Monday 4th February 2019

Time for Tea: Bathurst 12 Hours

The battle for third at yesterday's Aussie event produced some brilliant racing, as this onboard shows

---

For many professional racing drivers, there are a small handful of circuits around the world that stand above the rest. They're usually the really technical ones, like Monaco and Macau, or ones that are carved into a rolling landscape with undulations, cambers and jumps thrown into the mix, such as the Nurburgring. Over the weekend, the motorsport world's attention was drawn to another one of the greats. We are, of course, talking about Bathurst.

This year's 12 Hours of Bathurst was another classic, mixing close racing with stupendous lunges and plenty of wall-scraping action. The race for the win went down to the wire, with the 911 GT3-R of Dirk Werner, Dennis Olsen, Matt Campbell just pipping the Aston Martin Vantage of Jake Dennis, Matthieu Vaxiviere, Marvin Kirchhofer to the line by three seconds after a spectacular late move for the lead - that's after 12 hours of racing, remember!

The battle for third was even closer, where two Mercedes-AMG GT3s crossed the line just two tenths apart after an intense battle that lasted for most of the final stint. It's onboard footage from that fight which we think is worthy of your morning tea break, because we know how much you love the sound of two race-spec 4.0-litre V8s thundering through the New South Wales landscape.

The two oil and fly-strewn machines are being driven absolutely flat out, with actual defensive driving - no DRS here - and even some panel kissing thrown in for good measure. This is proper racing on a proper circuit - one we are infinitely jealous of over here in the UK. Anyone fancy a quick hop over to Australia for a Sunday Service track day?

 

#B12HRpic.twitter.com/g6VXqsw1o2

— Bathurst 12 Hour (@Bathurst12hour) February 3, 2019

 

[Augustus Windsock]

Sorry, fast as these things are, there’s no interest from me since the great days of Peter Brock and Allan Moffat....

[romac]

Do you hear the drums, Fernando?

Alonso needs to get there and add it to his tally!

[Fishy Dave]

Close, clean racing, shame no overtakes in this clip, but as the cars are both from the same stable it was probably sensible.

[ArnageWRC]

Sportscars and more particularly GT3 is the finest 4 wheeled motorsport on the planet; great events, great races. And I say that as rallyfan first.....

[big_rob_sydney]

Don't know if you guys saw the lap times, but I believe the GTR had the fastest race lap:

https://dpq6glm99k454.cloudfront.net/wp-content/up...

Coincidentally ALSO picked up a 30 second penalty.


And I agree, this category of racing is pretty good. At least you can *sort of* see the similarity between what is racing, and what you can buy in the showroom. Just a shame that the days of Group A racing are gone. I really loved going to Bathurst, and watching the 80's and early 90's racing. I havent watched any of the latest incarnation of whatever they're called now for the better part of 20+ years. Once they got rid of Group A, that was the end.

But now this category has really taken off, and I really appreciate the link to road cars. More!!!

Edited by big_rob_sydney on Monday 4th February 22:47