It’s pretty fair to say that you cannot compare any racetrack with the famed Nürburgring Nordschleife. But here in Australia, Mount Panorama in Bathurst is the closest we have to anything like the Ring. The Bathurst circuit is only 6.2km long and a fair portion of the track consists of undulating straights. However, the climb and descent across the top of the mountain is definitely comparable the Nürburgring.Every year Australia’s big motor race is the Bathurst 1000. It’s the premiere event on the V8 Supercar calendar and today was the day of the Great Race. The footage above shows the opening lap and you can get a sense of how badly it can go wrong when high speeds are involved.

Followers of the Nürburgring 24 hour race will have some idea of what our V8 Supercars are capable of, thanks to the exploits of Mal Rose. In 2010 Mal wasn’t able to bring his V8 to the Ring, but fingers crossed it is back in 2011.

After the break you can see footage of Mark Winterbottom’s pole position winning lap from yesterday’s Top 10 shootout.