They’ll drink you Down Under the table

Drinking and driving – they go together so beautifully.

Now if you’re driving, you most certainly should not be drinking. But if you’re just a spectator, bottoms up.

Any form of automotive racing has its stereotypical fans drinking stereotypical beverages.

Americans watch stock-car racing, drink moonshine and scream “yee-haw” as cars drive round and round. The Brits watch Lewis Hamilton throw away his world championship, drink Pimm’s and Sprite on a warm, summer day.

But when it comes to combining driving with alcohol, one continent of race fans drinks the rest of the world under the table – Australia.

When you hear the word “Australia,” you immediately think of dingoes eating babies, the late Steve Irwin and putting a few more shrimp on the barbie. What you neglect to think of is the Bathurst 1000 – probably because you’ve never heard of it.

Bathurst 1000 is a touring-car race held every year in Bathurst, New South Wales, on the beautiful continent of – big surprise – Australia. This year’s race took place from Oct. 7 to Oct. 10. And even though the race itself is legendary, its fans will definitely go down in the books being the heaviest drinking race fans ever.

This year, Aussie racegoers were limited to 24 regular-sized cans of beer a day. That’s not a misprint – 24 cans of beer a day.

For us Americans, that limit would be irrelevant.

Twenty-four beers a day? Who would be bothered by such a thing? Aussie race fans, that’s who.

Holden fans and Ford fans put their differences aside to fight the common enemy that was keeping them from drinking their cherished booze. I mean, why would someone only want to drink nine liters of grog a day? Less than that couldn’t be satisfying to any man.

Aha! Why wouldn’t you just drink wine? Because wine was limited, too – to 4 liters a day.

What a debacle. What an absolute outrage. Limiting an Aussie’s alcohol intake when they’re at a touring car race? Despicable.

And the lads and lassies from Down Under made their opinions on the limit known. Within 48 hours of the gate opening, police made 50 arrests and got their hands on large amounts of alcohol. Other arrests were made for drug and gun possession, and one man was even arrested for throwing nails at people as they entered the race.

When people start throwing nails, you know you’ve pissed them off.

It’s fair to say, then, that Australian motorsport enthusiasts can indeed out-drink all other motorsport enthusiasts.

We should allow them their glory by letting alcohol be guzzled with no limits at all. The clouds will open up and beer will pour over all the good little girls and boys and wine will flood the streets.

So congratulations, Australia. You might be the best motorsport drinkers in the world but, hey, at the end of the day, you’re still Australia, mate.