Bathurst magazine out now

BATHURST - The Great Race magazine – Australian MUSCLE CAR's annual pre-Bathurst sister publication – is your pre-event armchair guide to the Great Race. It’s more than just a form guide: the 2025 issue examines some of the important behind-the-scenes issues that will affect this year's race, such as the change to the co-drivers’ minimum lap requirement. This regulation change will fundamentally alter the way teams approach the race – we explain why, what might happen, and how it might affect the outcome.

We take you on a sight-seeing tour of the Mount Panorama circuit with the man who has been the track’s caretaker for more than a quarter of a century, and go inside Race Control to meet the Motorsport Australia official, James Taylor, whose voice you’ll hear over the telecast saying those words: ‘Safety Car boards and scramble’.

On the subject of Safety Cars, BATHURST - The Great Race magazine looks back on the almost Safey Car-free 2024 race – and how so many people, including even the TV commentators, thought the first half of the race was in desperate need of a Safety Car. In this philosophical reflection, BATHURST - The Great Race argues that if a Safety Car period is needed to spice up the action, then maybe the product itself isn’t exciting enough – or expectations these days are simply unrealistic. The bottom line is that if caution periods are needed to enliven a race in which the entire field is covered by barely more than two seconds' lap time difference, over a lap distance as long 6.2km, then we have a problem…

Things have certainly changed over the years at Bathurst – no one ever though the 1977 Moffat Ford Dealers 1-2 form-finish or the Peter Brock/Jim Richards six-lap win in 1979 weren’t exciting. For a look at how things were at Bathurst back in the day, BATHURST - The Great Race magazine this year celebrates the half-century anniversary of Peter Brock’s second Bathurst win, the 1975 Hardie-Ferodo 1000, and the first year of Group A, 40 years ago.

All that and much more in the 2025 edition of BATHURST - The Great Race magazine, available now at newsagents or online at MyMagazines.