Top contenders, favourites dark horses, who will win? Brodie Kostecki, Erebus, Shane van Gisbergen, Triple Eight, championship battle, Mark Skaife

The Bathurst 1000 is just one race in the Supercars season, worth the same 300 points as every other round the series visits over the year.

But it’s also so much more.

There’s the prestige of winning at Australia’s most famous circuit and lifting the Peter Brock Trophy knowing your name will be immortalised on the list of victors at Mount Panorama.

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There’s the risk of all 300 points being up for grabs in a single race after a season comprising mostly sprints. The mountain offers no second chances.

And then there’s the fact that winning a 1000-kilometre race is just a seriously difficult thing to do.

There’s only one way to win but 1000 ways to lose. Winning the Great Race is the culmination of myriad factors and a good dose of luck that the six-plus hours of racing go your way.

Who’s best placed ahead of the year’s biggest race to claim the season’s most recognisable trophy?

EREBUS AND KOSTECKI LEAD THE WAY

The regulatory change this season always had the potential to shake up the competitive order, but few would’ve tipped Erebus to be leading both title tables with just three rounds remaining this season.

The Dandenong South squad burst from the blocks at the start of the year, but its consistency through the campaign has been more impressive.

Brodie Kostecki has led the way. He collected 10 podiums, including two wins, from the first 12 races, and he arrives at Bathurst off the back of four wins in the last six races and six podiums from his last seven starts.

Combined with his solid second-place finish at Sandown with co-driver David Russell, form alone must put Erebus in general and Kostecki-Russell in particular near the top of the list of Bathurst victory prospects.

“They’ve been the standout performers of the season, there’s no doubt,” Fox Motorsport expert and six-time Bathurst winner Mark Skaife says.

“We all said at the start of the year that whoever gets their brain around the new car, whoever grabs it by the scruff of the neck and then deals with their engineering group best, will have success, and if you put all that together and you press the equal sign on your calculator, it equals Erebus.

“They’ve been the ones that have been manifestly the lead team for the major part of this year.

“And it hasn’t just been Brodie; it’s been Will Brown at the same time, the two of them. There have been plenty of occasions when the cars have been on the front row of the grid together. They’ve had a standout season so far.”

But Mount Panorama is a different beast, and the new frontrunners will need to be perfect to claim what would be a history-making Bathurst victory and put one hand on the championship trophies.

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THE REIGNING BATHURST WINNER AND CHAMPION

Shane van Gisbergen is looming large as Kostecki’s closest title challenger. Despite a qualifying mistake at Sandown that left him and co-driver Richie Stanaway 19th on the grid, car 99 finished an impressive third, massively limiting the damage to leave Melbourne with a 155-point deficit.

Van Gisbergen is the only driver other than Kostecki to have tasted victory in the five races before Sandown. Combined with his and Stanaway’s good form over 500 kilometres, the two-time Bathurst winner is peaking at the right time.

While Erebus has been the form team of the season, Van Gisbergen is the form man at Bathurst, and that will count for plenty on the year’s most gruelling Sunday.

“It changes when you go to Bathurst,” Skaife says. “You need to apply all the same sorts of rigour and preparation at Bathurst that you’ve been using through the course of the year, but then you’ve got to make sure (a) the cars do 1000 kilometres, (b) the co-drivers are up to speed and (c) you minimise the mistakes, because that’s something that we’ve seen a lot of in Gen3.

“The wheel nut design’s different, the brake caliper design is different, the fuel coupling is different, we’re using a different tyre compound at Bathurst this year, so there are a lot of things that are that are different.

“When you go to Bathurst, this expectation of the performance that you’ve had through the course of the year almost goes out the window. It’s a form guide but it’s not going to necessarily tell you the story.”

It puts SVG in the box seat to make back some ground in the title race.

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THE MASTER AND THE APPRENTICE

“I said going into Sandown that Broc Feeney and Jamie Whincup would be for me the hardest pairing to beat,” Skaife says, and it’s hard to fault the pick.

Feeney, the Triple Eight young gun, has been threatening as a title contender all year, in particular thanks to a super-consistent run of results in the middle of the campaign, including a couple of round victories.

Whincup needs no real introduction. The T8 team boss and Supercars legend completes this impressive pairing, which made good on what is an almost embarrassing amount of potential by winning the Sandown 500 from fifth on the grid.

Sandown’s return as an endurance race makes it the most accurate read of possible Bathurst form we’ve got. The result should be read as a warning shot ahead of the Great Race.

“I was so pleased that we ended up with Sandown back on the card as an enduro,” Skaife says. “It’s very, very good for teams and drivers to get their brain around what you’ve got to do to be successful in long-distance races.

“This year we’ve made the biggest architectural change to the cars since 1993 with Gen3 and the Mustang and Camaro. We’ve got just a huge magnitude of change, and for teams and drivers to get their brain around that, a 500-kilometre race serves everybody well.

“Then obviously leading into what happens with Bathurst, it becomes a heightened experience given the gravity of that event and how important it is for teams to be successful there.”

The Feeney-Whincup pairing is the only one to have mastered the season’s first true long-distance race. The question now is whether that’s enough momentum to do the double and win the big one.

YOU CAN’T BEAT EXPERIENCE

But while Sandown might be good practice, it’s no substitute for real Mount Panorama experience and a race double the distance.

While 10 drivers on this year’s grid have lifted the Peter Brock Trophy, only two cars can count on both pilots having Bathurst-winning know-how.

Only one of those pairings has conquered the mountain together: Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth, the 2021 winners.

“The last time that they were together they won, and their car in terms of race pace through the season has really improved, they’re getting better and better all the time,” Skaife says.

Mostert had doggedly clung to the championship leaders for much of the season with a collection of podiums despite the Mustang’s high-profile performance complaints, but Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Sandown weekend was an unmitigated disaster, with both cars missing out on the pole shootout with issues and then making little progress in the race.

Mostert and Holdsworth’s afternoon was badly affected by early damage to the car, leaving them down on the sort of experience and momentum that could be decisive to a big result this weekend.

But the team is optimistic following a deep-dive debrief that it can resume its strong Bathurst form, with the team enjoying a six-year podium streak at Mount Panorama.

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