Race Information | |
Venue | Surfers Paradise Street Circuit |
Number of times held | 22 |
First held | 1994 |
Race Format | |
Race 1 | |
Laps | 102 |
Distance | 300 km |
Race 2 | |
Laps | 102 |
Distance | 300 km |
Last Event (2016) | |
Overall Winner | |
Shane van Gisbergen Alexandre Prémat |
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
Race Winners | |
Shane van Gisbergen Alexandre Prémat |
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
Jamie Whincup Paul Dumbrell |
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
The Gold Coast 600 is an annual Supercars event held each October at the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. The race is currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Castrol Gold Coast 600, and was formerly known as the V8 Supercar Challenge from 1997 to 2009.
First run in 1994, the event was a support race to the Gold Coast Indy 300 until its demise in 2009.
The event is staged over a three-day weekend, from Friday to Sunday, with Enduro Cup co-drivers joining the series' primary drives for the third consecutive event. Three thirty-minute practice sessions are held on Friday while a twenty-minute practice session is held on Saturday. Saturday features a twenty-minute qualifying session which decides the grid positions for the following 300 kilometre race. A twenty-minute qualifying session is held on Sunday, succeeded by a top ten shootout, the combined results of which decide the grid for the following 300 km race.
The Gold Coast, of which Surfers Paradise is a suburb, had long had an association with touring cars through Surfers Paradise International Raceway in the suburb of Carrara. The track held numerous rounds of the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC), a previous incarnation of Supercars, between 1969 and 1987.
The Gold Coast Indy 300 was first run in 1991, however it was not until 1994 that touring cars joined the event. The event, featuring cars from the ATCC, was run as a non-championship exhibition round, supporting the then CART FedEx Championship Series event. In the next two years, cars from the two-litre Australian Super Touring Championship were a support category at the event; in 1995 as the sole touring car category and in 1996 one of two touring car support categories alongside the return of the ATCC cars. Greg Murphy won the Super Touring event in both years for Brad Jones Racing. From 1997 onwards, the event returned to solely featuring five-litre ATCC cars, the category that was now known as V8 Supercars. The 1998 event was notable for providing Mark Larkham with the only event win of his decade-long full-time touring car career, albeit at a non-championship event. Due to the often crash-filled nature of the rounds, its non-championship status and the relatively quick turn-around time between the event and the Bathurst 1000, some teams used older model cars at the event, such as in 1999 when Paul Radisich won the event with a 1998-spec Ford EL Falcon, instead of their usual AU Falcon.