Motorsport legend Greg Murphy may look cool, calm and collected ahead of a highly anticipated return to Bathurst this weekend.
However, the four-time King of the Mountain is highly aware of the challenges ahead of him.
Murphy retired from Supercars in 2014 and has been entered as a wildcard for this year’s race, along with Richie Stanaway who walked away in 2019.
Murphy tells 1News that coming back is a bit like riding a bike.
“There's definitely muscle memory for certain things, but the cars have changed a lot since I last drove here.”
The wildcard plan was delayed by one year thanks to the pandemic, but Murphy says that’s only given him more time to prepare.
"I've been fortunate to have, you know, been working with a trainer to keep me motivated, basically, to do that kind of thing, because I hadn't, I've slipped away from doing any kind of regular gym training, or pretty much non-existent after I stopped racing.”
Murphy is perhaps best known for his so-called “lap of the gods” in 2003, where he managed to shave a whole second off the previous best qualifying time, and set a new lap record of 2 mins 06.8594 secs.
However, today he was tempering expectations.
“I'm not preparing like I would normally prepare to go out there to try and win this race, that's just not what's realistic in any respect for me,” he said.
“So, you know, I'm treating this very differently and not bringing any of the past when I was full-time into the equation.”
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