Police have issued restrictions on alcohol at the forthcoming Bathurst 1,000 car race

Know your limits: Australian race fans told to keep to 24 cans of beer a day

Fans have been limited to one case of full-strength beer.

Australian motorsport fans are ruing militant alcohol consumption guidelines at one of the country's most popular races – after being limited to a mere 24 cans of beer a day.

Police in charge of the Bathurst 1,000 car race in Bathurst, New South Wales, issued the restrictions before the start of the four-day event this Thursday.

Spectators are limited to one 24-can case each of full-strength beer, although if revellers are willing to consume lower-strength alcohol (3.5% abv or less) they will be entitled to a more satisfactory 36 cans.

Wine lovers have not escaped the heavy hand of the law either, being restricted to a punitive four litres a day.

Fans will be limited to 24 375ml cans of average-strength beer – a total of 9,000ml. This betters by 1,048ml the 14 pints William Hague famously said he swilled as a young man – but then the Conservative MP reckoned he was drinking that amount every day rather than merely reserving heavy consumption for infrequent sporting events.

Clearly, we mere mortals could not hope to match the exploits of a rowdy Australian motorsport fanatic or an adolescent shadow foreign secretary.

But more acceptable to amateur drinkers may be the comparatively gentle exploits of the London mayor Boris Johnson, who chooses November's edition of Tatler to extol the benefits of a couple of pints over lunch. Johnson's predecessor, Ken Livingstone, was known to enjoy a glass of whisky during meetings, asserting it was good for his cough.

But for the most notorious drinking records, one must delve back into the sporting world.

The Australian cricketer David Boon famously, or infamously, drank 52 cans of beer on a flight from Sydney to London before the 1989 Ashes tour, a staggering (literally) total of 19,500ml of grog.

This betters the total of a motor-racing fan and a precocious young Tory combined.

Maybe 24 cans is quite harsh after all.