A love letter to the Mountain

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.