Mount Panorama

Mount Panorama is a public road for most of the week and a closed racing circuit for the rest — a status it has held since 1938, managed by Bathurst Regional Council rather than a private operator. The current 6.213-kilometre, 23-turn layout runs counterclockwise up and over the mountain the circuit is named for, with a vertical difference of 174 metres between its highest and lowest points and a steepest gradient of 1-in-6.13 — among the most dramatic elevation changes of any circuit in the world, and the reason it is regarded as one of motorsport's great physical challenges as much as a technical one.

Hell Corner, the tight left that opens the lap, is named for a tree stump that once sat at its apex. The Cutting, where the road was literally cut into the mountainside, carries the circuit's steepest gradient. Reid Park — named for Bathurst city engineer Hughie Reid, who redesigned sections of the road to suit racing — is an uphill right-hander followed by an open left, before the field is released down the 1.916-kilometre Conrod Straight, the circuit's fastest section and the run every driver waits for after the climb.

Mount Panorama is a public road for six days a week and a cathedral on the seventh. Since 1938, the climb over the top of the Mountain and the plunge down Conrod Straight have made Bathurst the spiritual home of GT3 racing and the one lap every serious driver owes themselves. It is the pilgrimage — and the reason the championship has to reach Oceania.

The ultimate bucket-list lap, made bespoke: a members' ascent of the Mountain, three hours west of Sydney and bookended by the harbour.

Mount Panorama opened on March 17, 1938 as a scenic drive. The first race meeting, for motorcycles, followed on April 16 that year, and the Australian Grand Prix was run over the mountain two days later — the first of four, with the race returning in 1947, 1952 and 1958. Its headline event today is the Bathurst 1000, one of the biggest dates on the touring-car calendar; the Bathurst 12 Hour, first run in 1991 and revived in 2007, has been a GT3 race since 2011. Almost ninety years on, it remains the lap every serious GT driver is said to owe themselves at least once.

Circuit information — Bathurst Regional Council →