MOST people, and probably the man himself, though Paul Morris’ chances of ever breaking his Bathurst duck had passed him by.

In 1997 during the AMP Bathurst 1000 – the Super Tourers edition of that year’s race – he and Craig Baird briefly celebrated victory before they were stripped of the result because Baird had broken the time limit for a single driver stint.

A third with Mark Skaife in 1999 remained his best result, and despite a consistent record over the last decade even since retiring from full-time driving, he had come no closer to a victory.

Five top-10 efforts between 2006 and 2012 were nice returns highlighted, by a sixth with Steve Ellery in 2006.

When he picked up a drive with Ford young gun Chaz Mostert for the enduro rounds of this year’s V8 Supercars Championship, all that changed.

Seventh at Sandown in the first of the endurance events was a positive sign, and during Bathurst practice Mostert especially looked strong.

But the pair were forced to start from the back of the grid on race day after Mostert passed under a red flag in Friday practice, meaning they were excluded from qualifying.

Only the ultimate optimist would have given them a chance from there, and when Morris himself put the car into the tyre wall at Griffins Bend on lap 45, their odds would have been astronomical.

Morris was hardly to blame, as the track was beginning to deteriorate in that area. It was only be 16 more laps before the race was called to a halt altogether when eventual runner-up Taz Douglas did the same thing.

Prior to that and having been given the task of starting the race himself, Morris had avoided trouble and even in untangling himself from the tyres after he left the track, he ensured they stayed on the lead lap and didn’t lose much ground.

“It was just ridiculous, I came out of Pit Lane and there was a bloody gravel trap in the middle of the corner,” the 46-year-old said.

“It was a hell of a day.”

It was Morris’s 22nd start in the endurance classic since his debut in 1992 – a year before Mostert was born.

For the Ford prodigy, it was his third race win as a V8 championship driver, and despite the age and experience gap it was also the third victory in the series for Morris, a fact he made light of in the press conference afterwards.

He also addressed the possibility that he will call it quits having finally picked up a win in the biggest event on the category’s calendar.

“I probably should’ve retired 10 years ago, but I kept coming back because I wanted to win the thing,” he said.

“Thanks to Chaz now I can tick the box and can probably hang up the helmet.

“A lot of people thought it was a pretty weird decision when [FPR team bosses] Tim [Edwards] and Rod [Nash] gave me a gig.

“But it turned out they knew what they were doing, didn’t it?

“Full credit to Chaz and the whole team. They’ve won back-to-back and we’ve both won our first, so I couldn’t be happier.”