Mount Panorama (Bathurst)

Circuit · Australia, NSW

Australia's Mount Everest of motorsport. 6.213 km of public-road mountain.

A 6.213 km street circuit on the side of Mount Panorama outside Bathurst, three hours west of Sydney. It is a closed public road for fifty weeks a year, residents drive it to get home, tourists drive it to say they did, and a homologated FIA-grade circuit for the other two, including the Bathurst 1000 V8 Supercars race that defines the Australian motorsport calendar.

For drift Mount Panorama matters as the cultural anchor of an entire continent's tin-top tuning identity. Drift Australia and the King of Nations rounds bring grid cars here; the Hell Corner-to-Forrest's Elbow downhill demands the kind of long-corner commitment that builds different drivers than short-circuit pros.

New Zealand has Hampton Downs; Australia has Bathurst. Together they make Pacific drift more than the Mad Mike monoculture the export-numbers suggest.

Source: Maksym Kozlenko · CC BY-SA 3.0