The Adelaide 500 motorsport carnival kicks off today on a street circuit revered across the globe, as past legends recall the inaugural event held in 1999 and what made it so special.
It was hotter than hell for the drivers and participants who wondered what they had "gotten themselves into", but 25 years later, the inaugural Adelaide 500 is being celebrated as a catalyst for change across the Supercars Championship .
For 17 weeks of the year a veritable construction site rises and falls in Adelaide's Parklands and transforms the city's east into a carnival for petrol heads. Murphy said when the first race was held, many wondered "what the hell we had gotten ourselves into?"But following the "carnage that ensued on the first day in Saturday", he said the idea of a parc fermé was effectively thrown "out the window"."It was just such a learning curve for everybody to do a race distance like that.""It think it was about 900 degrees in the cars," Murphy said.
"It's unforgiving, it's got a hero corner … it's the reason people ride big waves or jump out of planes — we love it."The final round of the Supercars season pits teammates against each other in a title showdown. Rising crowd numbers in the following years prompted organisers to turn what was a three-day event into a four-day event that attracted more than 200,000 people in 2003, and a record of 291,000 in 2008.
Formula 1 Craig Lowndes Mark Skaife Greg Murphy Benchmark Motorsport Festival Adelaide 500 Murray Walker Parklands Sensational Adelaide 500 Turn Eight Peter Brock Australian Touring Car Championship South Australian Tourism Commission Circuit
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