Previous WinnersDownhill Skateboarding 2009 Kevin Reimer, Canada 2008 Erik Lundberg, Sweden Street Luge 2009 Nick Duffield, Australia 2008 Nick Duffield, Australia Woman's Downhill Skateboarding 2009 Brianne Davies, Canada 2008 Anne Harding, Canada Classic Luge 2009 Andy Lally, United States 2008 Abdil Mahdzan, Malaysia Newton's Nation is Australia's premier downhill
racing event. Skateboarders and lugers will compete on a 1.3 km
course starting from Skyline at the top of the iconic Mt Panorama
circuit, and finishing on Conrod Straight. Competitors reach speeds
of over 100km/h while racing only centimetres from each other. |
"K1 ON NEWTON'S 1 AND 2" from SKATE[SLATE] on Vimeo.
McPhillamy Park is a downhill, deceptively fast left hand turn which is guarded by a crest prior to turn-in, rendering the corner blind to approaching riders. Riders have to stay close to the wall while turning so as not to go out wide upon exit. To go too close however may cause the rider to clip the inside kerbing, which Allan Moffat famously did in practice for the 1986 Bathurst 1000, crashing heavily, head on to the concrete. McPhillamy Park is the location of longest running campsite for those who camp at the track for sometimes over a week ahead of the race.
A short straight connects McPhillamy to the next corner. Now named 'Brock's Skyline' after the legendary Peter Brock, Skyline is a sharply descending right hand corner which signifies the beginning of the descent from the top of the Mountain. The corner acquired the name from the visual effect of looking upwards at the corner from below, such is the sharpness of that initial plunge. During the 1970 Bathurst 500 Tony Roberts launched over Skyline backwards after losing control of his Ford Falcon, before tumbling down the hillside.
The Esses are the series of corners which begin at Skyline and stretch down the Mountain towards Forrests Elbow. There have been many notable accidents at this part of the circuit.
The most famous of the Esses, the Dipper, the fourth in the sequence, is a sharp left hand corner, so named because, before safety changes, there was quite a dip in the road surface and then a steep drop not far from the edge of the road. Many cars used to get two wheels off the ground, sometimes having their left front wheel dangling off the side of the track before the concrete walls were put up.
'The Elbow' – named after Jack Forrest, a motorcycle racer who scraped his elbow away after laying down his bike – is a fast, descending left-hand turn that leads on to the long Conrod Straight. The corner's line drifts towards the outside wall on exit and riders have to be careful of getting too close. It was just past here,at the kink, during the pole qualifying session (the top ten drivers from Friday's qualifying session participate in a final session to determine the top ten starting positions for the race) for to the 1983 James Hardie 1000, that Dick Johnson clipped a tyre barrier just after exiting the corner, which sent his Ford Falcon careening into a grove of trees, totally demolishing it.
Formerly known as Main Straight, Conrod Straight was so named because of a con-rod failure that ended the race of Frank Kleinig in his Kleinig/Hudson race-car. Conrod Straight is the fastest section of Mount Panorama, with today's V8 Supercars just reaching 320 km/h. The straight is a roller-coaster ride featuring two distinct crests, the second of which was rebuilt in 1987. It has been on Conrod where five of the six car-racing deaths on the circuit have occurred.
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