V8 Supercars: Bathurst a real buzz

Chaz Mostert and Paul Morris dominated at Bathurst. Picture / Mark Horsburgh

Kiwis fall short way after promising start at Mount Panorama

Last weekend's Bathurst 1000 will go down in the annals of racing on The Mountain as one of the very best. It may not be remembered for the fiercest wheel-to-wheel racing, but for sheer drama, heartbreak, on-the-edge-of-the-seat action, weird and bizarre, there is no comparison.

All the drama in the Supercheap Auto-sponsored event really got started when the newly surfaced track started breaking up at the fast and tricky turn two (Griffins Bend) heading into The Cutting.

Cars began to spear off into the wall from lap 60 and so the red flag came out for only the second time in race history.

An hour later the field was back in action and from that moment it was all on for young and old. Speaking of young and old, the eventual "last pair standing" was the Ford Performance combination of one of the youngest in the field, Chaz Mostert, and one of the oldest, Paul Morris.

Crossing the line ahead of James Moffat and Taz Douglas with Nick Percat and Oliver Gavin in third meant V8 Supercars team FPR defended its 2013 title - last year's champions, Mark Winterbottom and Steve Owen, finished sixth.

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It was a day, though, where the Kiwis in the field came oh-so-close but no cigar.

The lead-up to the race looked good for the New Zealanders. Fabian Coulthard set a lap record in qualifying, Shane van Gisbergen put his car on pole, Scott McLaughlin led for large chunks of the race, Greg Murphy was handily placed for most of the race and Ant Pedersen stayed out of trouble.

Things began to unravel for the Kiwis early on when James Courtney and Murphy's cars had an electrical failure on the steering wheel from the get go, and although they soldiered on could manage only 13th.

Coulthard and Luke Youlden were nicely poised before first a lock up caused Coulthard to pit and then an errant kangaroo hit the car while Youlden was driving, dropping them to ninth.

McLaughlin and Alex Premat were sitting pretty in fourth until the young Kiwi clipped the wall, bringing a trip to the pit. Making it back out to the track 14 laps down the pair could manage only 17th.

Van Gisbergen and Jonathan Webb had a healthy lead until the last pit stop with 11 laps to go.

In an uncharacteristic error, van Gisbergen stalled the car in pit lane and was unable to get it started again as the rest of the field streamed past. The pit crew fired the car up again and they crossed the line in 16th.

The final Kiwis in the field, piloting the New Zealand wildcard entry for Super Black Racing, Pedersen and Andre Heimgartner did everything asked of them.

The youngest and least experienced pairing in the race stayed out of trouble and adhered to the maxim on Mount Panorama that to get a good result you have to finish on the lead lap, which they did in a respectable 11th place.

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