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Mount Panorama’s surprising Gold Star history
Mount Panorama may well be famous as a mecca for all things Touring Car racing, but the roots of Australian open-wheel racing stretch back just as far at the place known as the spiritual home of Australian Motorsport.
Bathurst played a significant role in the early days of the Australian Drivers’ Championship and also hosted the Australian Grand Prix on several occasions before the tin-top wave swept the open wheel cars away to other circuits.
2021 will see the Gold Star make a triumphant return to – and S5000 a spectacular debut at – the Mountain at the first ever Supercheap Auto Bathurst International event, set for November 26-28.
Tickets and Camping are now on sale for the event that will see S5000 joined by Supercheap Auto TCR Australia, Fanatec GT World Challenge, TransAm, Gulf Western Oil Touring Car Masters, Porsche Sprint Challenge and more in a bumper weekend of racing.
The event will be broadcast live on the free to air network of Channel Seven as well as being broadcast both live and on demand via 7 Plus.
CLICK HERE for general and grandstand admission
CLICK HERE for camping options
CLICK HERE for corporate hospitality options
The return of the Gold Star to Mount Panorama will add a new chapter to the famous circuit’s history that started with the first Australian Drivers’ Championship season in 1957.
The Bathurst 100 was the fourth round of the title that year and was claimed by Newcastle-born driver Arnold Glass, driving a HWM Jaguar.
Aged 31 at the time, Glass’ victory remains significant in the Gold Star record books as the only occasion in which a Jaguar-powered car has won a Gold Star race.
Lex Davison drove his stunning Ferrari 500/625 to victory in the second Gold Star race at Bathurst later that year on his way to the championship, before returning a year later to take the 1958 Australian Grand Prix, which doubled as a Gold Star round, as well.
It would be the final of four Australian Grands Prix staged at Bathurst. The first was the 1938 race, the first major event held at the recently completed circuit, which was won by Peter Whitehead driving an ERA.
Bathurst hosted the first post-war AGP in 1947, won by Bill Murray aboard an MG, while Doug Whiteford – a multiple Australian Grand Prix winner – won the penultimate race held at Bathurst in 1952, driving a Talbot-Lago.
Following Lukey’s 1958 Gold Star / AGP double, the Bathurst 100 returned in March 1959 and marked the fourth Australian Drivers’ Championship race at Mount Panorama.
The race was won by Ross Jensen, driving a Maserati 250F, however he was ineligible for Gold Star points meaning runner-up Len Lukey took the maximum score away on his way to eventually claiming the title that year.
The championship would again race twice at Mount Panorama in 1959, Bib Stillwell claiming the return bout later that year as part of the NSW Road Racing Championship event in October.
Stillwell would win again, in 1962, with the intervening races in 1960 and ’61 claimed by Alec Mildren and Bill Patterson, respectively. It would mark five-straight victories for drivers steering Cooper-Climax vehicles, a record not surpassed at Bathurst until the second decade of the next century.
Following a six year break, 1968 saw a famous name etch itself into Bathurst’s Gold Star record books, though initially it wasn’t as a driver rather the car itself.
Phil West won the 1968 Bathurst Gold Star trophy driving a Repco Brabham BT23, driving for the famous Scuderia Veloce team headed by noted industry figure David McKay.
It would mark the first time the famous World Championship-winning surname had won at Mount Panorama, though it didn’t take long to repeat: Sir Jack himself returning a year later to claim the 1969 Bathurst 100 aboard a Repco Brabham BT31 in a race that would also mark Bathurst’s final Gold Star race for a generation.
It didn’t stop the open-wheel racers desire to challenge the Mountain though, F5000 featuring regularly at Bathurst throughout the next four years.
The most notable occasion came in 1970, when Niel Allen blasted his Chevrolet-powered McLaren M10B to a stunning 2m09.7-second lap during a three-lap ‘Captain Cook Trophy’ race held as a support to the Australian Touring Car Championship event that Easter.
Allen’s record would stand as Bathurst’s fastest ever lap for more than three decades, as the ‘big banger’ open wheelers drifted away from the Mountain following the 1973 season.
It would take nearly 43 years – almost to the week – for Australia’s premier open wheel award to count Mount Panorama on its schedule once again, following a lengthy campaign by the Australian Formula 3 category, at the time custodians of the Gold Star, to have their cars permitted to tackle the Mountain.
After several years of trying, the international-spec Dallara F3 cars made their Bathurst debut in 2012 with young South Aussie driver Jordan Skinner winning the first race – driving for current Gold Star champions, Team BRM.
F3 would race at the Easter Bathurst event for the following two years, culminating in a thrilling 2014 race that saw Bathurst’s outright lap record once again fall to a ‘wings and slicks’ racer; this time Simon Hodge, again driving a Team BRM entered car. It would again mark the end of a Gold Star era, Hodge the final champion before the award was parked following the 2014 season.
Seven years later, Hodge would claim back-to-back Australian Drivers’ Championship titles, though this time he swapped steering wheel for headset as an engineer for 2021 VHT S5000 Australian Drivers’ Champion Joey Mawson.
The Gold Star returns to Bathurst this year with S5000 leading the charge for what will be just the 14th round of Australia’s peak open wheel award ever staged at Mount Panorama.
Brayden Willmington’s demonstration laps during this year’s Hi-Tec Oils Bathurst 6 Hour event were the first for the category at Mount Panorama, with the in-car video of his tentative first ever laps of the 6.213km circuit viewed more than 100,000 times since going online.
The Mount Panorama round of the 2021-22 S5000 Australian Drivers’ Championship will form part of a unique ‘Triple Crown’ of back-to-back-to-back marquee events, which includes the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne and the Gold Coast 500 event in Queensland.
Tickets and Camping are now on sale for the event that will see S5000 joined by Supercheap Auto TCR Australia, Fanatec GT World Challenge, TransAm, Gulf Western Oil Touring Car Masters, Porsche Sprint Challenge and more in a bumper weekend of racing.
The event will be broadcast live on the free to air network of Channel Seven as well as being broadcast both live and on demand via 7 Plus.
CLICK HERE for general and grandstand admission
CLICK HERE for camping options
CLICK HERE for corporate hospitality options