| Venue | Sandown International Raceway |
Sandown Raceway |
|
| Race Format | |
| Race 1 | |
| - Laps | 161 |
| - Distance | 500 km |
| Last Race (2011) | |
| Winning Driver | Stuart Kostera/Ian Tulloch |
| Winning Team | TMR Performance |
| Winning Manufacturer | Mitsubishi Motors |
The Sandown 500 is an endurance motor race staged at the Sandown Raceway, near Melbourne in Victoria, Australia between 1964 and 2011. It was typically held in September, the month before Australia’s premier endurance race, the Bathurst 1000. The “500” was not run in 1966, 1967, 1999, 2000, 2008, 2009 and 2010. The actual race name, race distance and race category varied considerably during its history, however, in its recent form from 2003 to 2007, it was a 500 km round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series. The race is being revived in 2011 as a round of the Australian Manufacturers' Championship for Production cars.
The first two races were open to production based sedans and, at six hours duration, were substantially longer than later iterations of the race. In 1968, after a two year hiatus, the event was revived as a three hour race and took on a long time roll as an unofficial “warm-up” event for the Bathurst 1000. From 1968 both the Sandown and Bathurst endurance races utilized similar technical regulations which limited cars to near production specifications, unlike the Australian Touring Car Championship which was for Group C Improved Production Touring Cars. New Group C Touring Car regulations were applied to all three contests from 1973 until replaced by a formula based on International Group A Touring Car rules in 1985. By this time the Sandown event had evolved from a three hour race to a 250 mile race, then to a 400 km race and ultimately to a 500 km event in 1984. Regulations for Group 3A 5.0 Litre Touring Cars, later to become known as V8 Supercars, were adopted for the “500” in 1993.
The second hiatus in the history of the race commenced in 1999 when a Queensland government supported bid saw the Sandown 500 replaced on the V8 Supercar calendar by the Queensland 500, held at Queensland Raceway. The Sandown 500 race was revived again in 2001, returning to its roots as a race for production cars. With regulations linked to those of the Australian Nations Cup Championship, (a championship for GT style cars), and the Australian GT Production Car Championship, the race featured a more exotic variety of cars than it had traditionally attracted. By 2003, new owners of Queensland Raceway had tired of the relative expense of the 500 kilometre endurance race format, allowing Sandown to reclaim the event. The “Production Car” format of the Sandown 500 was abandoned after only two years to allow for the return of V8 Supercars.
After a change of promotor of Sandown Raceways motorsport activities, a changed V8 Supercar calendar resulted in the 500 kilometre event moving to the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit for the 2008 season.[1] In 2011 the race returns, this time as a round of the Australian Manufacturers' Championship.[2] The 2011 event saw the race split into two legs run on Saturday and Sunday with the overall results based on the combined results of the two races.
* The .05 (pronounced "point-oh-five") in the event name for 1989 was part of a Government campaign targeting drink-driving; 0.05% is the legal blood alcohol content limit in Australia.