Bathurst's three Inter Dominion Pacing Championship hopes are sitting towards the bottom of the standings after two heats and with just one race left to rack up points it's going to take a high finish for them to be a hope of making the field for the $500,000 final.

Steve Turnbull's Conviction and Atomic Red along with Chris Frisby's Our Uncle Sam didn't quite have the speed to match it with the front runners over the mile in Tuesday's heats.

Atomic Red was burned out after putting in the early work to reach the death seat in his heat, drifting back through the pack to finish second last.

Conviction and Our Uncle Sam raced at the rear of the field in the second heat.

Both runners struggled to make their way up the standings in the run for home.

Conviction saved ground on the pegs but didn't have the legs to finish while Our Uncle Sam went widest of any runner down the home stretch in his unsuccessful bid.

Our Uncle Sam and Conviction are on nine points and Atomic Red is on seven going into Friday's last heat - well adrift of dominant leading pair A G's White Socks and Ultimate Sniper on 34 each.

"Atomic Red was travelling well before he hit the last turn. He didn't run on like he usually does but he seems to have pulled up alright. He just hasn't handled the track as well as I would have hoped," Turnbull said.

"Conviction just had no luck. He was in the one-one early before all of a sudden he was back out last and they were three and four wide in front of him. Amanda elected to pull him back along the fence. He found the line alright, it was just a shame he got pushed back to last.

"It's been disappointing but it's a learning thing. I remember I brought [former Inter Dominion champion] Smooth Satin over and he went ordinary through the series but as soon as he got back on his own track he won mum's race quite easily.

"They're out of their surroundings, they were held up coming over here, and you can't have any setbacks. The horses over here are really good, too."