Mount Panorama

What you'll find

Mount Panorama is a public road that closes a few days a year to become a circuit. The rest of the time it has a speed limit, road signs and residents who live inside the layout. That explains why it is the way it is: it climbs a mountain, crosses the top between concrete walls barely two car widths apart, and drops onto a straight over a kilometre long. In Assetto Corsa EVO it's one of the circuits that commands the most respect, because the difference between a good lap and a crash is literally half a metre of racing line.

The circuit is three distinct parts. Down below, Pit Straight and Hell Corner are almost flat and deceptively normal. Then comes Mountain Straight and the climb: Griffins Bend, The Cutting and Reid Park, all uphill with the walls a hand's width away.

At the top, at Skyline, the track looks out over nothing and the descent begins through The Esses and Forrest's Elbow, the hardest section of the lap. Out of there comes Conrod Straight, over a kilometre flat out with The Chase at the end, where the overtaking is decided.

Sector by sector

How the lap unfolds from start to finish, with the lines and the places where time is genuinely won and lost.

How to set the car up

Bathurst forces an uncomfortable compromise: you need top speed for Conrod Straight, which lasts over a kilometre, but also grip and stability for the mountain, where any unexpected movement ends at a wall. Almost everyone ends up with less wing than they'd want up top, because losing the straight means being passed with no answer.

Ride height is critical. The elevation change is huge and there are hard compressions on the Esses descent and at the entry to The Chase: a very low car bottoms out and loses grip at exactly the two points with the least margin.

The suspension has to absorb. This is a public road, with real joints, bumps and changes of surface, not perfect circuit asphalt. A stiff setup skips over the mountain and moves you towards the walls.

What almost everyone gets wrong

1. Abrirse en The Cutting. It's blind and uphill, with a wall on the outside. The classic mistake of anyone learning the circuit, and it always ends the same way.
2. Arriving too fast at Skyline. The track drops away immediately after. Entering too fast means reaching the Esses out of control with walls on both sides.
3. Fallar Forrest's Elbow. It's the corner that feeds Conrod Straight. Losing two km/h there becomes several metres by the end of the kilometre.
4. Frenar tarde en The Chase. You arrive at maximum speed after an enormous straight. It has the worst ratio anywhere between what you gain and what you risk.
5. Treating the mountain like a circuit. No hay escapatorias, no hay grava, no hay margen. Los tiempos salen de acumular vueltas limpias, no de atacar.

From the real circuit to Assetto Corsa EVO

Scanning a public road

Mount Panorama isn't a circuit built for racing: it's a mountain road with kerbstones, manhole covers and changes of surface where one stretch of asphalt ends and another begins. The laser scan captures exactly that, which is why the car moves constantly here in places where it would sit flat at a modern circuit.

Photogrammetry adds the houses, the trees and the signs along the route, which are the references every driver uses for the mountain's blind corners. Without them that sector would be practically impossible to learn.

What carries over well

Everything to do with memory and racing line. Bathurst is learned by heart, and that memory is identical in both worlds: the order of the corners, the turn-in for The Cutting, where Skyline starts to fall away.

Australian touring car drivers have used simulators to prepare for this race for years, and it's one of the best-documented cases of the transfer working.

What doesn't carry over

Consequence. On the mountain, going off means hitting a concrete wall at high speed. That certainty completely changes how a real person drives, and it's why sim lap times tend to be more aggressive than on track.

Nor the perceived gradient. The climb up the mountain has sections whose steepness flattens out on screen, and the vertigo of McPhillamy Park, looking out over the valley, doesn't carry over.

Conducir Bathurst en la vida real

It's one of the few legendary circuits anyone can drive: outside race days, Mount Panorama is a public road open to traffic, with a 60 km/h speed limit and residents living in houses along the layout.

Se puede subir con tu propio coche, parar en los miradores y hacer el recorrido completo respetando las normas. Para el aficionado que ha dado mil vueltas en el simulador, reconocer The Cutting y Skyline a velocidad de paseo es una experiencia rara y muy recomendable.

Where it comes from

The layout was built in 1938 over tracks on Bathurst's mountain and is still a public road open to traffic when there's no racing, speed limit included.

The Bathurst 1000, the great race of Australian motorsport, has been run here since the sixties. Winning at Bathurst carries as much weight in Australia as winning Le Mans does in Europe.

Visiting the real circuit

Mount Panorama can be driven any day of the year: it's a public road with a 60 km/h limit. You climb up from Bathurst, drive the full layout in the racing direction, and there are viewpoints where you can stop and look over the valley from McPhillamy Park.

Bathurst is about three hours' drive from Sydney, and the town lives off the circuit: there's a motorsport museum and much of the local trade revolves around racing.

The two big dates are the Bathurst 1000 touring car race in October, which stops the country, and the GT3 12 Hour in February, more international and easier for a foreign visitor to access. [Confirm dates, tickets and access rules before travelling.]

Frequently asked