It's Bathurst 1000 week. Here are five things to watch for during The Great Race

Australia’s premier endurance motor race is on this week and the entry for the 2026 Bathurst 1000 promises to provide a huge battle to what is known Down Under as The Great Race.

Raced over 1000 kilometers (621 miles) the 24 regular Supercars, plus two ‘Wildcard’ entries’ will line up at 11:30am Sunday, Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Times – 15 minutes earlier than last year’s race, which ended in near-darkness and under heavy clouds at the top of the Mount Panorama circuit.

Each car will have two drivers and in many (if not most) entries, the ‘co-drivers’ will have the responsibility of starting the race.

There has been a lot of change in Supercars this year, so much so that just six of those driver combinations remain unchanged since 2025 – but three of those combinations are now in a different brand of car. So much for continuity...

There are a lot of things to watch in the six-hour-plus race. Here are some of the most important.

BEWARE THE SLEEPING GIANT

There’s been a bit of talk this week about Red Bull and Ford returning to the top step of the podium. Seven days and thousands of miles removed from the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia, it might just happen again.

It seems odd to think that Supercars’ own Red Bull team, Triple Eight, is looking for redemption at Bathurst. After all, in its various guises the team has won the 1000km race 10 times and its drivers, Broc Feeney and Will Brown, currently sit second and seventh in the Supercars Drivers’ standings. Both have comfortably qualified for Supercars’ Finals series so they should be heading to Bathurst with a ‘free swing’, and among the race favorites.

And yet, the team’s first season running Fords in the Gen 3 era has been… underwhelming. At the most recent race, over 500 kilometers at The Bend, Brown and co-driver Scott Pye salvaged fifth place while Feeney and new co-driver Nick Percat were hit from pillar to post, made unscheduled stops and struggled home in 23rd (below).

Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

Neither of the team’s regular drivers has won the Bathurst before, but this could be the week to turn that around. Looking past their results, both are in good form and their co-drivers are particularly well-credentialed; Percat a former race winner in the biggest race of the year.

Triple Eight has taken on the role of Ford’s homologation team in Supercars – a role it filled with Chevrolet up until a year ago – so the domination of the Mustangs this season is partly, at least, down to their efforts. Changes within the team take time to settle down, but the familiar territory of Bathurst just might be the place where Triple Eight’s winning habits return to the highest level.

A QUESTION OF RELIABILITY

In the current Gen 3 era, Supercars have been developed into impressively reliable race cars. The sight of a racer pulling to the side of the track in a cloud of smoke is rare – but it’s not completely unknown.

One of the talking points of the season has been the first-season dramas faced by the Toyota teams. The five GR Supras race with a unique 5.2-litre version of the quad-cam 2UR-GSE V8, tuned to fit within the 7500rpm/10:1 compression ratio framework of the Supercars rulebook. There were some engine woes during the season, most visibly when Ryan Wood suffered a motor failure on home soil at Ruapuna Raceway in New Zealand, and another in Perth.

A revised specification engine arrived in time for The Bend race and Wood and co-driver Jaxon Evans took third place, backing up the winning Chaz Mostert/Fabian Coulthard Supra. Both Walkinshaw TWG cars ran perfectly during the 500km race and the team understandably left the track in a confident mood.

But the wet conditions during much of that race and the mostly flat Bend circuit does not mean that things will be similar at Bathurst. The heavily undulating track places a huge strain on the Supercars’ motors; six-time 1000 winner Mark Skaife has described the 0.7-mile climb up Mountain Straight as “the best engine dyno in the country”. Last year several cars had engine dramas in the race, notably including both Walkinshaw cars, which at that stage were still Fords.

As this preview is written slight engine parity adjustments were still being considered to take effect the week of the race. If any of the Ford, Chevrolet or Toyota packages has a power or torque deficit, it should be addressed prior to the race.

WATCH THE SKIES

Teams watch the weather radar like hawks during race week at Bathurst, and this week could present the drivers and teams with a wet track for the race.

The 3.86-mile circuit rises 571 feet from its lowest point to its highest, and rain adds to the challenge of getting the track right 161 times. The weather forecast for Sunday’s event indicates an 80 percent likelihood of rain, which might just produce a replay of the great race that happened a year ago.

The timing of the rain might be critical. A year ago (below) everyone knew that the rain would arrive two hours after the start and remain until the end of race, so many of the team compromised what would normally be a dry-weather set-up to make the most of the weather in the second half of the race.

Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

Most of the Supercars drivers – and many of the co-drivers – are well-equipped to take on the challenge, but there is a fascinating outlier. A year ago James Golding actually took the checkered flag first in his PremiAir Racing Chevrolet, but he was penalized five seconds for an incident involving Cooper Murray (Erebus Motorsport), dropping Golding to third.

This year, in a Blanchard Racing Team Ford, Golding has a chance to make the Supercars Finals series (its version of NASCAR’s Playoffs) and his co-driver might have a lot to say in determining that. Richie Stanaway has already won the race, alongside Shane van Gisbergen in 2023, and is almost freakishly fast on a wet track. Golding has nothing to lose to make the Finals, so if the weather goes their way, he might get to take the checker again and keep the win this time around…

A CHEVROLET COMEBACK?

The pre-season move by Triple Eight from Chevrolet to Ford has been catastrophic for the GM branded teams.

The eight Camaros on the grid are outnumbered by the 11 Mustangs so numerically, an even spread of results would tend to favor the Ford teams. But few observers would have predicted how bad the news would be for Chevrolet fans. In the 29 races to date in the 2026 season, Chevrolet has taken just two wins, both to Team 18’s Anton De Pasquale. In those same races Ford has banked 23 wins and even Supercars rookie Toyota – with just five Supras on the grid – has won five times.

In the Supercars Team’s championship, which sets the pitlane order and is changed from race to race, the best-placed Chevrolet outfit is GM’s homologation team, Team 18, in sixth place. Matt Stone Racing is two places further back while PremiAir Racing (10th) and Erebus Motorsport (11th) are the last of the two-car teams, at the entry end of pitlane.

And yet, among all the doom and gloom, there is some good news for Camaro lovers. After the first 500 kilometer endurance race of the season at The Bend last month Supercars conducted some parity testing, which as resulted in a change to the Camaros’ ballast. The cars’ minimum weight with remain the same but the position of ballast has been changed, potentially giving the cars a lower center of gravity than before. If the Camaros faced a deficit in this area, it should be fixed now.

There is also barometric dyno testing ongoing in the week prior to the race, meaning that engine parity will, in theory anyway, be closer than ever before.

And for all its driving challenges, Bathurst does appear to offer a level playing field to the makes. Ford won the 2025 1000 with Grove Racing but Camaros filled the next six places, and the closest Chevrolet was less than one second back from the winner.

A Camaro winning the race may look like a surprise, but don’t be shocked if it happens.

A FIRST-TIME VETERAN WINNER?

Winning the Bathurst 1000 can be the highlight of a racing driver’s career. Multiple race winners are feted like Daytona 500 or Indianapolis 500 winners.

There are a lot of rising stars who would love to make their mark at Bathurst this year, and a lot of experienced race winners stand in their way.

But there are also some veterans who have yet to win their first Bathurst classic.

When James Courtney (below) finished on the podium in three of his first Bathurst starts, winning the race looked like a formality. He went on to win a V8 Supercars title in 2010, and became one of the stars of the sport.

At the end of last year Courtney, now 46, stepped down from his full-time career to split his time between roles as a TV commentator, realtor and endurance co-driver. There was a lot of interest in signing the veteran, and Team 18 won the race, pairing him in a Chevrolet with 2017 Bathurst winner David Reynolds.

Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

At Walkinshaw TWG Racing Fabian Coulthard has had a similar timeline. The swift New Zealander has not won a title but he will line up for his 23rd Bathurst start, and first in a Toyota, alongside Chaz Mostert. The pair are fresh off an impressive win at The Bend 500 last month and will be among the favorites for the race.

David Russell has had a far lower profile career than Courtney and Coulthard, but his Bathurst record is impressive. In his 17th Bathurst 1000 start partnering Jayden Ojeda in a PremiAir Racing Chevrolet, Russell’s last five results in the race are third, fourth, second, sixth and third.

Experience counts for a lot at the Mountain, and it might just be hard to look past the form of these experienced co-drivers breaking through for a win.

RACE FACTS
2026 Bathurst 1000
Round 11 of the 2026 Supercars Championship
Mount Panorama, Bathurst, New South Wales

161 laps of a 3.86 mile circuit

26 entries/two drivers per car

Min distance for each driver; 60 laps

Max driving stint for each driver; 3.5 hours

2025 Winners: Grove Racing/Ford

Matt Payne/Garth Tander*
[Tander retired from racing after the race]

Winning margin: 0.959s [14 of the last 20 races won by one second or less]

2025 Pole: Brodie Kostecki (Dick Johnson Racing/Ford) 2m04.0413

Watch the Bathurst 1000 live on RACER Network and RACER+. Click here to sign up, and here for schedule information.