The Bathurst 12 Hour with its record twenty safety cars would like to remind us all: Mount Panorama Circuit will bite you—hard. The infamous Australian track didn't get its reputation as one of the toughest places to race in the world by having tons of runoff or being gentle on cars.
If you thought drivers might take it easy for practice sessions, nope.
The Coffee Rocket's Aussie cousin seems to have similar luck to its American 911 counterpart.
It's amazing how crews are able to rebuild these cars in a hurry.
You would think racers might try to just get some easy laps in during the start so as not to ruin a twelve-hour race in the first hour.
Nah.
That's not the best place to remember that a Mazda RX-8 in race trim is hard to get going again. Wait for it...wait for it.....aaaaand, he's backing up into traffic with no lights on.
The rest of the race was just as intense. Here's a mere sample of crashes, oops and spins.
Who says you only need to hit one sand trap? This Audi skipped through two!
Aussie Vodka? Pfft! In Soviet Vodka, wall hits YOU!
Of course, Porsche 911s are still the masters of sending their engine-filled rumps into the wall. This one brought a friend!
Even the glorious V8 Mazda3 wasn't immune from the wall.
Although you could almost argue that the safety car won this year's race, everyone is glad that this sign didn't come true:
If someone hit the safety car, it would probably cause another safety car, and whoa. Whoa, man. I can't even wrap my head around that. SAFETY CAR-CEPTION.
Mount Panorama is not your friend. Mount Panorama will chew you up, spit you out and use that wad of chewed up car-and-people-mush to fertilize the shrubs.