Mount Panorama Lap Guide: Bathurst in ACC

Mount Panorama is really two circuits welded together. The bottom is a drag race: Mountain Straight, Conrod, heavy braking, big speed. The top is a 1.5-kilometre tightrope across a hillside with concrete on both sides and almost no run-off. Most drivers lose their time in the second one, and not because they lack pace, but because they lift. In a GT3 car in ACC the difference between a 2:05 and a 2:02 is mostly found between The Cutting and Forrest's Elbow, in a handful of corners where the correct input is more throttle than your instincts want to give.

Why the mountain costs you so much

The top section is a chain. McPhillamy Park feeds Skyline, Skyline sets your entry to the Esses, the Esses set the Dipper, and the Dipper decides whether you can get on the power early at Forrest's Elbow. One tentative entry at the start of that chain propagates all the way to Conrod Straight, where it gets multiplied by two kilometres of full throttle. A tenth lost at McPhillamy is worth closer to three by the time you brake for The Chase.

That is why "I will just be safe over the top and make it up on the straights" does not work here. There is nowhere to make it up. The straights are where the mountain's mistakes get cashed in.

Sector one: the climb

Hell Corner

Tight left at the end of pit straight, second gear. The temptation is to brake late and sling it in, but Hell Corner exists to launch you up Mountain Straight. Prioritise a straight, early exit over a late apex: you want the wheel unwound and the throttle pinned as soon as possible, because the next kilometre is uphill and every km/h you leave here compounds. Use the apex kerb lightly. The car will push wide on exit toward the outside wall if you are greedy with entry speed.

Griffins Bend

Fast approach, uphill braking, right-hander. The gradient helps you stop, so you can brake meaningfully later than you could at an equivalent corner on flat ground, but the braking zone is bumpy and the car moves under you. Keep the brake release smooth and get the rotation done before the apex, because the exit runs out toward concrete on the left and the track immediately starts climbing again. A tidy apex and a clean, straight exit beat a heroic entry followed by a correction.

The Cutting

The steepest part of the lap, second gear, blind, walls on both sides. Two mistakes dominate: apexing too early and clipping the inside wall, and over-slowing because the corner looks impossible. The climb gives you enormous traction on exit, so your job is to carry the car to a slightly later apex than feels natural, get it rotated, then take all the throttle you can. Look up the hill, not at the wall. If you are correcting on exit at The Cutting, you entered too tight.

Across the top

Reid Park and Sulman Park

Once you crest The Cutting the track levels out and narrows. The left at Reid Park and the right at Sulman Park are not low-speed corners, they are direction changes you take with the car already loaded. Treat them as one flowing section with a single commitment point rather than two separate brake-and-turn events. Lifting twice here is a classic two or three tenth loss that never shows up as a visible mistake.

McPhillamy Park

This is the corner that separates fast Bathurst laps from safe ones. A long left along the ridge, and in a GT3 car it is a committed, barely-braked corner once you trust the line. The wall is on your exit side and it is close. The technique: get the car positioned early, make one decisive turn-in, and hold a steady, confident steering angle with a small amount of maintenance throttle instead of hunting for the apex with repeated corrections. Mid-corner steering corrections at McPhillamy are what put cars in the wall, not speed.

Brock's Skyline

Highest point of the circuit, a right-hander where the track falls away as you turn. You lose load at exactly the moment you ask for it, which is why the car feels like it wants to run on. Get your braking and your rotation done slightly earlier than you would like, use the inside kerb, and be straight before the drop begins. If you arrive at Skyline still turning, the descent into the Esses takes the decision out of your hands.

The descent

The Esses and The Dipper

Downhill, off-camber in places, and the fastest way through is one committed line rather than a sequence of reactions. Pick the entry, be patient with the wheel, and let the gradient carry you. The Dipper has a compression and a steep inside kerb that will unsettle the car if you lean on it hard: touch it, do not ride it. Braking through here is light and mostly about settling the platform, not about losing speed.

Forrest's Elbow

The last corner on the mountain and the one with the highest payoff. It is a downhill-entry left that opens onto two kilometres of flat throttle, so exit speed here is worth more than anywhere else on the lap. The outside kerb is aggressive, and running wide puts you onto the grass at the start of Conrod at considerable speed. Brake in a straight line, be deliberate on entry, and feed the power in progressively so the car is settled and pointing straight before you commit fully.

Conrod, The Chase and Murray's

Conrod Straight is full throttle over a crest, mostly a rest for your hands and a verdict on how well you did at Forrest's Elbow. The Chase arrives at around 290 km/h and is the heaviest braking zone on the circuit: brake in a straight line, be honest about your reference point, and do not attack the kerbs. The right-then-left is easy to overdrive and a spin there is lap-ending. Murray's Corner, the slow left onto pit straight, rewards the same thing Hell Corner does: a clean, straight exit, because you are accelerating out of low speed onto a long straight.

Wall margin versus lap time

There is a genuine trade-off at Bathurst, and the honest version is this. On the top section the fast line is close to the wall, and the time you gain by moving a foot or two closer is smaller than the time you lose by crashing once per stint. The resolution is not to drive scared, it is to be repeatable. Pick a line with a margin you can hit ten laps in a row, and only move closer once your telemetry shows a smooth steering trace and consistent minimum speeds lap to lap. Inconsistency, not bravery, is what makes the walls dangerous.

How to actually learn it

1. Learn the bottom half first. Hell Corner, Griffins Bend, The Cutting, The Chase and Murray's should be automatic so that the mountain gets your full attention.
2. Run the top section in isolation at around 80 percent, with no intention of setting a time, until you know what is over every crest.
3. Add commitment one corner at a time. McPhillamy first, then Skyline, then the Esses.
4. Compare minimum speeds and throttle traces against a reference lap corner by corner, rather than chasing total lap time.
5. Do ten-lap runs. A single good lap at Bathurst means very little. A consistent stint means you have actually learned it.

If you want that feedback while you are driving rather than after the session, P1 (https://takep1.com) is an AI race engineer that reads your telemetry live and coaches the exact corners and braking points costing you time. On a circuit where the useful information is "you lifted at McPhillamy again," hearing it on the next lap matters more than finding it in a graph an hour later.

Bathurst rewards conviction backed by repetition more than it rewards raw talent. Build the commitment corner by corner, keep a margin you can honour every lap, and the mountain stops being a survival exercise and starts being the fastest part of your lap.