The Mount Panorama Racing Circuit is nestled along a hillside surrounding Bathurst.  What strikes most amazing your first time here is how well maintained the road is, and it should be!  It’s a professional race track, for crying out loud!

Yet along this track it isn’t uncommon to see people in normal, everyday cars driving along the route.  Or people jogging or walking along the shoulders through the windy and challenging elevation changing turns of “The Esses”.  While there, I actually saw several bicyclists doing the route, which seemed grueling enough in our car!

I guess you could argue that the course for the Long Beach Grand Prix is also a public road, but this is way different.  Long Beach actually re-routes traffic and configures the streets specifically for the race.  Mount Panorama’s streets need no reconfiguration, or painting of tarmac markers; ANYONE can drive along the very same route which is the Mt. Panorama race course!

And yes, people do live alongside the course.  I saw a winery, several homes, a brand new hotel facility, and of course their paddock building and grandstands, all along the drive over the course.  Surreal!  A mere several hundred feet from the course is an incredible motorsports museum which holds many classic race and performance vehicles which has put Australian cars, teams, and drivers on the map, so-to-speak.

Joey and I had lunch at the restaurant in the hotel, and was able to enjoy an incredible burger out on the patio which overlooks a portion of the track.  Because we were there during an off-season, it was quite empty.  When our waiter found out we were from the States, we were visited by one of the actual managers of the Mount Panorama track!

After lunch we decided to lick & stick the video cams to the Falcon and do some laps around the course.  Me being who I am, kept scoping the skies as it was shaping up to be an incredible sunset; that’s when I decided to take advantage of this and we performed yet another photoshoot.  Surprisingly, this session would yield the “money shot”…. YEW!

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