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After this weekend’s Sandown 500, we have begun to get a clearer picture of who the co-drivers are, who the favourites are and who are the best at keeping their heads cool under pressure ahead of this year’s Bathurst 1000.
Certainly there are a number of drivers that are a chance to win the Bathurst 1000 but, after yesterday, you would have to think both the drivers of Triple Eight racing, Jamie Whincup (paired with Paul Dumbrell) and Craig Lowndes (paired with Warren Luff) are the two hottest favourites for the biggest race in Australian motor car racing.
At Sandown, a lot of the major drivers had some sort of drama throughout the day, whether it was Steve Richards’ (co-driver for Mark Winterbottom) stall off the grid, or Will Davidson’s (paired with Steve Owen) major oil leak at the end.
These are the sort of issues all drivers will need to overcome at Bathurst, where anything can happen and it has proven time and time again to be a very strange sort of race full of surprises.
As hard as it may be for the main full time drivers to concentrate during this 1000km epic, it is even harder for the co-drivers, who aren’t racing full time and are suddenly called in to drive the biggest race in Australian motorsport.
When looking at the ones who can genuinely put up a fight for the Bathurst 1000, your mind almost automatically goes to Triple Eight racing. However we need to look at the bigger picture.
People like Mark Winterbottom and Will Davidson are in with a massive shot at winning the race on a day when anything is possible.
So far it has been a shocking season for Erebus racing and Lee Holdsworth, however they turned it around at Sandown with a fourth place finish for Holdsworth and his co-driver Craig Baird.
If they stay out of trouble and get the right car setup there is no reason they can’t take out the Bathurst 1000.
Shane Van Gisbergen and his co-driver Jeroen Bleekemolen had a shocker yesterday, but previously Van Gisbergen has finished high up the order on the mountain, so certainly don’t count them out because of a bad Sandown 500.
The Holden Racing Team Commodores are the two others among the real favourites.
Garth Tander with his co-driver Nick Percat have won on the mountain together before, and are both talented drivers.
The other Holden Racing Team car is piloted by James Courtney, a former V8 supercars championship winner, and former multiple Bathurst winner Greg Murphy.
This is a very experienced talented team and driving around in the Holden Racing Team Commodore, you would be a brave man to rule this talented duo out of contention to take the win.
The outsiders for the race include drivers like Michael Caruso (paired with Daniel Gaunt) or boom rookie Chaz Mostert (paired with Dale Wood). The pair of Mostert and Wood make up for their inexperience with an incredible amount of talent and neither of these teams should be written off.
In fact when it comes to the Bathurst 1000 no team or driver should be written off.
It is a long day – a long weekend in fact, with qualifying and all – and any one of the drivers and teams are capable of winning the greatest race of them all because that is the nature of the race; anyone could pull off a surprise upset with a couple of crashes or a little bit of good fortune in the strategy situation.
Everyone sets out to win Bathurst, but at the end there will be one team and two drivers standing on top of the podium with the Peter Brock trophy.
It could be anyone. That is the nature of the Bathurst 1000. Cruel and unforgiving.