Winton Motor Raceway

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**Winton Motor Raceway**
Location	Winton, Australia

Major events	V8 Supercars
Circuit length	3.0 kilometres
Turns	12
Direction	clockwise
Lap record	1m14.5697s (Christian Murchison, {{{Record_team}}}, {{{Record_year}}})

Winton Motor Raceway is a Motor Racing track in Winton, near Benalla, Victoria.

1 History
2 V8 Supercars
3 Australian Superbike Championship
4 2007 Race Results
5 External links

[edit] History

The Benalla Auto Club (founded in 1957) began planning for a permanent racing track around 1958. In 1960 it was decided to build the track at Winton Recreation Reserve and was completed in twelve months.

The first race meeting was conducted on 26 November, 1961. The circuit's first meeting included the entry of local star Barry Stilo, who set the track's very first Outright Lap Record, a now modest time of 1 minute 24.2 seconds in a Faux Pas (today's lap record for the short circuit is 52.9900s - set by Mark Larkham in April, 1992 in a Reynard 90D).

The first Championship meeting on 9 December, 1962 (Victorian Formula Junior Championship)

In 1978 The Benalla Auto Club hosted the Rose City 10,000 which saw Formula One World Champion, the late James Hunt, race at Winton, where he dominated the event.

Winton Motor Raceway also hosted the first race meetings of legend drivers such as Peter Brock, Alan Jones and Allan Moffat.

In 1985 Winton hosted it's first ever round of the Group A Shell Australian Touring Car Championship, which was also the first Touring Car round to be televised by the Seven Network.

In 1997 the Club added a 1 Kilometre extension onto the existing circuit and resurfaced the entire circuit at a cost of $1.1 Million. This included a new pitlane without the buildings.

On June 5th 2000, 5 weeks before the biggest event on the Winton Motor Racing Calendar, the Shell V8 Supercar Championship Round, an arsonist set fire to the Race Control Tower that stood tall and proud over the circuit for many, many years. To date the arsonist has not been found, but the police are still looking.

The building was restored to its former glory in time for the V8 round, once again standing tall and proud in its rightful place, on the Start/Finish straight on the short circuit.

The circuit celebrated its 40th Anniversary in November 2001, and with recent additions such as construction of Pit Lane garages, a 1000 seat Corporate Pavilion, the new three-storey Race Control building and a "State of the Art" Media Centre, Winton Raceway has grown to become one of the best facilitated race tracks in Australia.

Winton has the unique characteristic where the public can see all of the racing from almost any part of the facility

[edit] V8 Supercars

The track is currently used as a round in the popular V8 Supercar series. The track is one of the more popular tracks in the series with spectators. Easy access to the track and the fantastic viewing from one of the many areas around the track makes it very popular. It attracts some of the biggest crowds of any of the permanent race tracks in the series. In 2006 the round was won by Ford driver Craig Lowndes.

Year	Driver	Sponsor	Car
2007	Jamie Whincup	Team Vodaphone	Falcon
2006	Craig Lowndes	Betta Electrical	Falcon
2004	Cameron McConville	Valvoline Cummins	Commodore
2003	Marcos Ambrose	Pirtek	Falcon
2002	Jason Bright	Holden Racing Team	Commodore
2001	Russell Ingall	Castrol	Commodore

[edit] Australian Superbike Championship

Winton Raceway is one of the most prominent Superbike races in on the Australian racing calendar. Winton Raceway has seen riders such as Mick Doohan, Kevin Magee and Matt Maladin ride regular at the venue.