Bathurst 2001: The Return Of The V8's

In 2001 the V8 Supercar's will make a triumphant return to their traditional date of the first Sunday in October. The rival Super Touring series have finally relinquished their booking of the Mt Panorama circuit on that date.

It seems ironic that at the same time the announcement came that Super Touring Championship was officially dead. Despite their efforts to reinvent themselves as an off season V8 based series the Seven Network pulled the plug on television coverage. This was the last straw for TOCA Australia and Chief Executive Kelvin O’Reilly announced they had cancelled the series. Perhaps their new class will now be known as No-Future Tourers.

HRT announced that they will split their regular drivers to maximise their chances of keeping at least one driver on top of the series table, HRT's Jeff Grech explains why. "A lot of thought went into this." Said Grech. "You can put your two lead drivers together and if they have a successful day at the mountain then that's fine. However if anything should go wrong - and let's face it, there are plenty of opportunities for that at Bathurst - then the two drivers who are leading the Championship, could find themselves back down the order. Especially with 540 points for a race win available." Mark Skaife will have Tony Longhurst and Jason Bright gets Tomas Mezera. Their efforts in the Queensland 500 showed they can still cut it at the front given a top car.

As this is the most important race of the year many teams plan to have new cars for this event. Perhaps the most significant is the new Gibson Motorsport Falcon. This will be the first in house Falcon built by this former top Holden team. They have been running a second hand Stone Bros Falcon for Craig Lowndes the earlier races while they learnt about Fords and how to turn a Falcon into a race car. I am sure they learnt a lot from the SBR Falcon, the only people to have built a Bathurst wining Falcon V8 Supercar. The driving line up for the new car is very impressive, multiple Australian Champion Craig Lowndes backed up by the experienced Neil Crompton. There is something about Bathurst that brings out he best in Neil, last year he was the second fastest man in the race, they will lose nothing in speed when they change drivers. Who was the fastest driver

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