Renee Gracie reflects on her Bathurst debut and how it changed her life 10 years on

Reflecting on the Mount Panorama campaign which was one of the “biggest turning points” of her life, Gracie said her experience at the Bathurst 1000 not only put her on the map in Australian motorsport, but simultaneously drained her love for the game.

The former V8 pin-up girl famously made her Bathurst debut in 2015 in an all-female wildcard entry alongside Swiss former IndyCar racer Simona De Silvestro.

Then a young racer in the Supercars development series, Gracie joined De Silvestro to form the first all-female team to take on the great race in 17 years.

It was a highly-publicised build-up for the pair, but their Mount Panorama campaign was thrust into the headlines for the wrong reasons just days out from the race when fellow driver and long-time V8 character David Reynolds referred to their team as the “pussy wagon” and was later slapped with a huge fine.

But it wasn’t the only drama Gracie faced at the event, as she was also subjected to abuse from fans and on social media and even had a beer can hurled at her.

“The Bathurst 1000 for me is something that made me and something that put me on the map in Australian motorsport … unfortunately it wasn’t overly positive,” Gracie said.

“It helped me tremendously with everything that I did, but sadly enough, I think the course of that weekend and everything that transpired over that period of time before Bathurst and then after Bathurst, was also when I realised that I didn’t want to be in the sport anymore.

“That was a really, really tough thing for me to understand and for me to swallow.

“Just the way that I was treated and things that happened to me over the course of that weekend … it was one of those weekends where I refer to it as the start of the end, that’s how I explain it in my mind and in my world of what happened.

“That’s when I realised a lot of things weren’t how I wanted them to be and I wasn’t really a race car driver, I was a marketing tactic.

“I was making all these people money, I was getting everybody’s attention but I wasn’t getting all the right care that I wanted. I wasn’t getting looked after how I felt that I deserved to be looked after.”

Gracie and De Silvestro finished 21st in a Ford in 2015 after an early-race incident when the young driver skid on residual oil on the track and found the wall, but they were able to return to the race after repairs.

The pair returned to tackle Mount Panorama again in 2016, finishing 14th, but Gracie only raced in feeder series Super2 for one more year after that before she quit the sport.

Gracie walked away from racing to make a fortune creating adult content on subscription platform OnlyFans before making a return to the track in 2023 to race in the GT category.

She said she had found it hard to escape the “negativity and the hatred” in the abuse she had received both online – and in person.

“(There) was death threats, I had a beer can thrown at me, I had people abusing me, I got booed,” Gracie told Code Sports.

“If you’re a motorsport fan, we all know the type of people that hang up on the top of the mountain and it was all of those people who were really quite nasty and horrible to myself.

“Unfortunately, I felt there was a little bit of a divide between myself and Simona as well, just because Simona was an established racing car driver and people had real respect and love and support for her.

“Where I was still kind of proving myself and I feel like the Australian fans and motorsport fans, they really didn’t want a female in the category and they really let me know about it.”

While Gracie said the build-up to the race had been “kind of crazy”, the spotlight went to a new level after Reynolds’ comment, for which he was slapped with a $25,000 fine.

“That was a whole ‘nother element to what was going on,” Gracie said of the media frenzy the remark created.

“We were talking about one of the biggest things Australian motorsport had seen in a while, one of the biggest turning points of my life … but I was just not prepared for that.

“So when that got thrown in there on top of everything else, I guess it made it a part of the whole journey and it made it a part of my story and I look back at it now and I sort of laugh.

“It was naive for me to think that everything was going to run smoothly … of course there was going to be controversy.

“It was already such an immense event for me, but it was something in a way I am glad that it happened just because of the way my story and my life has played out … I wouldn’t take it back and I wouldn’t change it and I don’t think Dave would either, it was just part of the story.”

Despite the attention that came after the comment at the time, Gracie said she did not feel insulted or offended by the remark.

“I know Dave and I knew him quite personally – he was my teammate at the time. So for me, I did not take any offence to it at all,” Gracie said.

“I understand why at the time it was obviously knocked back and why there were strict things put in place in regards to the punishment for Dave because I understand that not everybody understands Dave like I do.

“I do get the bigger picture, but for me there was no personal offence taken to it, nor Simona I think we know what Dave’s like and it was quite lighthearted.

“To be fair, as bad as it sounds, in the scheme of motorsport and the names that I have been called, I really did not think that was the worst thing that I have been called.

“I was just like ‘What’s going on? I’m so sorry’ because I felt bad that I had got him in trouble. I didn’t want him to think that I had a problem with it because I didn’t have a problem with it.”

Gracie said she had since shared a laugh with Reynolds about the headline grabbing moment.

“He came on my documentary and addressed it and we still laugh about it to this day because he paid it on his credit card and got all these points and brought himself a nice toaster with the points.”