From its early beginnings as a leasurely Sunday afternoon drive to the Tradition of Attrition, Mount Panorama is full of fascinating History and Tales.

The Circuit

As you look at the above map, you will notice that the road snakes it's way along the ridge lines of the mountain. And on either side of the Skyline - Forrest Elbow Stretch is a steep descent. This is part of what makes this circuit so great, and believe it or not but those steep hills have taken their toll on driver and car. Topographic Map Coming Soon.

The History

    Several years before 1938, Mount Panorama was designed and built to be a leisurly sunday afternoon drive to attract many people to Bathurst. The engineers made the roads wide on purpose in the hope that they would attract some racing events. At the time, they thought it would be just another race track, but they built the greatest racing circuit in the world.
    The bikes were the first to discover this mountain track, with many Formula One races to follow on either side of the world wars.
    Tin topped cars didn't officially hit the track until 1963, but these were only production cars that had a scary amount of body roll coming down the esses. I was going to take our look at the evolution of this circuit from the year 1963, but I found a History Book with many pictures from all over the track and some from the very first meeting in 1938.
    I have also included some significant events that happened on this track over its 62 year history.

Year	Event
1981	Last year Dick Johnson hit the rock shortly after exiting BP Cutting. A few fences and Concrete walls went in as a precautionary measure to stop the same thing happening again this year.
1984	During the course of the year, the new pit entry was built as a safety feature to slow cars down as they enter the pit area. The new construction was a section of zig zagging road that brought car speed down to between 40 and 50 km/h.
1987	Caltex Chase as it was formerly known, was built this year, because of an incident the year before when Mike Burgman died after losing control of his car and hitting the Bridge near the end of the straight in 86. It also prevented the bikes from getting airborn over the crest at the bridge and smashing into the fence at Murrays Corner because they couldn't brake hard enough into the turn upon landing. This section of track increased the lap distance from 6.172 to 6.213 km and reduced the number of laps from 163 to 161.
1999	There were several Concrete walls placed around the circuit to keep the rock faces from eroding on to the track and causing accidents. These were placed on the inside of the corner just before strathfield cutting, and on the outside of the turn at forrest elbow. An existing concrete wall and an arnco fence was replaced because a HQ Holden managed to clear the fence in a high speed accident. These walls were installed from the Dipper to Forest Elbow, and in the renovations, a little piece of Motor Racing History was removed. The little marking on the inside of the track just before forrest elbow where possibly hundreds of cars had clipped the wall on their qualifying laps.
2000

Name?
Email Address?