Challenge Bathurst is a regularity motorsport event, that attracts hundreds of race drivers, amateur, semi professional and professional drivers with teams.

The beauty of this type of racing is the variety of cars – from Maserati’s, Lotus’s, Porsche’s, Holden’s, WRX’s, BMW’s etc  and MX-5’s, old and new.

They are sorted into groups according to the time the driver sets for doing 1 lap around Mount Panorama.  Don’t be fooled though, there is no such thing as a slow lap time. All the drivers are pushing themselves to get the fastest lap time.

Points are allocated to drivers who drive faster or slower than the time nominated.  The aim of the game is not to get points, but to drive consistent timed laps each session. There are no timing devices for the driver, so the driver needs to drive smart and fast around the track with other cars that maybe faster or slower .

As in all motor sport, a few cars with break down, crash out or hit a kangaroo in this notoriously difficult track. There are whole teams that come with their cars in semi trailers, with sponsorship galore.

This year the ambassador for the major sponsor Liqui Moly, was John Bowe, who was a Bathurst 1000 winner, and tours now in the Touring Car Masters series. He decided to have a go at this event.

Our own Newington College PE/PDH teacher Jamie Martin, with his MX-5 car, (sponsored by Merribuiningfinearts.com) not only won his group, but also won overall, against 100s of race cars with the lowest point score of 100 points. He ran 4 laps in the last session hitting his exact time of 3.05 minutes.  

This was a mammoth effort beating some of the best drivers to take out this prize. Congratulations.