Bob Talbot's 1973 documentary opens on a close-up of a tyre, and from there it pretty much refuses to show us the race. Sunday Symphony is more interested in the man calling the action over a rotary phone, in a driver gulping water from a glass bottle with his hair stuck flat to his forehead, in the dead bugs splattered across someone's visor.

The Tasman Cup ran between Australia and New Zealand from 1964, and by the early 1970s, it had 5-litre V8s thundering around Sandown, Surfers Paradise and Warwick Farm, with crowds banked up on the grass. Talbot and his cinematographer, Gordon Bennett, clearly weren't interested in covering it like a sport. They linger on the Ansett-liveried Team Elfin like it's a piece of furniture they like the look of and hold on a sunburnt mechanic in a yellow Shell cap until we start wondering what he's thinking about. The result is something distinctly Australian, a spectacle that’s both serious and a great laugh all in one.