Description
Edited by Thomas B. Floyd and Barry Lake, Hardbound, 160 Pages, ISBN: 13293184 - No 1 in the series **VERY RARE BOOK** First Edition, 1997
The 1997 Primus 1000 Classic was a terrific race held in front of a terrific crowd — all of which pulled terrific ratings for a marvellous telecast around Australia by the Ten Network.
And that summed up a race that had that vaguely familiar look to it. The 1997 Primus was an inaugural event held on an unusual date, yet one got the feeling we'd been there, done that, watched them and went wild for Larry Perkins in... what, '93 and again in '95?
The story of how the Primus 1000 came into being is long, complicated, arduous and, one day, will be preserved somewhere, by someone who has a penchant for ensuring history is recorded write (or should that be right?).
Depending apon which side of the fence you stand, the story is going to be relayed differently, with an almost different cast doing almost different things — the only thing that can't be changed is the outcome — and that's the subject of this book.
The 1997 inaugural Primus 1000 Classic was always going to be a tremendous battle. The teams were pumped-up to give the public a Big Show, the fans were pumped-up to show their support for V8 racing Australian style and the promoters pumped-in the publicity and hype. The result was a record trackside crowd of 51,000 for promoter/marketer IMG and good national television ratings for the Ten Network.
By the time race fans realised that Peter Brock wasn't going to win his farewell Australian major race, Larry Perkins was already well on the way to cementing his sixth 1000km race win at Bathurst.
Perkins set the fastest lap of the race on his sixth lap (almost a second quicker than Lowndes' fastest race lap of '96), just around 1/1500th of a second faster than Brock had circulated on his third lap — and the Brock/Skaife pole position time, set by Skaife, was an amazing 2m10.0397s — 25.4 seconds quicker than the 40th car on the grid, and almost a full second quicker than the Lowndes/Murphy pole time of 1996.
This, then, is the story of the 1997 Primus 1000 Classic — a race that was faster, bigger and as raucous as any other year of racing on the mountain, and we're proud to be publishing this limited edition number 1 annual book titled, V8 Bathurst.
