MOTOR SPORT
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Bathurst Light Car Club’s annual Harold Weal Memorial Speed weekend at Mount Panorama, has once again attracted maximum entries for the two- day event that will see a Supersprint run today and the Mountain Straight Hillclimb run tomorrow.
Among the massive fields will be a variety of very different high performance cars, with GT3 and 996 turbos, a deregistered V8 Supercar and, making its Australian competition debut, a Tesla electric car.
While tomorrow the outright Mountain Straight record holder, a Gould GRB55B, will return.
Both the Porsches are owned by Bathurst businessman David Pennells, who will be driving the road-going 996 turbo, while he will go head-to-head with his own competition car, a GT3 to be driven by Wollongong’s Vic Watts, a friend of Pennells and fellow Porsche racer.
“We’ve been mates for 25 to 30 years, and there’s always a lot of banter between us as to who’s the quickest,” said Pennells. “I generally end up beating him, but it’s only because I’ve got more horsepower that his 968 Clubsport. In all honestly he is quicker than me. He’s an old rally driver and still lives on the edge.”
The V8 Supercar is an ex-Brad Jones Racing BF Ford Falcon to be driven by its owner Doug Barry, a former Mudgee farmer who has returned to his trade as an automotive engineer in Sydney.
A multiple state hillclimb champion, Barry has been running the BF in the Kumho Tyres Australian V8 Touring Car Series under the banner of Douglas Barry Specials for 32-year-old Sydney driver Steven Devjak.
Barry told In the Pits earlier this week that he had been helping Devjak because of his talent and wanted to help get him into the V8 Supercars championship.
“Steve’s got an incredible amount of ability and deserved as much support as we could give him. He was very good in hillclimbing, he won last year’s NSW Improved Production Touring Car Championship and then did a great job in the BMW 335i,” he said.
“This weekend will be the first time I’ve driven the Ford, apart from around the pits, so I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve also had a fair amount of support from around Bathurst with Scott Tutton as part of the regular crew, while Stuart and Karen Inwood threw in some of their money to help us along,” Barry said.
As for the Tesla, it has been receiving outstanding reviews, particularly with its incredible acceleration. The car competing on Saturday is a P85D four-door with front and rear computer driven all wheel drive, claiming 400 kilowatts.
The Tesla is owned by Sydney man Stefan Williams, and it will make its competition debut today in the hands of Williams’ 54-year- old brother-in-law, David Catt a well known Bathurstian, better known as a rally driver.
Sydney driver Tim Edmondson will be reunited with his Gould, a car that he won the 2012 Australian Hillclimb Championship in the last time it was held at Bathurst.
That event in 2012 went down in history as being one of the most exciting of all time, as Edmondson battled with Doug Barry in his Lola, winning on his final run of the day.
After three days Barry led, breaking the record three times as Edmondson struggled with car problems, but on his final run of the event he got the Nicholson McLaren-powered Gould all together to win and break the record, a 36.83 seconds. That time, along with those sub-record times set by Barry were over a 160 kph (100mph) average, from a standing start.
The Supersprint will see two cars start from the top of Con Rod Straight side-by-side racing against the clock, and finishing on Pit Straight a distance of 1.3km, while the hillclimb which runs over a distance of 1.7km, will start one car at a time from the hump on Mountain Straight and finish just prior to McPhillamy Park gates.