At Mount Panorama, Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander gave Holden the perfect farewell by winning the 2022 Bathurst 1000.
In breathtaking moments, Van Gisbergen led the Red Bull Racing entry to victory before Chaz Mostert and Cam Waters, earning his second Bathurst triumph and Tander’s seventh overall.
The fans’ enthusiasm for Holden left Kiwi driver van Gisbergen speechless. With Tander, he remained in the lead throughout all but 51 laps of the Great Race on Sunday, despite the hectic opening to the race, which saw six safety cars before halfway.
After colliding with Macauley Jones toward the end of qualifying, they survived a five-second penalty for a sloppy pit lane departure. They began three positions farther back on the grid.
Per The Guardian, the victory set a new record for van Gisbergen and solidified the most dominating season in Australian Touring Car and Supercars history.
He currently holds the record for the most victories in a season with 19, breaking Scott McLaughlin’s previous mark of 18. Mostert, Waters, and Davison each had three wins in the 2022 competition, which is the next-highest total for any driver.
In contrast, this is the second time Van Gisbergen and Tander have dominated the mountain in three years. Surprisingly, the winning car from 2022 used the same chassis as the team’s 2020 Great Race winning vehicle.
Due to COVID-19 limits, there was a small audience at Mt. Panorama that year when Van Gisbergen and Tander won their first and fourth Bathurst titles, respectively. The Mustang, driven by Cameron Waters and Will Davison, began from the front but finished in second place, behind van Gisbergen.
After being controversially defeated by Ford’s Scott McLaughlin and Alexandre Premat by less than a second the year before, van Gisbergen finally won the Great Race after 14 tries.
In 1968, Bruce McPhee and Barry Mulholland’s HK Monaro GTS 327 became Holden’s first Bathurst winner. The following year, Colin Bond and Tony Roberts’ HT Monaro GTS 350 won the race. These victories occurred in the previous Bathurst 500 (mile) races, as did Peter Brock’s first triumph in 1972 while piloting the LJ Torana GTR XU-1.
Similarly, in the LH Torana L34, Brock and Brian Sampson won the 1975 Bathurst 1000 together for Holden. Bob Morris and John Fitzpatrick again drove the same car to victory the following year. The Commodore era started when Brock and Jim Richards earned triumphs in the LX Torana A9X SS in 1978–1979.
Driving the VC Commodore, Brock and Richards won in 1980, completing a hat-trick and beginning a legend. In addition to the 1997 Primus 1000, the Commodore has won 28 Bathurst 1000 races.
In the same way, Greg Murphy and Steven Richards each won at Bathurst twice in 1999, with Richards being the first driver to win the Great Race in both a Ford and a Holden, after finishing second to Jason Bright in a Falcon the year before. The Paul Radisich and Steve Ellery Falcon, which suffered a puncture and other damage in a collision with 20 laps remaining, was pursued by the No. 7 Commodore, which had started 12th.
Besides, in the No. 34 Holden VT Commodore, both drivers won for the first time at Bathurst in 2000. The triumph came after a classic fight of attrition that included 13 safety cars and torrential rain. After Tony Longhurst and Adam Macrow’s vehicles collided with the wall with 11 laps remaining, Garth Tander regained the lead and held off Paul Radisich to win. Tander also competed for the championship, but Mark Skaife won his third series title with a valiant sixth-place finish.
2001 saw Mark Skaife’s first Bathurst victory for the Red Lion and third overall; Tony Longhurst’s triumph was his second after taking Peter Brock’s position as a Holden Racing Team driver in 1998.
While completing a hat trick that year, Skaife won a fourth series championship at the height of his powers. He finished ahead of the Falcon driven by Brad Jones and John Cleland at Mount Panorama by a little more than two seconds.
Accordingly, the former Nissan team rejoined the following year for the first time in seven years to claim a fourth Bathurst victory for Skaife and a seventh and last victory for Jim Richards, who, at age 55, became the race’s eldest winner. Skaife won a fifth and final overall victory to clinch his hat-trick of series championships and back-to-back victories at Mt. Panorama.
The Holden racing team won the Bathurst 1000 three years in a row. However, they didn’t win the race for the next three years, from 2006 to 2008, but they came back in 2009 with a roar, winning 11 races up to this point.
With the Holden Commodore ZB in 2018, Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards entered legendary territory at Mt Panorama with their seventh and sixth victories at Bathurst, respectively.
In contrast, they got out to a ninth-place grid start before passing Pye and Luff’s Commodore for the second consecutive year in the second position. With a comfortable last-lap gap allowing him to relish the occasion, Lowndes’ farewell to Bathurst as a full-time driver turned into a fairytale.
With a fantastic performance in the No. 25 Commodore, Chaz Mostert achieved his second Bathurst victory and first for Holden last year, and Lee Holdsworth won his first Mt. Panorama race. After Mostert’s lap record-setting performance in the Top 10 Shootout, the duo got off to a fast start.
On lap 49, Mostert was forced to stop with a tire issue, slipping from the lead to 12th in what appeared to be a devastating setback. However, Mostert made a tremendous comeback to win a great race.