1. Hell Corner - Garth Tander

Hell Corner is the first corner of a 1000km race, so everyone tends to be a little bit courteous and give the others plenty of room, so it's probably not your traditional 'first corner'. But that's probably the only time in the race that anyone will give you any room because as soon as you get through there, you're into racing mode.

Hell Corner itself is actually quite an interesting corner because the camber falls away as you get to the apex, so the cars can understeer a bit through there and quite often there'll be people running wide up over the kerb of the exit. It's important to get a good run through there because obviously that'll determine your top speed at the end of Mountain Straight. And because Mountain Straight is an uphill straight, any small gain that you get at the exit will help you enormously once you get to the braking area. Although it seems like quite a text book 90-degree corner, it's actually one of the most important on the circuit.

It is also a very good opportunity for overtaking, and quite a safe place to overtake too. You don't want to go tearing the corner off the car at any time, you want a safe place to pass and in that sense it is quite safe.

Saying that, Matt Neil did a good job of almost taking three cars out of the race in 2000 when Skaifey, Crompton and myself tried to pass him when we were lapping him... so it's probably had its share of drama as well. But all in all it's probably a safe place to pass and you can quite easily get up the inside if you get a good run out of the final corner.

Not many people who have gone in the sandtrap at Hell have driven out under their own steam; there is an escape road there so really if you do commit yourself to going too deep on the brakes, you're better to steer up the escape road and just step up on the corner totally rather than just make it round.

2. Griffin Bend - Jim Richards

For me the thing is you get a brake marker that you're happy with - as in how late you can brake. The thing about turn 2 is that you have to turn in earlier than you would on most other corners because the track sort of falls away a bit, so I try and turn in a bit early and try to get back on the throttle virtually as hard as I can before I'm half way around the corner and then I go out to the ripples from the outside and I gauge my speed.

If you do the corner pretty well the same every time - our computer system has a log that logs your maximum exit speed - so if you do the corner the same way every time, my aim is to get usually over 150km/h at the point where the thing logs. And I think that if you're doing around the high 150s you've done a real good job of the corner.

There is a bump just as you turn in, which is why I tend to turn in a little bit early and I think most guys do when you watch them on the telly. If you leave it too late in a classic line... you touch the bump, the car gets out onto the slippery part and the road falls away. So you're better to turn in early and miss the bump and then you're back on the power and then let it run out to the outside of the curve.

It is an important corner because it goes uphill and your car doesn't accelerate much up that hill. So if you can get round there 2 or 3 kays faster than another guy, you're going to hold that up the hill. So although you can't pass him, you may catch him.

I suppose there is a risk involved if someone dropped a bit of fluid on the corner, or someone's had a bit of an excursion across the dirt and got a bit of dirt on the track, but I think it would have to be a failure of some sort to make you have an accident there.

Jason Bright: What did winning Bathurst do for your career? At the time it was huge, the amount of publicity we got through winning that race was amazing. I would like to see it as a standalone race, it'd be great to go to Bathurst every year and just have a real shot at trying to win it.

3. The Cutting - Jason Bargwanna

You come up into The Cutting and you're in fourth gear as you approach, you're out wide on the right hand side then you aim for the bank on the left hand side which then pushes you right out wide to the turning point of The Cutting.

You go back to second gear and try and carry as much speed as possible and really use the front tyre. Your braking is not that hard because of the steepness of it, you literally get off the gas and the car starts to slow down instantly, so you're not standing on the brakes because you're washing speed off rather than slowing the car right down.

You come very close to the wall on the inside, which throws you right out wide against the right hand wall, so it's quite exciting. As you try and get the throttle on to come up out of The Cutting, you've then got to set the car up, change gear and go over the little crest just as you come out of The Cutting - which Dick Johnson would know quite well from the old days with the rock - and then you get thrown from the right hand side of the circuit across to the left and then you're setting yourself up to come up under the tree at Reid Park there.

You can overtake coming into The Cutting, if you get a good run on someone you can get up the inside, just before the turning point. But really, that would have to be a slower car situation. If you're really racing someone it's almost impossible to pass there. It's a very exciting bit of the track because you're going very close to the walls. You go from the left hand side to the right hand side, back to the left hand side, back to the right hand side, back to the left hand side again, so you're very busy in the car and I reckon it's one of the best parts of the race track.

4. Reid Park - John Bowe

This is my favourite part of the track and I reckon it's many people's favourite too - it's really challenging. You come out of The Cutting and you go through the right hander with a little lift off and the car moves around a lot because it's quite bumpy. You can't hit the kerb on the inside because last year they raised the level of the kerbs all round the circuit so you have to be very accurate.

By nature these cars are quite softly sprung so they walk around a lot on the tyres and you're doing all of this in third gear. Just as you clear the right hander you go up to fourth gear then you play it until you crest the rise which you do about the middle of the road and then breathe over the throttle again as you sweep down into Reid Park.

It's really a series of corners and if you get one little bit wrong it can cause lots of grief. As you swoop down into it, the car uses up all its suspension travel, so it almost goes solid and while all of this is going on, you've got to turn a left again to go through Reid, so some people have a little brush on the brakes... I don't.

I just get out of the throttle and try and free it up again.

It's quite exciting and if the car's not working well it's absolutely petrifying, but if the car's working well it's exciting, it's terrific. The kerb on the inside at Reid is much higher so last year a lot of the drivers complained about it and they shaved a bit off. You used to be able to ride up on it, now you can't. And now the exit, you have to use all the road without actually grazing the fence as you approach McPhillamy. The whole top of the mountain is a sequence, one after the other and if you bugger up one, you bugger up the whole lap in terms of doing a really demon lap time.

Glenn Seton: How does it feel to come close to winning Bathurst? I'd have to say I felt fairly ripped off in 1995. We had the race in the bag and the disappointment we had was really gut-wrenching. I didn't cry when the car stopped, but I had a few tears when I got back to the transporter.

5. McPhillamy Park - Mark Skaife

McPhillamy is one of the highlights of the lap because it's one of the only corners in Australia where you actually turn the wheel before you see what the corner looks like. When you come out of Reid Park you use every skerrick of road coming out of there, the cars are on the slide in fourth gear, they make about 200km/h, and as you accelerate up to the rise, you have to position the car carefully to get it to turn in well.

It's a very accurate spot in terms of making sure that when you turn the wheel that you actually can get the car to the apex, but not too harshly in that if you turn it too much you upset the car, it's quite fast and they're always prone to being really oversteery on the entry into there. And then if they're a little bit oversteery, and you catch the kerb on the inside there all that does is get ugly and then the road falls away off camber out to the exit curve which continues the oversteer, so that's why over the years so many people have crashed there.

There's a big chance of having a crash, and a small margin for error - that's one of the reasons it's such an interesting and weird corner, because the car is unweighted on the entry, when it finally puts its feet back on the ground again and you've then got some steering action going, you control your own destiny then, you fight it at the corner whether you fight it too fast, you don't know until you get it there and get it settled.

It's a fair roller coaster ride at every lap. It's a fantastic corner, one of the best corners in Australia, and if you do a really good job there, it's one of the most rewarding corners that you'd ever be able to attack.

6. Skyline - Craig Lowndes

On a good lap you'll be in fifth gear as you approach Skyline hard on the limiter - the reason they call it Skyline is because that's all you can see. You need to set up the car approach before you drop over into my favourite part of the circuit - if you get it wrong, you'll hurt yourself. When I first went to Bathurst that was the section that sort of scared me the most, it's a matter of getting the line right, understanding where the car is going. A lot of people, some of the team mates that I've driven with, try to carry too much brake down the mountain, off the Skyline and down through the esses and into the Dipper. You've just got to set the car up and put it back to third and drop over the actual corner. You've got the right hander which you've got to hug the concrete wall then you actually bend back to the left when you reapply the brakes again after you've dropped over Skyline.

Approaching the crest there are no bumps on the circuit the car is very smooth, but once you've gone over the crest when you're trying to get the car to turn right over the crest, the car becomes very light, so that's why it's so crucial to make sure that the car... the approach to the corner is actually set before you drop over it. Because there's no way you're going to be able to change the attitude of the car once you've committed. A lot of cars have continued straight over the gravel trap, some have managed to get back on the race tracks, others have ended in the wall... it is a very quick section of the circuit.

My father used to tell me, you spend two thirds of the time getting up the mountain and a third coming down it. But coming down the mountain is probably the most fun. So it's quite an amazing corner.

Larry Perkins: What does Bathurst mean to Larry Perkins? It means a lot to me... Bathurst is the only race in touring cars I really want to win - it is an 11 out of 10 desire to win. You can throw skill and daring at that track and get great rewardS... that is what I love.

7. The Esses - Jason Bright

It's quite hard braking as you come over Skyline, the car's extremely light and you're just trying to carry speed down the Esses, but because you're going downhill and the car's light, you can't do as much braking as you normally do when you're either on a flat surface or going up the hill, so it is pretty critical to get the speed right. There's a lot of time to be made down through the Esses by getting it right.

It is an area where it's quite easy to make a mistake because the car's light and you can use a bit of the kerb through the Esses, but that can also catch you out. I think it's one of the more challenging areas of the track because over the weekend you're still finding pace through there. It's the steepest part of the track and it's after a very quick section, and because it's all downhill you can't wipe off a lot of speed, so if something does happen ahead of you, you can't stop.

There've been plenty of times when I've carried too much speed over Skyline and tried to wipe it off down through the Esses, which just means locking wheels and there's no room for error... it's probably also the narrowest part of the track as you head down towards the Dipper so you can't afford to be carrying too much speed there because you haven't got a lot of room for error and the car's light as well. I actually made a bit of a Mezera-style trip there last year and went down to the sand traps and missed the Esses all together.

8. The Dipper/Forrests Elbow - Greg Murphy

The lead into the Dipper is obviously pretty important, you come down over Skyline, through the Esses and the right hand of it comes in, if you drift too wide it totally stuffs up your line through the Dipper. It might not look like an important part of the circuit, considering it's quite slow, but it's pretty imperative to get through there nice and straight for the run between there and Forrests Elbow, which is critical for Conrod.

You don't really set up the car for Dipper because the car does get pretty light, but you've got to make sure it doesn't drift too wide on the exit because you've got to pull it the left to get round the little kinks straight after the Dipper. It's a really great part of the circuit and if you stand there and look at it the drop off is quite high - it's a hell of a drop from just exiting the Esses to the bottom of the Dipper. If you stand right on the apex of that corner, you really need to balance yourself and hang on to the wall just to stand there... it's a pretty historic and a legendary part of the circuit for sure. And I enjoy that part of it, without a doubt.

Once you get through there and head down through Forrests Elbow, the drop again as you crest into the Elbow is very steep, and you've got to be very careful on the brakes. It is easy to lock an inside wheel there and miss the apex. And we've seen plenty of incidents... guys coming around the right hand kink, getting too wide and finding themselves in the marbles and then into the wall or going straight ahead into the fence there. The better run you get off there gives you an opportunity down Conrod and gives you a bit of speed and, trust me, you don't have to get it wrong by too much to lose 4, 5 or 6km/h top speed down into the Chase, so it's a very important part of the circuit.

Marcos Ambrose: Can you do a perfect lap at Bathurst? I think I did one in 2001. It's very unique, it's so tight, when you're running at 180-190kM/H and your apex is the concrete wall, you've really got to be fully comfortable with the car and just hang on the line.

9. Caltex Chase - Russel Ingall

Caltex Chase is one of the few corners in Australia where it's a very high speed corner going into it... a lot of people can't believe that we're actually going into the Chase flat. Coming down Conrod, you just pick 6th gear over the last hump and you're motoring along, and nowadays because we've got a little bit of extra grunt we're hitting the limiter well before we start to turn right and you're on the limiter hard, turning right into the Chase.

It's actually a fair corner. On TV it may look like a gradual sweeper but when you drive round it or have a look, it's fairly tight, almost a 90 degree turn... that's what it looks like approaching it because it disappears. But when you're coming down Conrod, there's a fence in the way and you can't see where the corner is going so it's a bit of a blind corner, and a bit of a hit and miss.

And just to make it more interesting there's a nice series of bumps right in the braking area as you're going in so the trick to it is to get the car absolutely dead straight before you jump on the brakes, if you brake when you've still got the car turning, you go over all these bumps and the front wheels just lock straight up and she's into the gravel trap and you do a bit of a Tomas Mezera... people have been upside down and creating all sorts of havoc.

So it's really tricky to pull a car up from 290, she's a big task and that's when you really feel the weight of these things. You can get through the left hander in third at quite a high speed. I remember going back into the VS days, it was a definite second gear corner and the corner speeds were quite slow. But the left hander is quite a fast corner now and quite entertaining, but it's really important because getting a good exit speed dictates how quickly you get down to Murray's Corner.

10. Murrays Corner -Steve Richards

I suppose the best thing about Murray's Corner is it's the last corner before you greet the chequered flag. I've been fortunate enough to see it a couple of times like that, and it is amazing. It offers plenty of passing opportunities: if you get a good run through the Chase and a good run through the right hander you can generally make the move at Murray's Corner pretty comfortably. Obviously if somebody covers it's pretty difficult, but it's a genuine overtaking opportunity. When you brake and turn the camber falls into the corner, and then you can get on the power reasonably early and let the car run wide over the exit kerb.

You can actually let it run right up on top of the kerb, get the power down for a good drive up Pit Straight. The other thing is there's very little run off if you do have a major problem there. I think last year Jason Bright and Tomas Mezera were fairly lucky there, which I reckon was wrong - they gained a massive advantage from being dragged out. They caused the safety car and then got dragged out when they were stuck, before the safety car got there.

The corner is pretty smooth, it's just the nature of how the camber is on the road there that challenges. There's a slight undulation but nothing that really upsets the car. Wheelspin is not a problem because at Bathurst you use such high gearing, and you use second gear and just turn into the corner and stamp on the throttle and it opens up a fair bit being able to use the kerb. Normally when you're on a good lap, you know it because you pretty well bang the limiter in fourth gear every time you get to the end of that little straight there out of the Chase, so it's a good indicator that you're on a pretty flash lap and you've got out of the Chase well if you hit the limiter for a fair way before you get into the braking.