Why the first Adelaide 500 took over 25 hours to complete

 

THIS year marks the 25th anniversary of the Adelaide 500, the only event to sit in the Supercars Hall of Fame – but there’s an element of its history that is commonly overlooked.

 

 

In November this year the Supercars drivers will line up for a pair of 250-kilometre races on the Saturday and Sunday with two race wins being awarded across the two days. However, the inaugural event in 1999 was a very different scenario, as the Sensational Adelaide 500 – as it was then known – debuted on the V8 Supercar calendar with a bang as a single 500-kilometre race, stretched over two days.

 

 

As it turned out, it took 25 hours, 35 minutes and 23 seconds to complete the ‘500!

 

 

Taking a special victory was Craig Lowndes, who had to overcome all sorts of drama to collect the trophy at the end of 156 laps of racing.

 

 

Despite greeting the chequered flag first on both days, his win in Adelaide in 1999 is counted – due to the race format of that year – as a single race win towards his career wins tally, and not two race wins.

 

 

He led home Glenn Seton and Garth Tander at the end of 250-kilometres of racing on Saturday after serving a stop-go penalty mid-race for contact with Danny Osborne that resulted in the #22 Colourscan EL Falcon clouting the wall.

 

 

News came through on Sunday morning though that Lowndes was excluded from the Saturday race for the Osborne crash and therefore put to the rear of the grid for the start of Sunday.

 

 

He started 36th on the grid and sliced his way through to cross the line first at the end of 78 laps to head Greg Murphy and Jason Bright and take the chequered flag first for the second day in a row.

 

 

Post-race the news got better for Lowndes and his Holden Racing Team.

 

 

The team had appealed the exclusion and, in the week following the race, the charge of Lowndes ‘failing to exercise proper care and consideration’ was upheld, and he regained the 100 points for Saturday’s victory, but was fined $10,000.

 

 

The ‘one race over two days’ format caused plenty of confusion.

 

 

Originally there was a curfew rule that meant teams couldn’t work on their cars beyond 6pm Saturday, save for brakes, fluids and body panels, but this was rescinded to allow ‘open slather’.

 

 

A ruling issued during the event also stated that drivers that started Sunday’s race would be deemed to have run all 78 laps the previous day and could win the event overall, even if they had not completed all 78 laps on Saturday!

 

 

The race format was simplified for 2000 with the concept of ‘one race spread over two days’ removed and each of the 78-lap races were counted as individual races.

 

 

The only real link between them was that the Sunday grid was formed via the finishing order of the Saturday race.

 

 

While the cars in the inaugural Sensational Adelaide 500 took just over four hours to complete the 156 laps on track, it proved to be a race that took just over 25 hours to complete from start to finish – technically making it the longest race in the history of the Supercars Championship!