The 2010 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 will be remembered for a number of reasons, but no vision is etched more into the memories of Australian motorsport fans than Fabian Coulthard’s Bundaberg Red VE Commodore going through a series of barrel rolls through The Chase gravel trap on Lap 1. Miraculously, Coulthard emerged safely from the wreck.
It was the first Bathurst 1000 that introduced the current co-driver rule that prohibits teams from pairing their two regular drivers in the one car. This provided drivers that were no longer full time - like Mark Skaife - the perfect chance to win Australia's Great Race again.
A five-time winner only recently out of the sport, a driver like Skaife was always going to be hot property under the new co-driver rules. Sure enough, Triple Eight Race Engineering signed him up, and Skaife went on to score a sixth Bathurst win.
For lead driver Craig Lowndes, it was Bathurst win number five. It continued an amazingly successful spell for Lowndes – he’d now won four of the past five Bathurst 1000s. The previous three wins had all been with Triple Eight Fords, but this latest one came in a Holden Commodore. Triple Eight, the dominant team in V8 Supercars from 2006 through 2009, switched sides to join Holden for 2010.
It was a defection that would prove costly for Ford in 2010 as the heavyweight team again delivered the goods on the Mountain, but this time for Holden.
Mark Winterbottom had scored pole position on Saturday but that was to prove one of the few highlights for Ford at Bathurst in 2010. Rubbing salt into the wound, the second Triple Eight Commodore of Whincup and Steve Owen finished second, and crossed the line alongside the winning car in a one-two formation finish.
With Garth Tander and Cam McConville taking third place and the Jason Bright/Matt Halliday combination finishing just off the podium, is was an historic 1-2-3-4 for the General Motors brand.
Duration: Approximately 4 Hours 40 Minutes