Four-time Bathurst 1000 winner Greg Murphy admits that he doubted whether he would be quick enough to tackle Mount Panorama in his comeback wildcard outing alongside Richie Stanaway.
Murphy was coaxed out of retirement for a one-off co-drive alongside compatriot Stanaway in an ambitious plan hatched by Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton.
The story is recounted in the new documentary Wildcard: One Last Shot, now streaming on Kayo.
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Adderton conceived the idea to revive Stanaway’s stalled racing career after being pushed out of the Supercars in 2019.
Kiwi racing icon Murphy was an obvious choice as supporting driver and Stanaway’s foil. Not only do his four wins and four other podiums make him one of the Mountain’s all-time greats, but his legendary 2003 qualifying ‘lap of the gods’ earnt him a permanent place in Bathurst folklore.
But speaking to Fox Sports, Murphy said he had serious doubts about his ability to tackle the legendary circuit so long after his full-time retirement in 2012.
“I just wasn’t sure that I was ready to go back to that and actually deliver a performance that was at the level that Bathurst deserves,” he said. “That was the biggest part — having the self-belief to be able to go back to an event such as the Bathurst 1000, which deserves the absolute utmost respect.
“The most challenging part is the mental preparation and being in that strong mental space where you have that confidence, you have that belief.
“You look at Shane van Gisbergen, Cam Waters, Will Davison — all those guys — the most powerful part of what they do in many respects is the mental side. It’s having that belief.
“You get in a car and you just have this instinctive subliminal ability that’s just there and you know what you’ve got to do and you’re able to go out on a racetrack and ply your trade at that really, really high level immediately every time.
“You have the confidence to be able to react and do the things you need to do to keep it off the wall or brake at that last moment and turn the car in. All that stuff becomes very instinctive, and those who are winning in Supercars are just some of the best operators in the world.
“When you step away from it and you don’t have to think like that on a regular basis — it’s not what you eat, sleep and breath 24/7 — all that stuff just starts to be pushed further and further out of your mind and daily operation.
“That’s what happened to me. That mental side to be able to have that confidence and that knowledge and that subliminal feel and vibe was gone.”
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The biggest mental hurdle and test for his readiness turned out to be his crowning achievement: the lap of the gods.
Murphy’s barnstorming 2003 pole lap is his indelible mark in Bathurst history.
The Mount Panorama track record had been incrementally coming down every other year or so until 2003. Prior to that season no-one had been quicker than 2:08.763.
His final qualifying lap for the pole shootout was a 2:06.859. It was more than a second quicker than anyone else managed that weekend — 1.0962 seconds, to be exact.
It took more than a decade for anyone to better that time — Murphy had effectively short-circuited ongoing car development by 11 years. Even today the track record, held by Chaz Mostert, is only 3.5 seconds quicker than that most famous of Bathurst laps.
Stepping into a modern Supercars machine almost 20 years newer than the VY Commodore that carried him to that sizzling performance presented him with a golden chance to beat the lap of the gods. But there was no guarantee of a second coming.
“That was one of my big things,” he said. “I don’t know if it was always going to happen.
“2003 was a bloody long time ago. I raced up until 2014, and the fact that I never went faster than that from 2003 to 2014 was somewhat of a concern. But saying that, not many people did really.
“I think we never really spoke about it too much because you never know what the track’s going to do. You never know how good the track’s going to be.
“The times on Thursday were electrifying considering how wet it’d been, so that actually helped me, because the track was gripped up and that gave me more confidence to be able to push.
“There was never any guarantee that that was going to happen, but considering the track was as fast as it was, being able to actually do that job and create that little milestone was really significant.
“That was so significant because if that hadn’t happened that day and I hadn’t been able to get to grips with it and I hadn’t been able to get a rhythm and I was dead last and a second off the slowest car or whatever, then that would’ve created a much bigger challenge.
“But being able to actually drive the car, feel comfortable and then lay down a time which was the fastest I’d ever been by over a second, that started that confidence progress where I started to think, ‘Okay, this is going okay’.
“But it was far from a given.”
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His best time was more than 0.987 seconds faster than his lap of the gods.
The achievements are of course vastly different. His 2022 lap might have been quicker than his 2003 tour de force, but the modern car is also much faster. In that sense there was little for Murphy to take away from his new benchmark.
But the Kiwi said the entire experience was humbling as a reminder that his pole lap, set almost 20 years ago, is still considered integral to the story of the Great Race.
“That really makes me feel good and proud, it really does,” he said. “I never thought it would last as long and stand the test of time like it has.
“To be able to break it didn’t make me feel any different about what I did in 2003 because of the evolution of the cars and how they have moved on — albeit not huge amounts, but a couple of seconds. It was just one of those milestone things.
“There have been other great moments — Scott McLaughlin breaking the 2:04, Cam Waters doing the fastest time last year — so to have one of those, I’m very proud to be part of the Bathurst folklore because of that.”
Wildcard: One Last Shot is streaming now on Kayo.