In the introduction to Turning Fortune's Lore Section I shared how I like to view motor racing as a mythic endeavor. I must admit the myths told of motor racing have nothing on the myths told about mountains. For as long as humans have lived around their world's peaks they have inspired a sense of awe– a foreign terrain, where few things live and unknown dangers lie around every corner. Naturally, mountains became a setting for stories told of people wandering into the wilderness and after a series of trials returning forever changed. As it turns out, in motor racing it is no different.

I reckon every motorsports fan remembers their first time watching a race on the Mountain of Bathurst, whether it was a version of the Great Race, the 12 Hour, or the infamous highlights of Jordan Cox doing legendary things with a Honda Civic in the Improved Production Race. For me it was the 2015 12-hour, when the "Godzilla" overtook the Bentley Continental GT3 and Laurens Vanthoor's Audi on a final restart with less than five minutes left to give Nissan a famous win. That race had many storylines to make it compelling, but it was not what was etched into my memory. My enduring memory is the far simpler and more visceral experience of watching racecars travel across the top of the mountain in anger for the first time. It is a feeling that has not and will never get old.

Perhaps I find every lap turned at Mount Panorama captivating because the design of the circuit encapsulates a hero's journey: Our heroes on four wheels start their lap on a short Pit Straight just outside the town of Bathurst, where all seems relatively normal. The 90-degree Hell Corner leads onto Mountain Straight, where the brave drivers begin their ascent, charging towards the wild danger that waits atop the Mountain. After navigating Quarry Bend they reach the blind, rising left-hander of the Cutting that marks the entry to the Other World. A world where they ascend, descend, take multiple blind corners, run inches from the wall and certain doom through Griffin's Mount then Reid, Sulman, and McPhillamy Park...until the climactic moment of Skyline where they reach the vista of the Mountain. However just as the climax of the hero's journey does not mean it is time to rest, this is not a moment of relaxation for our racers. They must immediately navigate the downhill Esses and the Dipper, before the descending Forrest's Elbow leads off the Mountain down Conrod Straight. A detour through the Chase, added decades after the track opened, is all that is left before our heroes return to where they started via the 90 degree Murray's Corner. Lap completed, and a moment to exhale in town before rounding Hell's Corner and heading up the mountain again.

I am not sure what former Bathurst Mayor Martin Griffin thought about mythology of mountains or heroes, but he seemingly knew Mount Panorama would make for an excellent racing circuit when he proposed and secured funding for a Mount Panorama Scenic Drive in 1936. In Griffin's mind, the Scenic Drive was always meant to be a racetrack. As such, the Drive was opened in March 1938 and the first racing held a month later. There have been safety upgrades made since, but the Mount Panorama Scenic Drive is essentially unchanged in design since then.

It feels appropriate that Bathurst holds the title of the most iconic Australian racing circuit. As an American, Australia itself has always felt like a place of myth, where people and culture are shaped by a relationship to an exotic and unforgiving natural world. So just as it makes sense for our most iconic races to be held on the ovals of Daytona and Indianapolis, symbolic of the American drive to use industry and technology to shape the natural world around us, it likewise seems fitting that the most sacred grounds of Australian motor racing would feel like a venture into the wilderness. I find myself forever more enthralled by the latter. Any time there are cars racing at Bathurst I will tune in and let the awe wash over me, watching as they hurtle inches from the wall and appreciating how humans continue to choose to race headfirst up the Mountain.

Motor racing is by its nature a mythic endeavor.

Those who choose to pursue a life in racing have committed themselves to pushing against what we understand of the laws that govern physical reality, in the pursuit of a very, very old human drive: “go faster than the others.” The result of this pursuit over the last 130 or so years has birthed a genus of species of modern mythical beasts: the racecar. This may seem a whimsical qualification, yet a description of the shapes, colors, and sounds that you experience at a racetrack would not seem out of place in D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. Even if you do not go so far as to consider a racecar a living being, the sensory experience of seeing a pack of them competing on track offers a transcendence that is difficult to find anywhere else. The stuff of myth.

One thing about myths is that they are alive, and like any living being, they require sustenance to survive. Sustenance for myths comes in the form of storytelling. Humans have been keeping their myths alive by telling and re-telling them for far longer than they have been recording them in words and pictures. Another way you might describe this act of storytelling is lorekeeping.

As Jon and I embarked on building out Turning Fortune, we had discussions about what the site may hold. Having a way to share news was the foundational idea for the site, and journals seemed an obvious choice to share our personal experiences at the track. But this did not feel complete.

During these discussions, we thought back to the earliest days of Jon's racing initiation. His entry point, like so many, had been Drive to Survive, and eventually the final rounds of the 2024 F1 season. However, Jon has an insatiable curiosity for things he is passionate about, and as such came with endless questions to probe deeper into the inner workings of motorsports and the history of how we got to where we are. I would share videos of races, books and articles with him, names of people to search and do his own digging on.

Once his proverbial tires were warm, Jon got to exploring on his own, and it was not too long before he would come back to me with stories and information that I had not known in my decades of racing fandom. This was not a surprise, as there is far too much racing lore for any one person to hold. Too many racing series, teams, cars, drivers, racetracks. There is always something new to learn, discuss, debate.

One of the joys of being a race fan is to share in the stories across the history of motor sport. Like my father did with me in the infields of Nazareth and Pocono as a kid. Like I did with Jon, first online and then at the racetrack. Like many of us do together, both online and at the track.

Out of reflecting on this journey, the idea for this Lore section of Turning Fortune came clear: To prop up a trailhead for those who enjoy prowling the depths of motor racing history and share the stories that most strike our fancies. A beacon and safe haven for the racing nerds. And our little contribution to sustaining the mythos of motor racing.