Around 200 kilometres west of Sydney, Australia, nestled in the town of Bathurst in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, lays a racing circuit home to one of the world’s most-prestigious motor races.

A mountain with its own name tag.

“ [P]eople know of Indy, they know of Bathurst, they know of Nürburgring, and they know of Spa.

The circuit is Mount Panorama, or simply Bathurst as it’s better known. It’s an unusual, 6.213km long course packed with steep grades, lengthy straights, twisting esses, a 174-metre elevation change between its highest and lowest points, and one of the world’s fastest corners. The race is the Bathurst 1000, one of the motor racing world’s most prestigious endurance events.Mount Panorama, we’re told by Turn 10 Studios content director John Wendl, has consistently been one of the most-requested race tracks from Forza Motorsport fans across the globe. It’s been added to the series and will debut in Forza Motorsport 5 “It doesn’t surprise me that much because if you go anywhere in Europe or in America, people know of Indy, they know of Bathurst, they know of Nürburgring, and they know of Spa,” Skaife tells IGN. “They’re the racetracks that everyone gets… Bathurst, worldwide, is held in that sort of esteem.”In 2012, Turn 10 sent a six-man crew to the circuit for three days, capturing the racing surface itself and the surrounding areas. The digital laser scanning technology employed for this purpose has reportedly resulted in the most authentic recreation of Mount Panorama ever, from the cracks in the asphalt to the precise positioning of the TV camera towers.Building Bathurst into Forza Motorsport 5, however, is just the start of the story.

Andy Priaulx and Mattias Ekström.

“ Anything inside the top 10 would be amazing. Anything more than that? We’ll take it.

“I would say we’re extremely ambitious, but extremely realistic,” grins three-time World Touring Car Championship champion Andy Priaulx. It’s the Monday before the 2013 Bathurst 1000 and the cheerful Brit and his co-driver Mattias Ekström are relaxed in the springtime Sydney Harbour sun.The two European touring car legends are in Australia to pilot a wildcard entry in this year’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000. In partnership with championship-winning outfit Triple Eight Race Engineering, Xbox Australia has launched the Xbox One Racing Team for a one-off race. With Bathurst coming to Forza 5 and a new console just around the corner, it seems there’s never been a better time than now to truly put some motorsport into Forza Motorsport.“We come to every race with a plan to win, but this is a one-off race; it’s never gonna be easy for us,” concedes Priaulx. “So I think if we can get inside the top 10 we will be pleasing everybody around us. Probably not ourselves, but we’ll be pleasing the team and all the guys that are realistic about the challenge we have.”“Anything inside the top 10 would be amazing. Anything more than that? We’ll take it.”“We definitely have a car that’s capable of winning,” says Ekström, two-time DTM champion and a three-time overall winner of the Race of Champions. “We have a team which is capable of winning. Andy has experience and he’s used to winning. I also won sometimes.”“On the one side 'realistic' is not to win. But you don’t have to be realistic.“I’m going to drive as quick as I can, still staying on track, for sure. That’s the name of the game every day. It’s no difference this time to normal.”The pair are headed up to Bathurst in separate rental cars in a scene Priaulx can’t guarantee won’t play out like the Cruise/Rooker grudgefest in Days of Thunder.“Actually it could easily be like that, with me and Eki,” he hints.“Actually mate, I ripped the splitter off mine yesterday,” he adds, turning to his Scandinavian ally.“On the rental car?”“I parked it in the car park, which was fine: no problems. Didn’t make a noise. And then I reversed. BOOM. There’s a bumper lying on the floor. I’ll have to get the duct tape out.”Priaulx has had three previous starts at Bathurst, most recently in 2009 where he came in 12th. Ekström has never driven at Bathurst before.Or, at least, not in real-life.

Six-time Bathurst 1000 winner Mark Skaife.

“ If you can use it as a tool like that for professional race drivers, then for gamers it must be unbelievable.

Car 10 takes to the track.

“I was blown away,” says Mark Skaife, regarding the apparently incredible accuracy of Turn 10’s laser-scanned ode to the spiritual home of Australian motorsport. “It was funny because we were standing in the pit area and Mattias had been on a simulator; Red Bull Racing have got a pretty good simulator.”“So he’d been on the simulator and he started to talk to me about the lap. We only got four corners in and I had to go do something else as a PR thing. So the next time we started to talk about the track I was going through those first four corners with Mattias playing [Forza 5], and it was unbelievable.“Turn 1, the amount of camber that was on the road; how much kerb you use. What side of the straight you drive up on Mountain Straight. What the bumps are like on turn 2 at Griffin’s Bend; what the road profile change is coming out of turn 2. How steep it is up to The Cutting, how much camber on the road there is at The Cutting.“How close to the fence and the rise as you come up the hill again to Reid Park. The plateau at the top of the hill; the grate at Reid Park. It blew me away. The level of detail is unbelievable.Ekström may not have tackled the real-life Mount Panorama before but he’s been making up for that fact with virtual laps instead.“In the good old days, when I was about 15 years younger, before I came to Germany and I had to go to Nürburgring and Hockenheim and all those tracks, the games in those days were not as good as they are today but they gave a feel of left and right,” says Ekström. “Nowadays you can get every single detail on the track and that’s where it’s really a massive difference.”“I mean, I spoke to Skaifey and then a half-hour later I went to the Forza game and had a try, and then he says, ‘Yeah, look here, and here, and up here' and so on. What he says is actually in the game.“I mean, the visual thing is what will help me the most because, still, driving a car at two or three hundred kilometres an hour is not the same as in the game. But to visualise, to see what you’re going to aim for and what it’s going to look like will definitely help me a lot.”