Near-record crowd braves Bathurst weather

A crowd of more than 200,000 has attended the 2017 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000.

Including 56,042 on race day despite rain arriving at Mount Panorama, the four-day figure of 205,693 is one percent up on the 2016 event.

That makes it the second largest in the history of the Great Race, only behind the 207,205 that attended the 50th anniversary event in 2012.

“This event just gets better each year,” Supercars CEO James Warburton said.

“It is the biggest event in New South Wales and one of the largest in the country every year.

“And later this year we will finish our season with our very first race in Newcastle which will be massive.”

Bathurst greats were honoured over the course of the event, before the construction of a Legend’s Lane in time for the 2018 race.

The late Peter Brock, Jim Richards, Allan Moffat, Dick Johnson, John Goss, John Bowe, Allan Grice, Fred Gibson, Colin Bond, Kevin Bartlett, John Harvey and Bob Morris are the first inductees for the new permanent tribute.

A group of the legends were also reunited with machinery from their careers for a special parade lap on Sunday morning.

That was led by Moffat and Bond in their 1977 Falcons, reenacting that year’s iconic one-two finish for Ford, with Supercars driver James Moffat joining his father as a passenger for the lap.