Background The event was the 60th running of the
Bathurst 1000, which was first held at the
Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in 1960 as a 500-mile race for Australian-made standard production sedans, and marked the 57th time that the race was held at Mount Panorama. It was the 21st running of the
Australian 1000 race, which was first held after the organisational split between the Australian Racing Drivers Club and
V8 Supercars Australia that saw two "Bathurst 1000" races contested in both 1997 and 1998. It was the 19th time the race had been held as part of the Supercars Championship and the fifth time it formed part of the
Enduro Cup. The defending winners of the race were
Will Davison and
Jonathon Webb.
Scott McLaughlin entered the event as the championship leader, 84 points clear of
Triple Eight Race Engineering's
Jamie Whincup. McLaughlin's
DJR Team Penske team-mate
Fabian Coulthard was third in the points standings, 161 behind McLaughlin. In the Teams' Championship, DJR Team Penske held a 372-point lead over Triple Eight. In the
Enduro Cup standings,
Prodrive Racing Australia team-mates
Cam Waters and
Richie Stanaway led the pairing of McLaughlin and
Alexandre Prémat by 24 points.
Entry list Twenty-six cars were entered in the event. It was the first time since 2008 that no additional "Wildcard" entries had been received for the race. The race would see the Bathurst 1000 debut of four drivers - Super2 drivers
Todd Hazelwood,
Richard Muscat and
Garry Jacobson and main-game debutant
Alex Rullo. Rullo (at 17 years, 4 months and 23 days) would become the fourth youngest Bathurst 1000 starter after
Cam Waters (17 years, 2 months and 6 days in
2011),
Paul Dumbrell (17 years, 2 months and 14 days in
1999) and Bryan Sala (17 years, 2 months and 15 days in
1991). ;Notes: • — following Practice 3
Ashley Walsh was replaced by
Andre Heimgartner due to injury.
Practice Three one-hour practice sessions were held on the Thursday prior to the race. Practice 1 and Practice 3 were open to both regular drivers and co-drivers, while Practice 2 was for co-drivers only. The first session saw Mostert set the fastest lap time of 2:06.3033. Lowndes was second fastest, six hundredths behind while Todd Kelly was sixteen hundredths further back. Tim Slade caused a
red flag as a result of losing control in the Esses before heavily impacting the wall on the entry to the Dipper. The session was halted again with nineteen minutes remaining after Alex Rullo stopped on Conrod Straight having found the wall at Forrest's Elbow. ==Results==