WHEN it comes to long track racing Panorama Motorcycle Club's Wade Carter thinks the Bathurst Showground is the fastest and best atmosphere track in Australia - and he's certainly not alone in holding that opinion.
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The lure of racing at the track has created huge interest for the revival of the Bathurst Long Track Masters meeting, which will be staged for the first time since 2017 this March.
The unprecedented interest is something Carter and those alongside him on Panorama MCC's new long track committee - Mick Kovac, Andy Shumack, Matt Siskovic and Lyndel Butler - had not envisaged when opting to stage the event.
"The real intention was this was going to be an entry-level, grass roots event that could encourage a bit of local racing first so the new committee could get their head around running an event," Carter said.
"But because we had to licence it as an open event, we have people coming from Townsville, from Mildura, Melbourne - they are coming from all over the place.
"Everyone wants to race there. It is just the fastest, best atmosphere track, best laid out facility for this event in Australia and they all say it."
Once Panorama MCC opened registrations for the event, they were inundated by a host of entries as riders signed up to be part of the Bathurst Long Track Masters.
Not wanting to turn away riders, the committee adjusted their plans to try and cater for as many people as possible.
The result will be a massive program featuring some of Australia's best riders.
"Lyndel Butler, she's the race secretary ... she says when there's an event on competitors usually drag their feet putting entries in, but she said Bathurst, it was like boom, it was full," Carter said.
"In three weeks we hit capacity so then we looked at the schedule of how we could increase numbers in class and we had the track licence to go from 13 to 15 bikes, which allowed us to put the 60 that were on the waiting list into the grid."
Given the Bathurst Showground is not a permanent track, plenty of hard work will go into preparing it for the event.
Then there's the logistical issues that arise from running an event with packed grids.
It means that for the first time, the Bathurst Long Track Masters will feature Friday night practice to allow for a full racing program on the Saturday.
"In previous years we've never run a practice night on the Friday night, but this year we are running that. Because we've got so many more riders than we've had in previous years, we want to get through practice on Friday so we can get into racing earlier on Saturday," Carter explained.
"Saturday starts at 9am and it will go through to 10.30pm - we have 14 classes and this year we've also got what we call demo, which is the demo 50s, the non-competitive juniors, and they've got a little track on the in-field.
"We've never done that before, but we are trying to cater for the next generation racers.
"On the day there will be over 40-50 volunteers to run the event, there are 117 races with over 300 riders entered. It's massive."
As well as the chance for non-competitive juniors to be part of the program, the Panorama MCC has taken another step to ensure some of the best emerging young talents get their chance.
From the Bathurst club alone some 20 juniors will get their first long track experience.
"There's been years gone by where juniors haven't really had a run, so we tried to make sure that kids from nine to 13 and 13 to 16 have racing - there's two different classes there," Carter said.
"At open meets they don't usually get much of a look in, but they're some of the fastest kids in the country. These kids that have entered for Bathurst, their laps times are no different from the pro 250 class - they need to be here."
That sort of quality, talent-packed classes will be a feature right across the program and as Carter points out, the competition for spots in the class finals should mean every heat is hotly contested.
"There are 74 riders in the pro 450 class, there's 74 riders in the unlimited class so to make the final, you have to win your heat race - that's how stacked it is," he said.
"Usually you'll go to a meet and they'll take the top three out of a heat race, but here you've got to win you heat race, it's that packed full of heavy hitters.
"We've also never had this many long track sliders, the real fast solo bikes. There are 28 modern sliders, usually we'd only get like 10 and then evo sliders, the older sliders, there are 13 of them."
The event will be held on Saturday, March 5.
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