THE 1996 Bathurst 1000 is a race which will forever hold a fond place in Craig Lowndes' heart, but eight months earlier at Mount Panorama he had a day he'd rather forget.
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It was in 1996 that the Australian Touring Car Championship, now known as Supercars, last raced at Mount Panorama twice in the same season.
This season the coronavirus pandemic forced Supercars to revise its original calendar, with the new plan to feature not only the Bathurst 1000 but the season finale at Mount Panorama.
Both those rounds will offer championships points, but in 1996 the Bathurst 1000 was a standalone event.
Lowndes, sharing the seat of his Holden Racing Team Commodore with Greg Murphy, posted the first Great Race win of his career that year.
They narrowly beat out the Shell Racing entry of Dick Johnson and John Bowe, while third that year belonged to Tony Longhurst and Steven Ellery.
"We had a great lead in to the Sunday and the actual race started when I started the race, I was having a great battle with Alan Jones," Lowndes recalled.
"He actually passed me, went up through turn two and the engine caught fire. I radioed to the guys that AJ was on fire.
"We put Murph on slicks on our first rotation, the track wasn't quite dry, but he complained for the first couple of laps but we got to the chequered flag.
"It was the first time we'd won the race both for Greg and I and also the team, so it was amazing.
"Post-race after we got the podium done we went back to the garage and celebrated as a team. We went out and celebrated a lot that night and we actually returned back to the circuit the next morning because the team thought it would be great to have a media call, but both Greg and I weren't in a shape to be able to do that."
That victory helped to ease the pain of Lowndes' visit to Mount Panorama earlier in the year for the third round of the Australian Touring Car Championship.
Lowndes arrived at Bathurst in February as the series leader, having taken out round one at Eastern Creek and round two at Sandown.
The format for the Bathurst round was three 10-lap races.
Lowndes placed fourth in race one, with John Bowe taking the win ahead of Peter Brock and Wayne Gardner.
But it was the second race that left Lowndes a disappointed man.
On the first lap as Lowndes approached Murray's Corner, he clipped the front of Gardner's Coca-Cola Racing Commodore. The damage caused in the incident forced both men to retire.
Bowe went on to win that race from pole with Johnson and Larry Perkins rounding out the top three.
That was the same order for the final 10-lap race as well, to see Shell FAI Racing star Bowe not only claim round honours but the series lead off Lowndes.
"The car was tremendous and I must say tribute to the Dunlop tyres, they were an experimental tyre from Japan but I think we might be on to something," Bowe said at the time.
