{"id":779610,"date":"2026-07-05T01:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T01:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/779610\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T01:04:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T01:04:17","slug":"the-bathurst-1000-crash-that-condemned-mark-skaife-to-supercars-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/779610\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bathurst 1000 crash that condemned Mark Skaife to Supercars retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

MARK Skaife<\/a> has pinpointed the two moments that set him on the path to retirement from full-time Supercars driving.<\/p>\n

Skaife is one of the all-time legends of the category. By the end of 2005, he was a five-time champion and five-time Bathurst 1000 winner \u2013 to this day, he remains the only driver with five-plus of each.<\/p>\n

But the pressures of owner\/driver life caught up with him, Skaife finishing a lowly 16th in the 2006 standings despite recording seven race wins that year. There were more ups and downs in \u201907.<\/p>\n

Come \u201908, there were early warning bells when power steering dramas struck at the season-opening Adelaide 500.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car would move around in a straight line\u2026 I remember during the race I said to the guys, \u2018I\u2019m going to have to come in, we\u2019re going to have to look at this\u2019,\u201d Skaife recalled via the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Parramatta Toyota.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those ones where I was like, \u2018what am I doing this for? I\u2019ve been working my bum off, I\u2019ve got all these other dramas going on and now I can\u2019t even make this thing steer properly and it\u2019s going to fire me in the fence\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that was the first marker where I went \u2018na, I\u2019m not enjoying this\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came the final straw, that October at Bathurst.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Jamie) Whincup and I were battling for the lead and I came into the braking area for Forrest\u2019s Elbow, locked the right-hand-front, speared over the hill going too fast, locked the left-hand-front and ended up making contact with the wall on the right-hand-side,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI sort of just resigned myself to the thing that I just don\u2019t want to do this anymore at the moment. That wasn\u2019t a mistake I would normally make.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like an unforced error of the day and really it was sort of evidence that I wasn\u2019t able to compete at a level that I enjoyed, or I thought that I could sustain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the month was out, Skaife had announced he\u2019d be hanging up the helmet at season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

He went on to be an enduro co-driver for three more years, rounded out by a four-race combination with Triple Eight\u2019s Craig Lowndes<\/a> that netted three wins and a second.<\/p>\n

The Undercut \u2013 How hot is too hot?<\/p>\n

The Undercut is back for another week, downloading a hot weekend in the Top End for Supercars!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARK Skaife has pinpointed the two moments that set him on the path to retirement from full-time Supercars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-779610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}