The fastest ten cars from qualifying contested a one lap "Top Ten Run-off" on the Saturday to determine the first ten grid places for the race. • 1997 was the first time in which a car
Peter Brock was entered in was driven in the runoff by his co-driver. In this case it was
Vauxhall Sport team owner and former
Formula One driver
Derek Warwick who was in the drivers seat. Brock had in fact rolled the #05
Vauxhall Vectra coming into Caltex Chase during qualifying.* Derek Warwick became the 6th ex-Formula One driver to appear in the runoff following
Jack Brabham,
Derek Bell,
Larry Perkins,
Alan Jones and
David Brabham.*
Paul Morris' pole time of 2:16.5958 was 5.5798 seconds slower than
Glenn Seton's
1996 pole time of 2:11.0160 set in a
V8 powered
Ford EF Falcon showing the difference in speed between the Australian 5.0 litre
V8 formula and the 2.0 litre Super Touring cars.* Eight of the ten drivers were making their first appearance in the Bathurst Top 10 shootout. Only
Brad Jones and Alan Jones (no relation) had appeared previously.
Alain Menu,
Tim Harvey, Derek Warwick and
Patrick Watts, all
British Touring Car Championship regulars, were Bathurst rookies.*
Geoff Brabham became the first third member of a family to appear in the Top 10 runoff following his father Jack (
1978) and his 1997 co-driver, his younger brother David (
1993). As of the
2015 race, this is the last time the name Brabham has appeared in the runoff.* Appearing in his first Top 10 runoff,
Steven Richards, the son of then 5 time Great Race winner
Jim Richards, joined David and Geoff Brabham and
Steven Johnson (the son of 3 time winner
Dick Johnson) as second generation drivers whose fathers had also appeared in the runoff. ==Official results==