Published on: http://www.spultured.com

Bathurst Motor Festival, Photo by Dirk Klynsmith

Over the Easter long weekend, Bathurst celebrated it’s 75^th year celebration of the Bathurst Motor Festival, held at the historic Mount Panorama raceway.The circuit was first opened in 1938 in conjunction with the Australian Grand Prix. Since that date, the festival has been in operation throughout the Easter long weekend, making Mount Panorama the oldest motor racing circuit in Australia, also amongst one of the oldest tracks in the world.

But history aside, everyone knows how iconic this Bathurst circuit is. This year the turnout for the event was huge, with categories including Formula 3, Formula Vee, Group N Historic Touring Cars, NSW Production Touring Cars, Production Sports Cars, Porsche Club of NSW and NSW Road Racing Club

Of course, the racing for the weekend was the highlight, with all types of weather coming to and from the circuit and drivers turning on the racing for all the fans.

The Mount Panorama circuit opened on Friday, with practice scheduled for all the teams and drivers entered in the event.

Saturday saw the first of qualifying and racing, with the Formula 3 cars breaking the qualifying lap record, a lap time of 2:03:239 set by Nathan Morcom. To put things into perspective, the fastest V8 Supercar lap around Bathurst was set by Craig Lowndes in 2010, with a lap time of 2:06.801!

With lap record pace being set around the circuit, every driver and team in the paddock thought it was their turn to break the race records on Sunday.

The Bathurst weather thought otherwise, as the track was declared wet on Sunday.

This meant trouble, with some fields reaching more than 55 drivers and on a circuit so steep and twisty, some drivers unfortunately found the wall. Luckily enough, everyone who did crash in the racing was a-okay.

Over 10,000 attended the event; with the festival being a huge success with fantastic racing put on by all the drivers.

Full race results can be found at Natsoft.com.