Fast Facts: Repco Bathurst 1000

1) This year is the 61st running of the event now known as the Repco Bathurst 1000. First held at Bathurst in 1963 as the Armstrong 500, ‘The Great Race’ has featured at Mount Panorama ever since. There were two races held in 1997 and 1998; both races from those years are counted in event history. It also marks the first time Mount Panorama has hosted two rounds within one championship season following February’s Repco Mt Panorama 500.

2) Brad Jones Racing will celebrate a major milestone at Mount Panorama. The Repco Bathurst 1000 will be the team’s 300 championship round start since its debut at the season-opening round of the 2000 season at Phillip Island. The team has reached the ‘Great Race’ podium six times and has a best result of second place, achieved in 1997 (2L) 2001 and 2009.

3) Mark Winterbottom will become the seventh driver in ATCC/Supercars Championship history to make 250 round starts when practice gets underway at Mount Panorama. The 40-year-old, who won the 2013 Bathurst 1000 with Steven Richards, made his championship debut at the 2003 Sandown 500.

4) Shane van Gisbergen enters the final round of the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship with an unassailable 349-point lead. It marks the third year in a row where the title was mathematically clinched with a round to spare. This is only the second time in ATCC/SC history that this has happened; the first instance was the 1972-74 championship seasons.

5) There have been a vast number of primary and co-driver changes at most teams since the 2020 running of the ‘Great Race’, so much so that only two crews from last year’s race have remained together for this year! Both of those crews are at Red Bull Ampol Racing: reigning Peter Brock Trophy winners Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander, and Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes.

6) The closest Bathurst race-winning margin between competing cars (as opposed to teammates lining up for a form finish) is 0.1434-seconds between Will Davison/Jonathon Webb and Shane van Gisbergen/Alex Premat in 2016.

7) One of the longer standing records at Mount Panorama is the smallest margin between the cars that qualified first and second on the grid. Steven Richards pipped Jason Bright to pole position for the 2004 race by just 0.0012-seconds.

8) The oldest and youngest drivers in the race will be aboard the same car. 19-year-old Broc Feeney will join 57-year-old Russell Ingall aboard a Triple Eight Race Engineering-run wildcard entry. Should Ingall add a third ‘Great Race’ win to his victories in 1995 and 1997, he will become the oldest driver ever to win the race. Currently, the best finishing position for a wildcard entry came in the 2013 race when Matthias Ekstrom/Andy Priaulx finished 10th in a Triple Eight-run entry.

9) There is just a single rookie in the field for this year’s Repco Bathurst 1000, the smallest number of first-time starters in the history of ‘The Great Race’ since its inaugural running at Mount Panorama in 1963. Tickford Racing’s Zak Best has never started a Bathurst 1000 previously but has made two Dunlop Super2 Series round starts at the circuit.

10) Since its introduction in 1987, the Bathurst 1000 has run without intervention from the BP Ultimate Safety Car on only two occasions: 1989 and 1991. The greatest number of Safety Car periods in a Bathurst 1000 is 13 in the 2000 race, while the greatest number of laps affected by the Safety Car is 45 of the 161 laps in the 2006 race.

The 2021 Repco Supercars Championship and Dunlop Series seasons will conclude at the Repco Bathurst 1000.

Every session of the event will be broadcast live on Foxtel (Fox Sports 503) and streamed on Kayo.

The Seven Network will provide live free to air coverage of the event. Tickets for the event and camping are on sale now.