You keep telling yourself its the greatest track in the world, that it's great fun. But most times that doesn't work. There's very little place to go if anything happens.
You've basically got a choice of a mound or the open air. People tell us we have no problems at the end of ConRod because there's an escape road there. But at the speeds we're travelling you've got to be dammed good even to steer into the escape road.
The circuit has a mystique that grabs you. It's such an overpowering track and because we only
race on it once a year it's easy to get wound up. It's up to the driver to get the hang-ups out of his head. If you treat the circuit section by section, instead of worrying about it as a whole, it becomes manageable.
But some of the sections are getting mighty fast. Back in 1969 we were lapping in 2 min. 54 secs, and thinking it was the quickest we'd ever go. Now we're doing 20 sec a lap faster, and we're picking up most of the time in the high speed sections. The fastest corner on the circuit, McPhillamy Park used to be a 140 km/h desperado. We're now going through at 180 km/h.
The increased speeds increase the need for driver comfort. We're all sliding around inside the cars - no saloon car seats were ever meant for holding a driver in place at such consistantly high speeds. I have special supports on each side of my seat - the rules allow it. But they're not there so much to hold me in as to cushion my hip bones from the seat belt. The belts can chafe your thighs so badly you're tempted to lose concentration with the pain.
And concentration is what it's all about. It's a mind game. There's just no room for easing off at Bathurst... Certainly not as much as there used to be. A t the apex of Shell corner you're doing perhaps only 65 km/h and accelerating hard in second. You take the car right out to the fence and punch it hard up pit straight through third and into fourth cog. Back to second for Hell corner, apexing on the tree stump which has been there since the circuit opened and then power up Mountain straight. The car becomes light over the hump and then settles down, still accelerating up to 200 km/h at the hard uphill XL Bend. It's a more difficult corner than it looks because the exit lightens up and you have to be careful where you put the power on.
The climb up to the cutting is far faster than you think. You're going through the left hander, brushing the earth bank at more than 160 km/h. You can lose a lot of time in the Cutting. ou're in second and you have to be terribly smooth, turning the approach and the exit into one smooth, flowing motion.
