THE weather did its best to interfere but all competitors got a crack at the Bathurst Light Car Club’s Speed Weekend event at Mount Panorama.
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The weekend consisted of two events, a supersprint on Saturday followed by the flying fifth on Sunday, bringing over 60 competitors trying their luck racing down Conrod Straight.
Despite the rain, competitors had a chance to get several runs in both events.
Due to the degrading condition of Griffins Bend, the popular Sunday hill climb had to be changed to the flying fifth event.
Clerk of the course Dave Robinson said changes to this year’s event were well received by the competitors.
“This is an event we run over two days of competition. It was a bit different this year because on the Sunday we normally run the hill, but of course with the issue with the track we couldn’t put that on so we did a flying fifth instead,” he said.
“Both those races were well received by the competitors. We even had a competitor come over from Adelaide, just because he wanted the chance to race on Mount Panorama. People come from all over the place just to have that drive on it.”
The supersprint is a timed run across the third sector of Mount Panorama, while the flying fifth is all about pushing cars to their top speed over a small 200-metre stretch down Conrod Straight.
Cars of all shapes, sizes and budgets were represented across both days, ranging from Formula 3s to Lamborghinis to Datsuns.
“It’s mainly street cars that compete but Doug Barry had a beautiful Reynard open wheeler. There’s a bit of history behind that car, too. Craig Lowndes drove that very car at one stage and Will Power, who was this year’s winner of the IndyCar championship, has also driven it,” Robinson said.
Barry claimed the victory in the supersprint, driving the recently-purchased Reynard for the first time, with his third and final run of 46.20 seconds proving too hard to top.
Bathurst drivers claimed the minors, with Scott Tutton’s time of 46.33 in his second run with his Mitsubishi Evo going very close to beating Barry. Robert Dean managed to better his time just before the rain came down as he steered his Subaru Impreza home in 47.63.
Arthur Kalantzis laid down his unbeatable flying fifth speed of 245.73 kilometres per hour early on Sunday to top the leader board in a Porsche 930.
On his fifth and final attempt, Tom Sethack and his Ford XR6 recorded a 243.24km/h to jump in second. Peter Kiel’s Ford Mustang was third in 236.84km/h.
