Skaife has picked Walkinshaw Andretti United duo Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth as the favourites for glory on Sunday October 13.
Mostert is a three-time race winner this year, sits second in the championship and has two previous Bathurst 1000 victories to his name, including with Holdsworth and WAU in 2021.
However, WAU endured a self-labelled “diabolical” Sandown 500, which included a spin for Holdsworth in a race utterly dominated by Triple Eight’s two Camaros.
The entire Ford fleet enters Bathurst under a cloud following a reliability scare at Sandown which has resulted in an emergency change of crankshaft.
“I reckon there’s six or eight combinations that can win it,” said Skaife when asked for his Great Race predictions at an event launch in Sydney.
“I think Mostert and Holdsworth probably shape up as the favourites for me. I know that the Red Bull cars will be very strong.
“A couple of outliers like James Golding who did a great job with Dave Russell at Sandown. There’s plenty of cars that are in contention.
“Craig Lowndes, it might be a fairytale, with he and Cooper Murray. At the end of the day, it’s going to be a cracking race.”
Skaife knows better than most the variables that Bathurst can bring and the need to overcome challenges along the way.
His six victories included winning a red-flagged race with a crashed Nissan GT-R in 1992.
Ten years later he drove to the chequered flag in a Commodore badly overheating due to plastic bags blocking its radiator intake.
And in 2010, Skaife’s final victory, he suffered a rib injury and then watched on as primary driver Lowndes tackled an epic triple stint to the finish.
In other years Skaife appeared to have a dominant car, including in 1995 alongside Jim Richards and 2006 with Garth Tander, but was struck down by mechanical trouble.
“It’s the ultimate in thinking on your feet,” Skaife said of the Great Race.
“It’s one of those ones where you have to make the right decisions at the right time, it’s a sprint race at the end, so you’ve got to be fast enough.
“You’ve got to make the least amount of mistakes, there’ll be mistakes through the day for sure, but the ultimate part of doing all that is you get the biggest prize.
“If you make the least mistakes you’ll be there and in contention.”
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