{"id":927803,"date":"2026-10-14T12:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T12:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927803\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T12:06:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T12:06:23","slug":"why-bathurst-1000-has-lost-its-international-flavour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927803\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bathurst 1000 has lost its international flavour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bathurst remains, for many, one of the truly great races, but in recent years the 1000km touring car classic around the mountain has become more of a national affair, even if global motorsport has become a more open playing field.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When touring cars were at their strongest in the late stages of the last century, the crossover of Group A saw drivers move between Europe and Australia. However, the two breakaway Super Touring Bathursts of 1997 and 1998, fabled to British Touring Car followers as the time their teams and drivers conquered the mountain, are almost eradicated from the history of Supercars, with current drivers barely aware there were once two \u2018Bathurst 1000s\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jim Richards and Rickard Rydell won the last of those events in a Tom Walkinshaw Racing-run Volvo S40, the year the Swede also won the BTCC. Since then, only one international driver has won: Alexandre Premat, who had acclimatised to the series as a full-time Supercars driver before becoming a top-level co-driver. Only two drivers from outside the Australasian region have taken part since that win: France\u2019s Kevin Estre, and Switzerland\u2019s Simona de Silvestro<\/a>, both 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So why the continual downturn in international stars, when drivers such as Matt Neal, John Cleland, Jason Plato, and Yvan Muller were regular guests in the early years of the Supercars era?\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges is adapting to a unique car with its own isolated technical regulation. The Australian championship replaced Group A with its own Group 3A five-litre V8 cars in 1993, which later took on the \u2018Supercars\u2019 name. These rear-wheel-drive beasts differed greatly from Europe\u2019s move to two-litre Super Touring. Iterations of that concept continue with the current Gen3 Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros and Toyota Supras, which look closer to GT cars but have much more in common with their Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon predecessors, making adapting hard, even for GT drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of international drivers come and drive our cars, but they\u2019re very difficult as they\u2019re right-hand drive, and they\u2019re still a stick-shift though they\u2019re now sequential,\u201d says seven-time Bathurst champion Craig Lowndes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Estre <\/p>\n

Estre was the last high-profile international driver at the Bathurst 1000 in 2023<\/p>\n

Photo by: Edge Photographics<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had Andy Priaulx come over and drive our sister car,\u201d he adds, referring to Priaulx and Mattias Ekstrom\u2019s wild card entry with Triple Eight in 2013. \u201cAndy had been out here a number of times, and in the end he got his head around it; they\u2019re a unique car with front-engine, rear-wheel drive and a locked diff, so they\u2019re different to anything else out there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lowndes\u2019s former team principal Roland Dane, now running PremiAir Racing, agrees that Supercars\u2019 basic differential is a key factor: \u201cWe run a constantly locked diff, and if we removed that and had a proper differential like a GT3 car or a NASCAR, I think that would improve the racing. It would make the cars easier to set up for the average driver. Then we\u2019d see an influx of international drivers, because a lot of them know the circuit very well through the Bathurst 12 Hour and can be highly competitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue is you\u2019ve got a handful of drivers at the top of this category who I\u2019d label as \u2018turkeys who don\u2019t vote for Christmas\u2019. They want to keep it as a closed shop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I loved the international flavour and what they could bring, their culture, our culture, their fans, our fans” David Reynolds<\/a><\/p>\n

There are long-standing political factors, too. In 2010 the series stopped teams running their two full-time drivers in the same car, a rule that still stands. Dane argues it was meant to stop Triple Eight dominating at the mountain, though it backfired when the team went 1-2 that year with Lowndes leading Whincup. He believes the rule stops teams being experimental with their second car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teams just got ultra-conservative about who they put in the cars, so these days you rarely see an international,\u201d says Dane. \u201cYou can take a driver to a track like Sandown, with lots of 90-degree corners and relatively low speed, and they can learn it in five minutes, as Estre showed, but go to Bathurst\u2026 it\u2019s completely different.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there is the waning interest in European racing. \u201cOur younger drivers don\u2019t have the same kind of knowledge of these other series,\u201d says Lowndes. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the Scotty McLaughlins and Shane van Gisbergens who have come from our world and gone to America \u2013 and the focus may have changed from Europe to America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Reynolds, <\/p>\n

Reynolds, who co-drove with Priaulx in 2009 and 2010, says he missed the international flavour<\/p>\n

Photo by: Chris Von Wieldt<\/p>\n

Lowndes adds: \u201cI think the desire is still there to get British drivers here. I met Jake Hill last year at the Adelaide Motorsport Festival, he loves our style of car and he\u2019s the right kind of person to get over here and get into a test.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have loved to have tried Ash Sutton or Gordon Shedden,\u201d continues Dane, \u201cbut when you\u2019re looking at the pool of drivers available, I\u2019d be looking at the top-ranking professional GT3 drivers, as there are some very good drivers who didn\u2019t quite make it in single-seaters and have huge potential.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The change in appetite isn\u2019t one-way, as even younger touring car drivers in Europe lack the same appreciation of the Great Race as previous generations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet Supercars drivers still feel the loss. \u201cI 100% miss it,\u2019 says 2017 Bathurst winner David Reynolds. \u201cI loved the international flavour and what they could bring, their culture, our culture, their fans, our fans. I thoroughly loved it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Through GT3, international drivers get to race at the circuit in cars they know, or have even developed, at the Bathurst 12 Hour, which has become a very popular sister event to the 1000. However, there\u2019s no question that the rich heritage and national interest behind the Bathurst 1000 make it one of motorsport\u2019s true spectacles, and it would be great to see the international flavour rejoin it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That probably won\u2019t happen until the cars move closer to the global market, testing becomes less limited and the series rebuilds its international profile. Otherwise, NASCAR drivers may well get there before the Europeans do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Some <\/p>\n

Some big changes would be required to get international drivers back to the Bathurst 1000<\/p>\n

Photo by: Daniel Kalisz\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bathurst remains, for many, one of the truly great races, but in recent years the 1000km touring car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,12356,806,805,803,804,129170,85,40367,494978],"class_list":["post-927803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bathurst-1000","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-mount-panorama-circuit","tag-sports","tag-supercars","tag-why-bathurst-1000-has-lost-its-international-flavour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927803","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=927803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}