It’s been nearly 25 years since the world returned to Adelaide when the Race of a Thousand Years was held on the full-length street circuit to conclude the American Le Mans Series.
Run on December 31, 2000, Christmas came late for South Australian motorsport fans when the prototypes and GT entries from the ALMS arrived in what was to be the only time the event ran despite a nine-year contract being signed.
The Race of a Thousand Years was to be part of a planned Asia-Pacific Le Mans Series organised by Don Panoz, which was to replicate the American and European versions.
Previously, Panoz organised a race in Fuji and an exhibition event in Sepang, but this proved unsuccessful putting the kibosh on any Asia-Pacific Le Mans Series.
More than 135,000 fans attended the event compared to the 200,000 attended as 70,000 were there on race day.
It proved a dramatic finale to the American Le Mans Series following an injury to title leader Allan McNish during a photoshoot involving the Scotsman and his kilt. A back injury was the result leading to McNish lying on his back for days to try and get right, while Audi drafted in Brad Jones as back up.
The former head of Audi’s Australian Super Touring hopes only drive a sole practice session after McNish recovered to take victory in the race and series alongside Rinaldo ‘Dindo’ Capello.
“It was a great opportunity to drive the car this morning and yesterday afternoon,” said Jones. “I am very happy about that. Allan and Dindo did a fantastic job to win. It would have been nice to drive the car in the race, but it was clear that I was here just in case Allan was too bad.”
Just 850km of the scheduled 1000km was run finishing at 10pm local time.
It was dominant win for the Audi R8 prototype by 21 laps from Konrad Motorsport’s Lola, while the leading GTS entry was the lead Viper Team Oreca Dodge Viper GTS-R in third outright.
Leading Australians contesting the race included Jason Bright and David Brabham in a Panoz LMP-1 Roadster-S shared with New Zealand ace Greg Murphy.
International stars included Karl Wendlinger, Olivier Beretta, Dirk Muller, Lucas Luhr, Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro, Éric Bernard, Boris Said, Hans-Joachim Stuck and Jan Magnussen among the names.
The Audi team celebrated the Australian race by both of its R8s sporting Crocodile liveries.
For the event not to return there were a couple of rumoured reasons including the Panoz and the South Australian State Government having a falling out or Tony Cochrane putting an end to it due to it detracting from the Clipsal 500 or residents not wanting the eastern section of the city closed for a second time during the year.
Anyhow, it’s disappointing the event didn’t continue although this type of race occurred at Shell V-Power Motorsport Park when it hosted the Asian Le Mans Series in 2020.
The Repco Adelaide Motorsport Festival will provide a category for Le Mans prototypes highlighting this brief blip in history in addition to the prestigious French endurance race on March 8-9, 2025.