Bathurst poles in 2013 and 2016.
“Just making the shootout and having that lap to yourself is something you really cherish and then it is massively elevated by being the fastest for that session.
“I was lucky enough to have done it twice over my career and it is a very special moment.”
So, what is it that makes a great Shootout lap of Mount Panorama?
Whincup said the Shootout was all about “throwing it all on the line”.
“There are not many Shootout laps where you haven’t had a huge moment, a big heart in the mouth moment where you’re either up against the wall or you’re close to,” the seven-time Supercars champion said.
“My (2016) lap, I clipped the wall out of the Forrest’s Elbow, I was very close to doing the Dick Johnson scenario, you know where he clipped the wall and ended up in the trees in that old green Ford. I was that close to doing that, although there is a wall there now, I would have hit a wall now rather than going into the trees. It wasn’t funny.
“Scotty Mac on his big lap, he’s dropped a wheel over Skyline. Greg Murphy, he missed a gear on the Lap of the Gods out of the Dipper.
“Most of those big laps, there is an element of it almost went all wrong, but it didn’t.
“You have to hang it on the absolute edge of your control for that lap to get pole, so I think that is the key.”
Dual Bathurst pole sitter Cam Waters, who started at the front of the grid in 2020 and 2022 – the later based on his time in qualifying after the Top 10 Shootout was cancelled due to torrential rain – agreed there was a fine line to dance between risk and reward when taking on the mountain.
And he said it was a line that was very easy to overstep.
“You need the car working well, you need to know what’s under you and I guess you need to put it on the line a little bit, there is a bit of risk versus reward around there,” said Waters, who has more pole positions (five) than any other Supercars driver this season.
“There is a bit of a line you have got to dance for sure, but quite easily you can overstep that mark and have a drama or make a mistake.
“It’s just all about understanding where that line is.”
Mostert secured his second Bathurst 1000 pole position with his Shootout lap record in 2021, but when asked if he knew what had made his lap so good, the now Ford star said he might struggle to ever replicate that lap again.
“By the time I opened my eyes after the lap I didn’t really know, I could probably never replicate that lap again,” Mostert said.
“The car was fantastic, it had been fantastic for a couple of years there, but you are just trying to get the most out of yourself and the most out of the machine that’s underneath you.
“I had a fantastic car there and it probably made me look better than actually what I was.”
The Mount Panorama circuit is littered with danger points where a little brush with the concrete or a slightly wide run cannot only ruin a flying lap, but can also spell much more trouble.
Mostert said Brock’s Skyline was the one section on the track where he felt a driver had to push “past your limit”.
“There are a lot of places where you think, ‘Wow, that could have all ended right there’,” Mostert said.
“One place you always feel like that you have got to push yourself past your limit is probably Skyline.
“Depending how fast and how much speed you can flow through that little crescented Skyline down through The Esses …. you kind of feel like you don’t breathe from Skyline down until you’re out of the Dipper.”
Seven-time Bathurst 1000 champion Craig Lowndes, a two-time Bathurst pole sitter, said across the top of the mountain was the most critical section of a Shootout lap.
“The straights are the straights, but you can make a lot of time up across the top of the mountain,” Lowndes said.
“If you can flow the car and get down into The Grate and get up over McPhillamy, run into Skyline and then the run from Skyline to Forrest’s Elbow, that’s where you are just guiding the car down the hill.
“It happens so quick from the Cutting to Forrest’s Elbow. It happens so fast that you don’t have a chance to think about anything else.
“Once you get out of Forrest’s Elbow and down Conrod Straight, you get a bit of a breather.”
Waters joked that just about every corner of the circuit had drivers on edge for the Shootout.
“From turn two to turn 23 I reckon that’s probably all the scary corners,” Waters said.
“Every corner between turn 2 and turn 23 as well.”
Of course, putting the car on pole position for the Bathurst 1000 is no guarantee of victory in the Great Race.
Since the Top 10 Shootout was first held in 1978 at Bathurst, only 10 drivers from those 45 races who started from the front of the grid have won the race.
Interestingly, of Triple Eight’s record 10 Bathurst 1000 wins, none of them have come from pole position.
While Whincup said there was no denying the honour of starting on pole for the Bathurst 1000, he said it could also prove distracting for the next day.
“It is very special, but at the same time – I don’t want to wipe the shine off it – it’s a huge distraction for the next day as well,” Whincup said.
“You are absolutely pumped that you are on pole when you do achieve it.
“But at the same time it’s really hard to bring the emotions back into check to get ready for the biggest day of the year.”
EVOLUTION OF A BATHURST POLE LAP
1978 pole time – 2min 20.006sec
1987 pole time – 2:16.969 (first year with the Chase added)
2003 pole time –
2023 pole time: 2:04.2719
Official Shootout record: 2:03.3736 (Chaz Mostert, 2021)
LAST FIVE TOP 10 SHOOTOUT WINNERS
2019 – Chaz Mostert (Tickford Racing) 2:03.7897
2020 – Cam Waters (Tickford Racing) 2:03.5592
2021 – Chaz Mostert (Walkinshaw Andretti United) 2:03.3736
2022 – Cam Waters (Tickford Racing) 2:23.61 *The Top 10 Shootout was cancelled in 2022 due to wet weather. Pole was awarded based on the fastest time in qualifying.
2023 – Brodie Kostecki (Erebus Motorsport) 2:04.2719
SHOOTOUT POLE SITTERS WHO HAVE WON THE BATHURST 1000
1978 – Brock/Richards
1979 – Brock/Richards
1991 – Richards/Skaife
1993 – Perkins/Hansford
1998 – Rydell/Richards
2002 – Skaife/Richards
2003 – Murphy/Kelly
2009 – Tander/Davison
2019 – McLaughlin/Premat*
2021 – Mostert/Holdsworth
* McLaughlin was later stripped of pole honours for a qualifying engine breach, but he started first and finished first.
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