Things we knew: Mount Panorama, the home of the iconic Bathurst race, is one of Australia’s wildest tracks and is arguably it’s best-known roadcourse. We know that the elevation changes and overall design were enough to turn Darrell Waltrip into a nearly-incomprehensible scream machine the one time he rode shotgun in a V8 Supercar. Effectively, the track is a bucket-list item and a must-see if we find ourselves on that end of the world. What we didn’t know was anything regarding Improved Production racing, and we only clicked on the link to the video simply because there were cars and it’d let our fingers take a rest from typing. And we are glad we did, because within the first few laps we were hooked.
Improved Production allows a wide range of vehicles that have been prepared at a reasonable level to compete, with sub-classes spread out by engine size measured in CC, from sub-1.0L to 6.0L. As long as the vehicle is prepared and is certified to race, it doesn’t matter what it is. Which is why you are seeing a 1970s Toyota Celica battling it out with a late 1990s Civic…and trust us when we say this, but these two waged a killer battle that you need to see. But they weren’t the only cars on the track. This was a fairly full grid, so in addition to these two you had Monaros and Falcons racing Commodores, first-gen Mazda RX-7s taking on Honda Integras, and even a Toyota Yaris taking to the course in anger!
I watch the live stream. The time shift isn’t that bad, add one day and subtract 7 hours on the west coast I think. The 12 hour race starts 5am there which makes it noon the day before here…Oh, now I’ve gone cross-eyed again…