Bathurst Mount Panorama

Circuit History

The circuit owes its existence to the pioneering vision of one man, Bathurst Mayor Martin Griffin. Enthused by motorcycle racing on the Vale circuit, which used public roads on the edge of the city from 1931 to 1937, Griffin hatched plans for a new course. This would feature fast straights, hairpin bends and plunging elevation changes in order to challenge man and machine to the full.

With the depression in full force, gaining funding for such an enterprise was never going to be easy. The story goes that Griffin attracted unemployment-relief funding via the ruse of creating a scenic road for tourists, and ensured that engineers built each corner just a little wider than on the plans... The Mount Panorama Scenic Drive was officially opened on March 17, 1938, with a plaque unveiled at Skyline.

Construction of the road over the hill, known as Bald Hills until a council naming competition in 1934, began in mid-1936, and when racing was approved the following year city engineer Hughie Reid reworked parts of the route to suit. The result was a lap of just over 3.8 miles / 6.1 km that climbs 571 feet / 174 m from Pit Straight to the summit, as steep as 1 in 6.13 on the exit of The Cutting.

Easter on the Mountain

With the support of the New South Wales Light Car Club and the Auto Cycle Union, the first event was organised at Easter 1938, before the track surface had been sealed. Unusually, it was a combined bike and car meeting, with motorcycles racing on Easter Saturday, April 16, before handing over to the cars, headed by the Australian Grand Prix, on Easter Monday, April 18. Those early events featured primitive facilities – a sea of canvas tents would form rudimentary paddock facilities, and there was nothing but the occasional (and rickety) wooden fence to protect drivers and riders should they get anything wrong while crossing 'The Mountain'.

That first Grand Prix, a handicap on the dirt, was won from scratch by the British driver Peter Whitehead in his ERA before a crowd reported at between 20,000 and 33,000. The road was tarred for 1939, and that Easter Frank Kleinig's Hudson Special threw a connecting rod on the main straight, which has been Conrod Straight ever since. Other corners were named in the same haphazard way: Bill Murray's crash at the 1946 New South Wales Grand Prix turned Pit Corner into Murray's Corner, and the motorcycle racer Jack Forrest lent his name, and his injured elbow, to Forrest's Elbow in 1947.

The format of the Easter weekend races was set and would become a staple feature of the Australian motor racing calendar. The Australian Grand Prix returned in 1947, 1952 and 1958, when Lex Davison's Ferrari won the last of them, and the single-seaters kept getting quicker. Kevin Bartlett's Brabham set the first 100mph lap at Easter 1967, and Niel Allen's McLaren Formula 5000 car lapped in 2:09.7, an average of 107.6mph, on March 30, 1970, a time never beaten on the original layout.

The Great Race comes to Bathurst

Of course, it was not single seaters, GT cars or motorcycles that ultimately helped popularise the Mount Panorama legend, but rather touring cars, and the October endurance race known simply as the Bathurst 1000. The race actually began as a 500 mile event at Phillip Island, but when the track surface broke up in 1962, Bathurst took over the running from 1963 onwards. Run first as the Armstrong 500 and from 1968 as the Hardie-Ferodo 500, it grew to 1,000 km in 1973, the year Group C rules arrived. The races were televised and began to draw huge audiences, making race day one of the most-watched days in Australian sport. The sight of grids of often more than 50 cars doing battle up and down the mountain enthralled viewers the world over, enhanced by the traditional rivalry between the factory Ford and Holden teams.

Names such as Dick Johnson, Allan Moffat, Colin Bond, Allan Grice and 'King of the Mountain' Peter Brock, whose nine wins are commemorated in the corner now called Brock's Skyline, became household names on the back of victories in the 1000, while there were plenty of unforgettable moments along the way.

Dick Johnson's famous brush with a rock on the run between The Cutting and Reid Park – officially dislodged by a marshal, though Johnson later said two fans phoned to confess – may have ended his 1980 race and destroyed his Ford Falcon, but it only served to increase interest in the event and was arguably the making of Johnson's career. Viewers pledged A$72,000 to rebuild his team, and Ford matched it dollar for dollar.

Crashes and the perils of Conrod

The Mountain has witnessed numerous terrifying incidents over the decades. In the final stages of the 1970 race, Tony Roberts suffered a horrific crash when his Falcon went over Skyline backward, tumbling violently down the hillside. Just a year later at McPhillamy Park, Bill Brown survived an equally shocking accident that ripped his Falcon in half against the fencing. Dick Johnson added another dramatic chapter to Bathurst lore during the 1983 Hardies Heroes top-10 shootout, striking the barrier at Forrest's Elbow and launching at high speed into the surrounding trees; amazingly, his team built a replacement Falcon overnight to take 10th on the grid.

Other spectacular crashes befell Tony Roberts in 1970, when his Falcon went backwards over Skyline in the closing laps, barrel rolling multiple times down the hillside. Then there was Bill Brown's roll at McPhillamy Park 12 months later, which saw his Falcon cleaved in two by the barriers. Dick Johnson hit the headlines again in 1983, when he clipped the barriers at Forrest's Elbow during the Hardies Heroes top-10 shootout and was sent at speed straight into the trees; a replacement Falcon was built overnight and started 10th. In all three cases the drivers could count themselves extremely fortunate to emerge shaken but largely unscathed from each accident, their cars much less so.

Not so lucky were those caught out by the humps on Conrod Straight. Jack Johnson was killed when he crashed his MG TC on the Conrod crest in 1949. At Easter 1955, during the Bathurst 100 on April 11, Tony Bourke lost control of Gordon Greig's Alvis-engined Alfa Romeo over the final hump and spun through the fence into the crowd; seven-year-old Gavin Larnach and Bert Constance of Cooma died of their injuries and 17 others were hurt. From that October spectators were kept away from all but the last section of the straight. 

The tragic run on Conrod Straight continued in 1960 during an Australian GT event. As Reg Smith reached the second crest in his lightweight Porsche 356, a sudden gust of wind lifted the vehicle, causing him to lose control. The car hit a track-side tree on the right side of the tarmac before flipping upside down back onto the track, where it instantly burst into flames. The 57-year-old driver died instantly in the crash.

Others would suffer the same fate: Bevan Gibson (1969) and Tom Sulman (1970) were both killed after losing control over one of the humps. Tragedy struck once more in 1986 when Mike Burgmann was killed when his Commodore aviated off the second hump and crashed into the tyre barrier at the base of the pedestrian bridge. This time the response was more comprehensive; the blindingly fast Chase complex was added by the following year to divert the cars away from the hump and, in the process, create a spectacular new addition to the lap.

The Chase changes the lap

Burgmann's death was not the only reason for the Chase. Bathurst had been awarded a round of the new World Touring Car Championship in 1987, and Conrod Straight exceeded the limit on the length of straights set by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The Caltex Chase, as it was first known, answered both problems and lengthened the lap from 3.835 miles / 6.172 km to 3.861 miles / 6.213 km.

Concrete walls, a separate pit entry and sand traps at the Esses and McPhillamy Park had already appeared by the mid-1980s. For 1987 a new pit complex replaced the old wooden shelters, concrete walls were extended along Conrod Straight and wherever there had been little or no barrier, debris fencing went up and the race had its first safety car. The World Touring Car Championship round was decided after the event, when the Eggenberger Ford Sierras that finished ahead were excluded for bodywork irregularities, handing Brock his ninth win.

Two races on one mountain

The 1990s brought 5.0-litre V8s in 1993, and loss of a different kind. In 1992 the New Zealander Denny Hulme, the 1967 Formula One world champion, suffered a fatal heart attack at the wheel of his BMW M3 on Conrod Straight; in 1994 Don Watson was killed in a high-speed crash at the Chase in the build-up to the race.

Then the race itself split in two. The Australian Racing Drivers' Club (ARDC), its organiser since 1963, fell out with AVESCO, which ran the V8 series, over rival television deals, and Bathurst City Council negotiated a separate V8 event with AVESCO. In 1997 and 1998 the Mountain therefore hosted two thousand-kilometre races a few weeks apart: the ARDC's AMP Bathurst 1000 for Super Touring cars, won by the Brabham brothers' BMW in 1997 and a Volvo in 1998, and the V8 race, won by Larry Perkins and Russell Ingall in 1997. The race was reunited as a V8-only event in 1999 and, on November 14 that year, counted towards the championship for the first time.

Motorcycles on the Mountain

Motorcycles had opened the circuit, and for half a century they remained central to its Easter tradition. The Easter meeting, carried over from the Vale in 1938, hosted the Australian TT and, in some years, the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix. At Easter 1976 Warren Willing set the first 100mph motorcycle lap, in 2:17.1. The same weekend Ross Barelli was killed in practice when his brakes failed at the end of Conrod Straight.

The meeting was also gaining notoriety. Clashes between police and spectators in 1980, 1981, 1983 and 1985 led NSW Police to ban BYO alcohol from August 1985, and with crowds falling the big Easter bike meetings ended in 1988. Motorcycles raced alongside the early 12 Hour until 1994, and a one-off TT meeting in 2000 proved to be the last motorcycle racing at Mount Panorama. At Easter 2026 six invited riders led by Shawn Giles ran demonstration laps, the first motorcycle laps for 26 years.

Endurance racing beyond the 1000

Easter car racing carried on too, continuing right through to the club-level meetings of 2008–2016, when Formula 3 cars headlined the action, through to today, when Easter belongs to the 6 Hour endurance race for production cars, which began in 2016. A 12 hour race, first run at Easter 1991 for production cars, was revived in 2007 and now runs each February. Since adopting international GT3 regulations for the premier class in 2011, it has seen entries boom; an Intercontinental GT Challenge round since 2016, it has become a much-anticipated early season race on the GT calendar, drawing a record three-day crowd of 55,231 in 2026.

24 hour race ran in 2002 and 2003, won both times by Garry Rogers Motorsport's Holden Monaros, and the Bathurst International ran for three editions before ending in November 2024. Challenge Bathurst has brought amateur drivers to the circuit each November since 2016, and it was there, on November 16, 2018, that Christopher Mies set the official outright lap record of 1:59.2910 in a derestricted Audi GT3, in a time-attack session rather than a race. Records can now only be set in races.

Building a modern venue

Improvements have not just been aimed at safety; spectator facilities have been much improved over the years, with grandstands erected at key points around the circuit. Nevertheless, many choose to watch the race from a spot at the top of the mountain, camping at Reid, Sulman or McPhillamy Park and soaking up the more tribal atmosphere of the Ford versus Holden rivalry that divided fans – and families – for decades. The National Motor Racing Museum, opened by Peter Brock in 1988, stands outside Murray's Corner.

New pit and paddock facilities were completed in 2004, comprising new pit garages, race control and media facilities, backed by A$10 million of federal funding. A trackside hotel, now the Rydges Mount Panorama, later opened alongside Conrod Straight, just beyond the pedestrian bridge. With every guest room overlooking the track, it has few problems selling out each October... The modern era has not been free of tragedy: in October 2006 Mark Porter died two days after a crash at Sulman Park in a Development Series support race.

Improvements continued in 2013 with the replacement of the concrete barriers along pit straight with a new design conforming to latest safety specifications, while the entire circuit was resurfaced immediately after the Bathurst 1000. The new surface broke up at Griffins Bend during the 2014 race, which was halted for around an hour for repairs, and there has been no full resurface since.

Other modernisations have seen concrete barriers put alongside the entire perimeter of the circuit and run-off areas either increased where possible or gravel traps inserted where not. By 1993 a tunnel ran beneath the Chase, and in 1998 the gravel traps there and at McPhillamy Park were extended. Ironically, the addition of the concrete walls has increased the perils of the run over the mountain in particular, though at least these days you should not find yourself leaving the confines of the circuit altogether, even if your car does suffer terminal damage should you stray too far off the racing line.

A public road with a future to fund

Despite its worldwide fame as a racing circuit, Mount Panorama remains in its entirety public roads, used to access the numerous homes, farms and other properties which sit alongside it. Cars can drive in both directions around the circuit for no charge on non-race days but be warned – there is a strict speed limit of 37mph (60 km/h) and police regularly patrol the circuit to enforce it. The Mount Panorama Motor Racing Act 1989 allows the circuit to be closed for up to five race meetings a year. Bathurst Regional Council owns and manages it, and the mountain has carried a second name since April 2015, when the dual name Mount Panorama / Wahluu was gazetted following an application by the Bathurst Local Aboriginal Land Council. The circuit's official name is unchanged. With Holden gone, Toyota's GR Supra joined Ford's Mustang and Chevrolet's Camaro on the Supercars grid in 2026.

Safety and money will shape the next chapter. At the 12 Hour on February 15, 2026, race leader Ralf Aron hit a stationary Porsche near Forrest's Elbow, suffering two back fractures. From the 6 Hour that April, Motorsport Australia mirrored flag signals across the top of the mountain and made a flag-rules test compulsory for drivers. Lights at flag points top a council wishlist put at A$70–130 million in full, alongside a full resurface, fauna fencing and more concrete barriers.

Nothing was allocated in the May 2026 federal budget, and as of October 2026 the council is preparing a core safety package of about A$15 million for the 2027–28 budget. A planned second circuit has been on hold since June 2023, when the federal government withdrew A$12.5 million in grants.

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