I love Bathurst

Bathurst is for Australia as the Indy 500 is for the States. Well over 100,000 men, women and children camping around a bitumen and concrete tunnel to watch highly paid men wreck very expensive automobiles. In a world where conservation is key, car pooling is cool and buying a second hand V8 is about as appealing as buying a second hand coffin there are 50 odd one person cars doing 161 laps at the rate of 3 litres of petrol per lap with a thousand or so tyres to consume landfill at the end of the weekend; I love Bathurst.

On the Friday practise session drivers were hooking into Forrest Elbow at the end of Conrod Straight going full noise (300kph) trying to get the car straight to brake hard for a set of second and third gear corners. At the same time any number of spectators were hooking into their sumteenth can of Bundy’n’Coke at full noise with no chance of getting straight, seemingly taking corners while trying to stand still.
Drivers spend all weekend trying to avoid hitting walls using precise cognitive skill and amazing reflexes while the spectators are simultaneously destroying those abilities while racing head first towards their inevitable ‘crash’; I love Motorsport.

Saturday was an average day for motor sport but the spectators didn’t seem to mind. We are Australian; our national hero’s are a cricketer and an armed stick up artist, our second longest serving Prime Minister held a Guinness world record for drinking beer, we eat our national emblem (the kangaroo) and have a day off for a three and half minute horse race so it’s no surprise many saw the rain as an opportunity to take an extra dose of ‘inner warmth’ and hoped for an increase in on track carnage. A combination of the whether and the old ‘never letting a mate down’ Aussie spirit soon delivered the carnage in the early support races as less expensive cars with lower paid drivers were sliding off into walls and sandpits to the delight of all. Excepting those in the pits who had to pay or work to fix the damage I would assume. The top ten shoot out for pole position on Sunday started wet and finished dry giving a huge advantage to the later entrants.

All this excitement took me by surprise; I was up for two hours on Saturday before I even put underpants on. During this time I heard a most troubling conversation:

Left:	Morning Righty. We’ve been out for a while, must be Bathurst.
Right:	Thought it was cold. I must’ve slept in, where’s Dick?
Left:	I think he saw some pit girls on the telly, you won’t get his attention for a while.
Right:	He’s hopeless, but it must be nice to have a head, and an eye to see with though. How are things up there?
Left: (annoyed)	Whinging already! When are you going to get over the ‘Up there’ thing Righty; it’s barely a couple of millimetres?
Right:	Easy for you to say Mr “I don’t take the brunt of bike seats”. You just...
Left: (yelling)	No more Righty! I was just trying to point out the beauty of our freedom but you can’t have a conversation with out the ‘poor me’ routine. No more!
Dick: (screaming)	Shut up you two there are girls in lycra on TV. LYCRA DAMN YOU!

I had no idea there was so much testicular tension. A veritable enclave of envy, I don’t know what to do? I guess when you spend that much time so close relationships are bound to get a little testy (a-ha, mmmmm). I feel I should intervene and act as a mediator but where would I start; you can’t change nature?

Sunday was a much more calculated affair, none of this waking up caught unawares and un-underweared. The race coverage started at 7am with a morning practise then a Carerra Cup race that provided a monumental spill with one flipping on its’ roof at about 260kms, culminating in the main race starting at 10am.

An absolute prerequisite for watching the race was a sparkling clean car. Driving a derivative of one the two cars racing I had to have it ready for a victory cruise in case ‘we’ would win. I set the alarm in time to clean the car and pick up some couch condiments and be home in time for 10am start missing the drivel that goes on before hand. Can’t handle that, it’s like sitting a young child in front of their presents of a Christmas morning and telling them they can’t open any until the national anthem is sung; I want to see a motor race not a freekin’ opera. Ask me about Aryton Senna I could bore you to tears, enquire after Three Tenors and I’ll lend you $30.

Anyhoo, my military like timing thwarted any mention of anything “girt by sea”.
What is girt anyway, you don’t girt things, and things don’t get girted. “I was having a picnic the other day and suddenly I was girt by ants”, hardly. Anyway if ‘home’, an island, was going to be girt by something what would it be if weren’t sea? Our home is girt by...Marshmallow, Our home is girt by...Gerbils, Our home is girt by...that wet stuff. We have iconic songs like the one about the bloke that stole a sheep and topped himself when the cops caught up with him. Girt by police he saw no way out it seems. Or that song the country fella sings at the rugby. That’s a better choice, no one commits suicide at the end of a crime spree and nothing is girt by the obvious in that one.

The race, as Bathursts are these days, was a 5.5 hour sprint punctuated by a series of safety car laps. ‘We’ won despite the fact Lowdnes, Ambrose and possibly Ingal were quicker on the day. One by one they managed to self destruct in some strange ways. Lowdnes made an uncustomary mistake once he had built an early lead only then to be hit by the detached wayward wheel of another car that had just hit a wall. Both Ambrose and Ingal cars were delayed due to failing to meet safety requirements. Bathurst is the only internationally sanctioned race for V8 Supercars where the wearing of fireproof balaclavas under helmets is required by FIA regulations. The cars are very hot inside and being a once a year thing it would be easy to forget and Stone Brothers Racing drivers weren't wearing them. A costly mistake as Ambrose got a penalty for his co-driver not wearing one and then had to stop again to put one on himself. Ingal managed to quietly pull off an unscheduled driver change, scurried out the back before returning minutes later ‘balaclava-ed up’ to relieve his co-driver that had only done a few laps. It probably saved him a penalty but the two driver changes would not have been a great deal shorter in time.

The important thing is that at least until this time next year I can look at those poor buggers that drive the other brand with an air of superiority; I love Bathurst.

-------------------------------------------------
N.B. Paper mache is not recommended to provide wheel access to a primary school.