G’day Motorsport Fans! How good was the V8 Supercars Bathurst 1000? Mt Panorama sure knows how to make for an interesting race meeting! I guess it’s rather fitting I labelled October as the Mad Month of Motorsport. Maybe I should tweak it and say the Month of Mad Motorsport?

I was fortunate enough to spend 4 days out at “The Mountain” for the V8 Supercars Bathurst 1000. I always get this special feeling when I arrive at Bathurst for a race meeting and this year I’ve been lucky enough to do it twice. I wont go into massive detail about the V8 Supercars on track activity as I’ve strung together some articles (with plenty photos) over at MyDrive, which you can check out with the links below. What I thought I would do, as something a bit different, is pick out a few of my favourite shots from 4 days of V8 Supercars action and explain a little bit more about them and how they came to be.

MyDrive Bathurst 1000 Articles

Preview – All Roads Lead to the Bathurst 1000 – http://mydrivemedia.com.au/preview-roads-lead-bathurst-1000/

The Mountain has come alive with the sound of V8 Supercars – http://mydrivemedia.com.au/mountain-come-alive-sound-v8-supercars/

V8 Supercars Shoot Out – http://mydrivemedia.com.au/live-v8-supercars-top-10-shoot-mydrive/

An Incredible Race – Bathurst 1000 Race Review – http://mydrivemedia.com.au/incredible-race-bathurst-1000-race-review/

The first shot is Chaz Mostert, lining the car up to take on The Dipper. It’s a really simple clean shot from Thursday’s first practice session, but I like you can make out the Chaz in the shot and see the tyre’s flexing as he’s taking the corner.

Next up is James Courtney bouncing his 22 HRT Commodore over the kerb through the Esses. You can clearly see the committment with the left rear wheel in the air. Throw in a bit of panning and some heat haze from the exhaust and I’m really happy how this shot came together.

This shot is another very clean and simple shot, but it shows the commitment of championship leader Jamie Whincup. You can see his rear wheel is flirting with the track limits but just not enough to kick up some dirt. There also an extra level of interest as you can see through the heat haze a couple of cars passing each other further up Mountain Straight. I also like the one off Airforce inspired livery the Red Bull Racing Australia team were running over the weekend. I think it really fitted in well with the Red Bull branding.

For the next two shots I was lucky enough to get a trip up in the Pepsi Max Sky Lounge on Thursday before Mt Panorama got really busy. Made for a rather unique view-point for the afternoon V8 Supercar session. This first shot you’ll see I’m really chuffed with. I managed to pull off a couple of nice panning shots with my feet dangling 150 meters above the ground. I like this one in particular with the Volvo Polestar blue and massive NASCAR style number of Scott McLaughlin and Alex Premat, as it really stands out from above.

This second one is just a shot of the unique view-point that the Pepsi Max Sky Lounge offered. In this particular shot you can see all the way from the exit of the Chase round to on Mountain Straight, with the whole pit complex in view. If you look closely you can see 10 v8 Supercars in this one shot. I’m sure the view would have been even better on Sunday when the viewing area’s and campgrounds were full.

Friday morning I was lucky enough to spend some time with the guys in the Super Black Racing Team garage. It was great to get an inside look into a V8 Supercar session from the garage. This first shot the crew were waiting patently for an opportunity to bolt on a set of brand new rubber to give Andre Heimgartner a practice at a qualifying run. I elected to put the near wheel in focus, and blur out the crew member to create a unique perspective on it.

I did a similar thing with this second shot. I wanted to draw attention to the Team Manager’s focus on the data in front of him, while blurring out the Motec data as to not give any team secrets away.

Here’s a shot of Tim Slade that I really like. He’s got his Supercheap Auto Commodore just a little crossed up through Reid Park in Friday afternoon’s 2nd practice session, just trying to find where the limits were prior to Qualifying. Also the car was sporting a special livery that I really liked, celebrating 10 years of Supercheap Auto being the naming rights sponsor of the Bathurst 1000.

This is another shot from Friday’s 2nd Practice Session. I was playing round with some slow shutter speed panning, as I tend to do in long practice sessions, when Chaz Mostert made way for Jamie Whincup who was on hot lap, practicing for Qualifying a bit later. The combination of the two cars and the blur from the pan and the curve of the corner make for an interesting combination.

This next shot is nothing overly spectacular, a 3/4 pan exiting The Chase during Qualifying. However I liked the special throw back livery that the DJR Team ran over the weekend on the 17 entry of David Wall and Steven Johnson. That’s reason enough for me to include it here.

Another shot from Qualifying, this time it’s Jack Perkins in the JELD-WEN Falcon having a moment at The Chase. Being qualifying I knew everyone was going to be giving it everything and The Chase is one of the few places on the Mt Panorama circuit that is a little more forgiving if you give it a little too much. There was bound to be a couple of people who ran wide during the qualifying session. Unfortunately for Jack, his was the one that I captured nice and crisp with a solid panning shot.

This next shot is another panning shot of the Jack Daniel’s Nissan Altima of Rick Kelly, this time from the now infamous Turn 2. The sun was starting to get a but high in the sky for this area of the track to work, but I committed to it, and worked the location a bit a got this shot that I’m quite happy with.

But that shot has nothing on these two… Yes I happened to be in the right place at the right time for the Warren Luff and Craig Lowndes crash. Unfortunately I was panning and missed the actual accident completely. However I did manage to grab these two shots of the aftermath of the accident. The first shot shows the immediate response from the Sector Marshall reporting the crash to Race Control. While the second shot shows the embrace between former team mates after Lowndes and the Sector Marshall helped Luff climb out of his wrecked HRT Commodore.

Here’s a shot from Sunday’s early morning Warm Up session. I really like the way the early morning sun lights up the Mt Panorama signage and the top of Skyline. While the Yellow of James Moffat and Taz Douglas’s Norton Hornet car really shines as well in that golden morning light.

Another panning shot, this time from Sunday’s Warm Up session. It’s another shot where I like how the early morning sun lights up the car, but this one has the added bonus of Robert Dalgren popping his Valvoline Racing Volvo S60 up on two wheels through the first part of The Chase.

Now we’ll dive into an assortment of race photos. I’ll kick it of with the good old race start photo. Race starts at Bathurst are just a little bit more special than a regular race. I like this shot as it not only captures the action of the race start, but the crowd on the hill at Murray’s watching on, while the crew head back to their garages after being on the grid.

I’m quiet happy with how this shot turned out, it was shortly after the restart from the first Safety Car and the cars were quite close together, dropping down from Skyline into the Esses. However out of all this shots I took in this particular location, this one has the added bonus of the Channel 7 helicopter chasing down the field in the distance.

The crowd at the top of the mountain are always good value. Here we have a few of them waving out to their favourite drivers at McPhilliamy Park, while the field was under Safety Car for the second time.

I wanted to take a shot of the iconic Mt Panorama sign on the mountain, while showing the cars going fast. Most of the shots I see from other people in this location are short panning shots and I wanted to do something a bit different. I have similar shots that I did during the Bathurst 12 Hour earlier in the year, but I wanted to step it up for the 1000. I dropped the shutter speed right down and got this great motion blur on Will Davidson’s Erebus Mercedes as he passed through the corner at Reid Park. It’s one of those shots you have to time just right so you get the car in the frame.

Here’s another unique shot that I doubt many other people have. When the race stopped I was at the top of the mountain, but with the race being stopped for so long, it was enough time for me to catch the Media shuttle bus back down to the bottom so I could head out on to Pit Straight and get shots of the cars parked on the grid. Here we have Damien White, V8 Supercars Operations Manager, discussing the restart procedure with the Safety Car driver after consulting the rule book, while crews are taking the opportunity to repair and regroup. Not something you get to see very often in Motorsport.

Time for another Helicopter shot? I think so. I got a few shots of Conrod Straight and the Channel 7 helicopter, but I like how this one comes together with the string cars at full pace and the helicopter chasing them down.

Over the weekend there were discussions that the rain could arrive towards the end of the race, and while that didn’t eventuate, I took this shot in the Nissan Motorsport pits of the Wet Tyres lined up just in case they needed to be called upon. An extra shot that could have brought an article together if the weather came into play (which was interesting, as it was about the only thing missing from the race!)

This next shot was supposed to sum up the race quiet nicely, and I guess it does for this point it the race. The sun was starting to get low on the horizon, the last safety car had just pulled into pitlane, the green flag was out for that final sprint to the finish and the crowd were watching on intently in the background. Then what can only be described as the most hectic 20 minutes of motorsport ever played out, and the top 3 slid, trundled and spluttered down the order.

Lined up in my spot with a bunch of other photographers for the checkered flag on the pit straight, I was lucky enough to see the crowd’s big screens on top of the pit complex. I could see the drama of the race play out as Chaz Mostert passed Jamie Whicup out of Forrest Elbow. With the race delays the sun was getting really low on the horizon, putting the shadow of the pit complex across the start finish line. I setup much like everyone else and trying to catch the checkered flag and the finish. I was lucky enough to grab that narrow patch of remaining sun light on Mosterts face as he took the flag. The lighting in the back of the shot highlights the crowd waving and cheering too which adds to the shot.

As soon as the Course Car opened the circuit couple of the Track Marshalls and Photographers bolted across the track to get into pitlane before the crowd swapped the area for these shots of the post race celebrations and the podium. Concluding what was an incredible race and weekend.





That wraps up my favourite shots from the V8 Supercar Bathurst 1000. I haven’t had a chance to sort through my photos of the support categories just yet. So what I’ll do later in the week, once I’ve gone through them all and throw together a few of my favourite shots and share those in another blog post. Keep an eye on my social media profiles – Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for that update.

Let me know if you liked this style of post in the comments below. If it’s a hit I’ll gear my blog posts more toward this style of behind the scenes writing.

As always if you’ve seen a shot of mine you like and wish to use, get in touch via my contact me page. I’m also putting together plans for 2015 at the moment and could use a some more customers, so feel free to get in touch if I can help you out.

The Mad Month of Motorsport continues this weekend with World Time Attack at Sydney Motorsport Park… Keep an eye on my social media and blog for more from that.