Mount Panorama is a place where dreams come true for some, nightmares re-lived for most.
It's a wonderful 6.213 km circuit that rewards the brave and condemns the weak.
In the build up to the 2018 Bathurst 1000, Kiwi Fabian Coulthard told Newshub that the driver doesn't choose 'The Mountain', it chooses the driver and over the last 58 years, that has certainly been the case.
One-hundred-and-sixty-one laps and anywhere between 6-8 hours racing is a long time - a long time for heartbreak, triumph, tragedy and pure elation.
Hell Corner, The Cutting, The Dipper, Skyline, Forrest's Elbow, Conrad Straight and The Chase - names that send shivers up the spine of some of motorsport's biggest names.
Those shivers are based on the history of when The Mountain bites back.
Fabian Coulthard 2010
The cerebral Kiwi brushed near disaster in the opening lap of the 2010 classic.
Coulthard was involved in a minor clash with Jason Bargwanna at the start-line, but little did he know that less than two minutes later - as a result of low-impact contact with another car - he would be flying through 'The Chase' upside down at close to 300 km/h.
The incident with Bargwanna had cut his tyre and as he approached The Chase, his Commodore snapped sideways and started tumbling across the sand trap.
By the time it settled, the car was little more than a roll-cage. Amazingly, Coulthard was unhurt.
Glenn Seton 1995
Arguably the greatest driver to have never won the Bathurst 1000 and a several-time Australian touring car champion, Seton made 26 starts at The Mountain, scoring three podiums and a couple of pole positions.
The long-time Ford driver should have won the race in 1995. Leading by close to a minute with 11 laps remaining, Seton's car developed a misfire.
He tried to coast the car home and held a 45-second lead over a hard-charging Larry Perkins, when his car started to give out on 'Conrad Straight'. A few minutes later, Seton's broken car was parked on the approach to 'Griffen's Bend' and his race was over.
The scene of the then-30-year-old sobbing, with his face in his hands, will live with many fans for years to come.
Dick Johnson 1980 &1983
Johnson has perhaps suffered more at the hands of Bathurst than any other racer - but his misfortune at the Mount has played a huge role in making him something of an Aussie motorsport folk hero.
When a fan threw a rock at his car in 1980, it ended his race - a race he was dominating and well on the way to winning. The rock caused Johnson's car to catapult into the wall and proved again that The Mountain had mysterious ways of ripping away the sight of victory.
Three years later, Johnson was almost an unbackable favourite in what he described at the time as the best race car he had driven in a 20-year career. While competing in the top 10 shootout, Johnson hit a tyre barrier at 'Forest Elbow', launching his car into the forest bellow, writing off his car and leaving him with no chance at victory the following day.
Oh, and he was on track to break the then lap-record at the time.
Jamie Whincup 2014
Granted, Whincup’s misfortune was more his doing than The Mountain's, but the result points back to Coulthard's assertion that The Mountain choses you.
Whincup was leading a crazy race with five laps to go by more than 30 seconds, when his team requested he pull back a few seconds a lap, as he was running out of fuel. For reasons only Whincup knows, he ignored team orders and continued to widen the gap to Ford’s Chaz Mostert behind him.
Things got serious, as the Holden driver approached the start straight for the final time and his engineer informed him that he was in reserve. Sure enough, halfway through the final lap, Whincup’s car coughed and the game was up.
Mostert closed on and passed Whincup, crossing the line first - the only lap Mostert lead the entire race in a race that he started from the back of the field.
Mostert was almost two laps down at the 80 lap-mark, but The Mountain decided it didn’t want Jamie Whincup to win that day.
Mark Skaife 2006
The race that everyone wanted to win and scheduled just a few weeks after the great Peter Brock lost his life competing in a rally event, the 2006 event was an emotional rollercoaster for the drivers.
That was especially the case for Skaife, who had taken the reins as Brock's successor at Holden, dominating Bathurst in the early 2000's and winning several Supercars titles.
Skaife, defending his win from a year earlier, owned The Mountain throughout the week, earning pole position by almost half a second. Skaife and teammate Garth Tander were the biggest favourites in race history on Sunday, but his race wouldn't last more than a minute.
With his Holden crawling off the line as the green flag dropped, Skaife limped his way up Mountain straight, clearly praying his clutch would come back in, when bang, he was hit from behind by Jack Perkins and his race was over - just like that.
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