S5000 claims fastest ever Bathurst lap
James Golding lapped the Mount Panorama circuit faster than anybody officially on record during the Bathurst International weekend.
That is the claim from the V8-powered S5000 series, which staged a series of demonstration runs in a bid to claim the record.
The series was set to race at the Bathurst International only for Motorsport Australia to pull the pin on safety grounds.
That led to the series instead focussing on a shot at the official lap record, a 1m59.291s set by Chris Mies in an unrestricted Audi GT3 car.
Given it wasn't a wheel-to-wheel race the S5000 cars were able to run without the power restrictions they faced at Bathurst in December 2021.
And that helped Golding better his own category record from 2021, a 1m59.837s, to an outright record-beating 1m59.264s.
He may have gone quicker, too, had it not been for a final, longer run on Sunday being called off due to time constraints.
S5000 cars now hold outright records at Bathurst, Symmons Plains, Hidden Valley and Surfers Paradise.
"It was a pretty special thing to do," Golding said.
"I only just got [the record] by a tenth, but we only had three flying laps so there's definitely more time to come out of it.
"These are the fastest cars in Australia and we wanted to try and get the record at the best track in Australia, and it's pretty cool to have been able to do that.
"The car was fantastic and an improvement from when we raced here in 2021; it felt great and was exciting to drive."
The unofficial lap record at Bathurst is still held by Jenson Button, who lapped the circuit in 1m48.8s in a McLaren Formula 1 car during a Vodafone promotion back in 2011.
The 2022 S5000 season will conclude with the second of two Tasman Series rounds at the Adelaide 500 early next month.
Nathan Herne leads the Tasman Series after clean-sweeping the opening round on the Gold Coast.
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