RENEE Gracie has already taken on Mount Panorama and made it to the finish line, but she knows what she will face in this year’s Bathurst 1000 is a different prospect.

This time instead of some 20 minutes of racing behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Car, she will join Simona De Silvestro in tackling the 161-lap Great Race.

Gracie and the 26-year-old Swiss driver have been included in this year’s Bathurst 1000 as a wild card entry, the Ford Falcon FG X they will steer supported by Prodrive Racing Australia.

While Gracie will get a small taste of the challenges that Sunday’s Bathurst 100 will bring as she contests tomorrow’s 250 kilometre race as a member of the Dunlop Series, it will arguably be the biggest challenge of her career thus far.

“It’s a massive, massive task and I know we are in the deep end, both Simona and I. We’ve never underestimated that, we’ve never told people that we are going to go out and win. That was never the point of why we are doing this,” she said.

“We are doing it for the challenge. It’s one of those things, you can’t underestimate it, you have got to respect the mountain, respect where we are going.”

It was as part of the Carrera Cup series that Gracie has done her previous laps of Mount Panorama, the all-Porsche series acting as a Bathurst 1000 race week support category.

Last year she placed 15th, 16th and 12th respectively in her three races, her best lap time being a two minutes, 13.70904 seconds effort.

Her season ended up yielding five top 10 race results and a 100 per cent race finishing record, an effort matched only by five-time series champion Craig Baird.

That earned her promotion to the Dunlop Series, the first female to race full-time in that category in 14 years, and in turn will help her realise her goal of a Bathurst 1000 drive. 

Gracie’s aim for her V8 Supercars and Great Race debut are simple.

“It’s is going to be an absolutely humongous couple of days, so just absorbing everything is the biggest thing,” she said.

“Our main focus is just to get to Sunday, if we get to Sunday and learn as much as we can and get as many laps as we can, I think we’ve achieved everything.

“I am already stoked now, I am so happy this happened.

“Probably the pinnacle is going to be that Sunday, if we can get there and start that race, things will be going pretty good.”