AS both a professional driver and now a team boss Zak Brown has seen some of the most challenging race circuits across the world, but he was still impressed by Mount Panorama.
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The McLaren F1 executive director is also a co-owner of Supercars outfit Walkinshaw Andretti United, so made the trip from his current home base in England to watch this year's Bathurst 1000.
Former Great Race winner Greg Murphy took Brown on a lap of the circuit and it gave him an appreciation of what the drivers who race around Mount Panorama face.
"Scary," Brown offered when asked what his first impression of the circuit was.
"Greg took me around for a lap and it was an iconic circuit, unbelievably brave these drivers ... the drivers here are absolutely world class, the teams are world class.
"What an awesome circuit, I've never seen anything like it."
While Brown was not able to mark his visit to Bathurst with a Peter Brock Trophy success story, he was still pleased to see one of the team's three Holden Commodores in contention - that of James Courtney and Jack Perkins - cross the line in third.
Another of the Supercars team bosses, Triple Eight's Roland Dane, also spoke of his respect for the Bathurst 1000 and the series as a whole.
"As far as I'm concerned Bathurst is still, in my mind, more important that the championship and has been all the time - 16 years I've been here," Dane, who can boast seven Bathurst 1000 wins and nine Supercars teams championship titles, said.
"I think the profile of Supercars, every time I go to Europe and particularly the UK ... my motor sport friends that I've grown up with, they still regard us as the benchmark in terms of national touring cars around the world.
"Sometimes we need to see the wood from the trees in terms of realising what a great product we have got fundamentally even though we spend an awful lot of time bagging it."
