The great father-son duo of Jim Richards and Steven Richards combined to win 12 Bathurst 1000 titles, with Jim’s 7 wins being second behind his old teammate Peter Brock, but father and son only paired up at Bathurst twice, the first being the 1997 Classic when they finished 2nd (Driving for Garry Rogers Motorsport) behind Larry Perkins and Russell Ingall, and the second was the 2004 race, by which time Steven was driving for Castrol Perkins.

The weekend for the 2004 race started well with Steven qualifying on pole position (Which was his first V8 Supercars pole position), but the race was far from smooth as they caught in several scraps, namely bumping with Jason Bright down Mountain Straight on Lap 1, before fighting back into the Top 10 by Lap 100…

However, the Richards’ family day was ruined on Lap 111, when Gentleman Jim (Running 9th) had no time to react to a kangaroo jumping over the wall, striking our coat of arms approaching The Cutting at 190 km/h, killing the wayward roo instantly and seriously damaging the No.11 car… it also left Russell Ingall (Who was 10th) with nowhere to go, and he gave the rear of the Commodore a nice old hit, which left Ingall’s car with cosmetic damage, although he did continue.

Channel 10 decided to air the instant replay of the incident, and it was as graphic as it sounds.

Richards made it back to the pits and the No.11 eventually went back out with Steven at the wheel and finished 21st, the last classified finisher some 13 laps down, while Ingall finished 6th.

Proving that lightning strikes twice, some 9 years later during the 2013 edition of the Great Race, David Russell (Driving a Nissan) struck a kangaroo at the exact same spot as Richards, only this time Channel 7 didn’t show a replay of the incident due to the graphic nature of the incident, probably as a result of that Channel 10 footage.

That kangaroo’s name was Skippy.

It finished as Qantas.