Bathurst 1000: Memorable moments from Mount Panorama
Updated . First published
Mostert shares hospital photos after 'crazy' crash
Chaz Mostert has revealed he still feels the effects of his monster qualifying crash ahead of the 2015 Bathurst 1000.
Mostert shared two photos to Instagram of him in hospital in the aftermath of the crash, in which he suffered a broken leg and broken wrist.
Mostert shares hospital photos after 'crazy' crash
Unsurprisingly, Mostert spent the remainder of the season 2015 watching from the sidelines.
"It's that time of year again. and I almost feel like my knee knows and starts to play up," Mostert said on Instagram.
"Crazy to look back at these pictures and see that it's been nine years since my accident."
The previous photo was a PR image circulated by the team in the days after the crash, while this one is a much more personal image.
Chaz Mostert and Paul Morris win in 2014
Mostert and Morris took the win at the 2014 Bathurst 1000, in one of the most remarkable races in the event's history.
The pair started from last on the grid after being excluded from qualifying for ignoring red flags, and did not lead a single lap all day, apart from the only lap that matters, the 161st.
In an extraordinary turn of events, the race had to be red-flagged from more than an hour after the track surface began to break up at Griffins Bend, with hasty repairs required to get the cars back on track.
The Red Bull Commodore of Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell had the lead, but Whincup was ignoring instructions to conserve fuel, holding a three second lead over Mostert with three laps remaining.
"I kept screaming in the cockpit - cough you bastard, cough," Mostert said, admitting that his team had informed him of Whincup's fuel issues.
But it wasn't until the pair exited Forrest's Elbow for the final time that Mostert made the pass to secure a famous victory, while Whincup could only crawl across the line in fifth.
Writing in his 2021 autobiography, Drive of a Lifetime, Whincup noted he had a big smile on his face when he exited the car, telling the team how proud he was of the effort put in through the day.
"The comment went down like a lead balloon; it was obvious they were all fuming about letting slip this golden opportunity," he wrote.
"The more I showed how happy I was with the performance, the angrier he (team boss Roland Dane) got.
The destroyed Falcon
In qualifying a year later, Mostert clipped the inside wall at the left hander before Forrest's Elbow.
That touch fired him into the outside wall, which then sent him once again into the left wall.
That final impact was the biggest. The car rode up and almost over the concrete wall, and struck a marshall point. Thankfully, none were injured.
The destroyed Falcon
Unsurprisingly, the car was completely destroyed. Once it was stripped of anything salvageable, the shell sat in the team's workshop for several years.
Once slated to be demolished entirely, the shell was saved by the National Motor Racing Museum, where it remains on display today.
Dick Johnson's huge crash in 1983
Dick Johnson somehow escaped unscathed after a monster accident during qualifying for the 1983 James Hardie 1000.
On his Hardies Heroes lap on Saturday afternoon, Johnson ran ever so slightly wide at the apex of Forrest's Elbow. That put him slightly out of position on the exit of the corner, and the Falcon's right front tyre clipped a pile of tyres attached to the end of the concrete barrier.
As Bill Tuckey described in the 1983 yearbook, such a small error can have huge consequences at Mount Panorama.
"It was the sort of revenge the Mountain waits for all year," he wrote.
"The impact broke the control arm on the Falcon's steering, and the Mountain took the car and flung it casually and contemptuously towards a grove of trees that had never been removed, because of the simple expert knowledge that no car could possibly get in there.
"Johnson was a helpless passenger, because the steering had gone and all he could do was watch the scene unfold in slow motion and guess which tree he would hit."
The Falcon ripped out a TV cable during its trip into the scenery, meaning the monitors in pit lane went blank, as did TV screens around the country.
Seven's helicopter was able to hover over the scene, revealing the horrifying images of a destroyed Falcon, as Johnson's wife Jill broke down in tears.
Miraculously, Johnson suffered little more than a cut over his eye, and was able to accept a lift back to the pits with Peter Brock, who stopped on his warm-up lap to collect his great rival.
Johnson and Kevin Bartlett actually competed the following day in a car they purchased that night from fellow Queenslander Andrew Harris, the crew working through the evening to convert it to the Greens' Tuf paint scheme of Johnson's major sponsor.
Johnson joked that his first warm-up lap on Sunday morning was simply to dry the paint, but the car struck trouble early in the race, with a short circuit in the electrical system causing a number of issues, and the car was retired after 61 laps.
Denny Hulme dies during the 1992 Tooheys 1000
The 1992 race will be forever remembered for the death of 1967 Formula 1 world champion Denny Hulme, who died of a heart attack at the wheel of his BMW on Conrod Straight.
The 56-year-old was at the wheel in terrible conditions, as a rain storm swept across Mount Panorama. His car initially veered to the left on Conrod Straight, before coming to a rest against the right side wall just before the entry to Caltex Chase.
When marshals arrived they found Hulme had suffered a heart attack, and he was pronounced dead a short time later.
"I was a mate of Denny's, I still have this vivid memory of driving down Conrod Straight when the safety car was out and seeing Denny slumped in the car," Neil Crompton, who finished third that day, told Wide World of Sports.
"It's etched in my brain, I wish it would go away.
"It was a really tough day because one of our mates died. It was a rotten day, I think I can safely say it was the worst rainstorm we've had at a Bathurst 1000."
Marcos Ambrose and Greg Murphy - 2005
The 2005 Bathurst 1000 is best remembered for a controversial crash in the closing stages that saw fierce rivals Marcos Ambrose and Greg Murphy exchange heated words in the immediate aftermath.
After a late-race restart, Ambrose attempted to go around the outside of Murphy in the kink that precedes The Cutting, which is not normally an overtaking spot.
The two made heavy contact, with Ambrose's Ford nearly going over the wall.
Neither driver would back down, with an ugly altercation ensuring, as the pair pointed fingers at each other.
"Murphy and Ambrose. These two do not like each other and they are going to have some serious words," said Leigh Diffey in commentary.
"They are two heated men. Can you believe this?"
Speaking to the V8 Sleuth Podcast in 2020, Murphy conceded there was fault on both sides.
"I tell you right now, if I knew what was going to happen I would have actually not have been as pig-headed to try and hold my line through that corner, and bailed out of that one and let him have it," Murphy said.
"I got baulked heavily by, I think, David Besnard going into Griffins Bend. He sort of turned down on me when I was trying to pass him and I lost all my momentum, and that allowed Marcos to come up alongside.
"It was just one of those pig-headed moments where he wasn't going to give in and I didn't give in.
"He had his nose ahead but there was no pass completed. I've always been quite open about the fact that I believe we both contributed to it and I always was happy to take 50 percent of the blame for it because it was a goddamned mess.
"We'll agree to disagree, I'm sure, but it was just a sh-t sandwich that I sort of wish never had happened, obviously.
"It's not like it was a great moment of my life and my career and not for him either, and it just added fuel to probably the fire that was already burning between us anyway.
"It was just messy up there that day and there was already a bit of a festering scab between the two of us, and that just made it a whole lot worse."
Drama erupts in 2019
Scott McLaughlin and Alex Premat took the win in 2019, but it was overshadowed by a controversial moment involving their DJR-Team Penske teammate Fabian Coulthard during a safety car period.
On lap 135, third-placed Coulthard slowed to a crawl when the safety car was deployed, while McLaughlin and Jamie Whincup were able to open up a large enough gap that they could pit without losing track position.
Those tactics eliminated the fuel advantage of hard charging Holden star Shane van Gisbergen, who eventually finished second, just 0.68 seconds behind McLaughlin.
The actions of DJR Team Penske drew strong criticism, with former winner Larry Perkins calling the move "disgraceful," while Penrite Racing boss Barry Ryan said McLaughlin and Premat should have be stripped of the win.
The team was later fined $250,000 (with $100,000 suspended) and stripped of 300 championship points.
When McLaughlin subsequently wrapped up the Supercars championship, he referred to the "toxic atmosphere" within the paddock.
Triple Eight team boss Roland Dane hit back, telling Wide World of Sports that McLaughlin and DJR Team Penske were to blame.
"To be honest, what's more of an issue to me is the whole month since Bathurst has been taken up with controversy which has come from one team," he said.
"I don't like the reflection that it's had on the sport, but it's come from one team, it hasn't come from anyone else.
"Scott McLaughlin referred to the toxicity of the paddock at the weekend, well that's self-inflicted."
This tainted victory remains the Blue Oval's most recent Bathurst 1000 success.
1987 James Hardie 1000 filled with controversy
Peter Brock scored his ninth, and final victory at Mount Panorama in 1987, but his win wasn't confirmed until March, 1988, when the cars that finished first and second on the road were disqualified.
The Texaco Ford Sierras entered by the European-based Eggenberger team finished first (Steve Soper and Pierre Dieudonne) and second (Klaus Ludwig and Klaus Niedzwiedz) but were subsequently found to have illegal wheel arches, with both cars thrown out of the race.
That promoted Brock to the top spot, but it wasn't in the famous 05 Commodore, which had expired in a plume of smoke early in the race. Under the rules as they were written at the time, Brock simply jumped in his team's other car (as he had in his 1983 victory).
Brock and David Parsons joined Peter McLeod in the #10 Commodore, leaving the unfortunate Jon Crooke to miss out.
The Brock/Parson/McLeod entry became the first car ever to win the race without leading a single lap, although the sight of Brock sliding around on a damp track in the dying stages has been replayed countless times in the years since.
The entire event was problematic from day one. As a round of the inaugural World Touring Car Championship, the traditional organisers, the Australian Racing Drivers Club, had to deal with the international governing body FISA, and to suggest they didn't see eye-to-eye would be an understatement.
The so-called European invasion saw journalist Joe Saward write in his report for Autosport: "Never a nation to figure strongly on the diplomatic scene, the Strines blamed the influx of Wops, Boxheads and Frogs on their misfortunes."
Bill Tuckey took the local view, writing in his annual book that covered the controversial race: "One could safely assume that the ARDC would never again allow the Great Race to be subjected to variations forced upon it by an international body just for the sake of what the northern hemisphere saw as sporting morality ... in that sense, 1987 was really the year the Great Race grew up."
