Pure Bathurst

Friend Warren and I have been making our annual pilgrimage to the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst for the 12 hour GT Sports Car race every year since 2015. We have a set program. We drive the 250 kms to Bathurst on Saturday morning. Then we watch qualifying and walk the paddock/pits Saturday afternoon, catching up with friends as we wander. Late afternoon we drive to Orange and our overnight motel. 

We have dinner in the pub, the Hotel Canobalas, in the evening and then rise very early on the Sunday morning and drive back to Bathurst-40 mins- for the spectacular 5.45am race start in the dark. We watch the race from a variety of locations through the day and then retreat to Orange exhausted after the end of the race. Then it's another evening in the pub lining up the schooners of draught Stone and Wood before an overnight stay then driving back to Terrigal over the Blue Mountains on the Bells Line of Road on the Monday morning.

Invairably the weather is hot and often it is very hot. Last year it was impossible -heatstroke temperature- and we talked about not going in 2021. We thought that 12 hours out in the open in those temperatures at our age was perhaps not wise. Little did we know that we need not have made any decision as covid-19 made the decision for us. The 2021 race would have been next weekend. 

When will we see the GT teams racing for 12 hours at Bathurst again? Who knows. 

In the meantime-memories of Bathurst 12 hours 2017- a Porsche 911 entering Caltex Chase in the first hour of the race with the sun rising in the east behind the Blue Mountains. Pure Bathurst.

This photo was taken with an unlikely motor sport camera-my Leica X Vario. The X Vario was a very slow seller when launched in 2013 due to a perceived poor specification, a silly marketing strategy by Leica and a hostile reception in the online photographic media. 

In reality the XV is a very capable camera with a superb lens and is now seen as a classic with steadily climbing used prices . The photo was taken at 1/1000th second at F/6.4 -the maximum aperture of the fixed zoom lens at 70mm-and ISO1250. It is a DNG (RAW) file which I processed in Lightroom.