Richard CraillHow to make racing cars fly on the GC..
HOW do you make racing cars work on the demanding, unique streets of the Gold Coast? That's the question we're asking this week as we delve into what makes that incredible circuit so special with title and Bathurst winning engineer, Mike Henry. From tuning the car to the driver and getting the balance between setup and driver aggression right, it's a fascinating insight into what you need to do right to make a racing car work on the Surfers kerbs. Then the crew look back at the week that was - including more rain pain, this time in South Australia
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Mark WalkerSurvivors, Innovators & Legends
After a couple of years parked up during the pandemic, Motorclassica roared back onto the scene over the Bathurst weekend in Melbourne, with the festival re-emerging with a new flavour, offering something for everyone with an automotive interest. While the event has grown a cult following for its annual collection of the classics, recent moves have seen the assembly opened up to include more recent uber-desirable hypercars. Think the 2023 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, a 2021 Mercedes Benz AMG GT Black Series "Project 1" Edition, plus a McLaren P1, amongst others, while at the other end of the scale, showpieces included
Continue readingSurfers Paradise: The Modern Era
PREVIOUSLY on The Race Torque, we looked at the early days of the Gold Coast Street Circuit – click here to catch up on the era from 1991 through 2004. Here we revisit the closing days of open wheelers on the Surfers Paradise streets, plus the event’s transition into the Gold Coast 600 with Supercars as the headline act. 2005 – The year that Team Australia initially took over the Gold Coast, with a three-car outfit for Canadian Alex Tagliani, plus Aussies Marcus Marshall and Will Power, who made his top-flight debut. Sébastien Bourdais claimed another win for Newman Haas.
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Team TRTMawson set for Tasman Title Tilt
DOUBLE S5000 AUSTRALIAN Drivers' Champion Joey Mawson will return in a bid to add the Tasman Cup to his trophy cabinet this year. The Sydney-based driver has confirmed his participation in the two-event Tasman Series, once again linking with Team BRM. BRM will field a pair of entries at the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 this week, with Mawson to line-up alongside teammate Mark Rosser on the Surfers streets. The pair have worked closely together this season, with Mawson in a coaching role, while the pair also joined forces with Nick Percat to contest the LIQUI MOLY Bathurst 12 Hour
Continue readingSurfers Paradise: The Early Years
THE streets of Surfers Paradise have played host to some of the more significant moments in the history of world motorsport. Here in two parts we take a deep dive into the evolution of the event, from a 1991 Indycar oddity, to a 2019 Supercars crown jewel, with this initial segment taking us through to 2004, and the closing days of CART. 1990 - The Gold Coast Indycar race was given the thumbs up from the Queensland Government in April, with the first race to be held in March 1991, despite the threat of life bans on competitors from CAMS/FIA.
Continue readingGoodwood of the Wild West
A 35km trip beyond Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit lies the claypan dry lakebed of Lake Perkolilli, a mainstay from the frontier days of Western Australian motorsport, which recently was once again revived for period racers to rip up the red dirt. 2022 images with thanks to Unlabelled Photography Hard, smooth, flat and dusty, it was the ideal playground for local motorcyclists in the time after World War I, and by 1924, car racers based in the state’s capital of Perth, some 600km away further West, had become aware of its potential. Images courtesy of the Western Australian Museum Collections A two-mile,
Continue readingBargwannas take on Tasman Series
COUSINS Ben and Jude Bargwanna will join forces to tackle the S5000 Tasman Series this year. The pair will link together under the families' Bargwanna Motorsport banner, while operating with assistance from Garry Rogers Motorsport. The shift to open wheel racing continues the trend of the Bargwanna cousins competing together, the pair having twice tackled the Hi-Tec Oils Bathurst 6 Hour. They finished ninth outright and second in class in the race this year, racing an Audi TTRS. Ben Bargwanna is no stranger to S5000 competition, having tackled the 2021 Tasman Series and the Australian Grand Prix S5000 round in
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Dale RodgersGreat Race Storylines Run Deep
Every year the Bathurst 1000 writes a unique chapter into Australian motorsport history, and almost every year it is for a different reason. Way back in 1979 it was Peter Brock winning by six laps in his HDT Torana A9X, in 1981, it was a victorious Dick Johnson returning to the Mountain that had bitten him so hard just a year before when he hit ‘The Rock’, and so it goes. In more recent times, 2014 saw an eight-hour marathon won by a car that led only one lap for the whole day, with Chaz Mostert’s victorious Falcon starting from
Continue readingMcElrea on the USA, Ojeda on Bathurst and more
A WIDE-REACHING show this week as we chat to one team owner and one driver - both trying to make waves both here and abroad. Jayden Ojeda drops by for his long-promised chat about his career, getting through a Bathurst 1000 unscathed and what his future holds. Then Andy McElrea talks taking his Carrera Cup team to the United States, the reasoning behind it, hanging out with Mario Andretti and lots of fascinating insight into how he sees it all playing out. Then the boys talk the week that was, the week it will be and the many and varied
Continue readingINSIGHT: The changing face of Bathurst viewers
BACK IN 2014, when the world was a much simpler place, the only way you could watch the Bathurst 1000 was via one single, linear operating free-to-air TV channel. Little did we know, as we all enjoyed the breathtaking, mad finish to the 2014 Great Race that in less than eight years a quantum shift would have occurred in the way racing fans consume the best race of the year – even if the audience size itself remains remarkably consistent. The way Bathurst is consumed by TV audiences is the media landscape in a nutshell – rapidly changing, quickly evolving
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