From five previous attempts the closest he has come is an eighth in 2014, while the only time the Nissan Motorsport team as a whole has enjoyed a Bathurst podium was in 2014.

That year James Moffat and Taz Douglas ran second.

There have been a handful of top 10 performances as well, but given the iconic nature of the Bathurst 1000, it has not been enough to satisfy Kelly.

However, this year he feels the four-car Nissan outfit will return its strongest performance yet at Mount Panorama.

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"The team has had a large focus on improving a lot of different elements in the car, a lot of that has obviously paid off for us, the results that we've got this year have been the strongest we've had in the Altima,” he said.

“A big part of that has been the power that we've got, we've had a big focus on the engine for many years now and that has started to pay dividends.”

Kelly is the best placed of the Nissan drivers in this year’s championship, sitting in seventh in a season which has seen him enjoy four podiums already.

One of those was a win at Winton. It was his team’s first victory in almost two years and the first time in seven seasons Kelly has stood on the top tier of a podium.

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Still, he knows there is still work to do.

Outright lap pace has been a focus, while for the three rounds of the Enduro Cup – Sandown, Bathurst and the Gold Coast – the team has worked on fuel economy as well.

“Most the races we do have a set fuel drop drop and the endurance races don't, so there's a lot of other elements to the enduros,” Kelly said.

“The fuel economy is not an over night fix, it is something which has an effect during endurance races, but it doesn't have that big an effect on the races leading up to it.

“We have had a little bit of time to work on that, but our bigger focus has been on our outright lap pace.

“We’ve been working hard developing it every year, obviously you spend as much time and money on it as you can and the areas the team has worked on the last 12 months have really shown.”

As well as trying to add to his personal tally of three Great Race podiums – a pair of wins with Greg Murphy and second alongside brother Todd – Kelly would like a good result to reward his entire team.

He feels they have certainly put in the work to deserve it.

“It's good to have the crew and the team behind us to back up that pace when we've got it,” he said. “We've shown that when we do have car speed we can convert that into results and sharing that with the team, especially because they have been working so hard over the last couple of years, it has been great to reward them.”