Hi to all you Supercars fans around the world!
On the weekend 1st to the 3rd of the February, 2019 was the Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 Hour which is a pre-season race before the Supercars Championship starts.
This is an international endurance race for GT and production cars, not V8 Supercars but there were so many drivers from the Supercars Championship in the race I include it in my reviews.
The title ‘Bathurst 12 Hour’ is true to its name. It is a time based race of 12 hours and disregards the number of laps performed.
In order to do the 12 hours in one hit the race started at 5:45am when it was still dark.
Englishman, Jake Dennis driving the Aston Martin was originally supposed to start in pole position but had been docked 2 grid spots for speeding in the pit lane. Then due a technical infringement by the team the Aston Martin started in 12th spot.
Car #999, the Mercedes Benz driven by Maximilian Buhk started in pole position; alongside him was the Mercedes Benz #77 driven by Luca Stolz.
V8 Supercars star, Shane Van Gisbergen started 19th on the grid after not making the top ten shootout on Saturday afternoon.
When the Mercedes Benz safety car took off for the warm up lap the 12-hour clock started for the race. After the first lap the race gets underway with a rolling start (not a standing start).
During the opening laps everybody was trying to keep their cars nice and straight as they knew it was a long race.
The two AMG Mercedes, cars #999 and #77 maintained their 1st and 2nd places.
In this early stage Shane Van Gisbergen made up 4 positions going from 19th to 15th. An excellent start but there was a long way to go.
It wasn’t long after that the carnage started.
On lap 6 while still early and quite dark car #71 ended up going down the escape road, an error not often seen.
Car #27, the Ferrari driven by Nick Percat got spun around at Forest Elbow after getting involved with the lapped car, MARC Focus V8 driven by Dutchman, Mathijs Bakker. Later, Percat laid claim that this was an incident that couldn’t be helped and a result of multi-class racing. Bakker was not so diplomatic and did not hold back to vehemently blame Percat. The repair time cost percat at least 25 laps.
The 888 Vodafone Mercedes had a drama with the brakes. After Shane Van Gisbergen had to pit to try and have it repaired the team could not find the issue. Shane Van Gisbergen had to return to the track he was not happy. Little did he know how this was going to affect all the drivers.
Martin Tomczyk was battling with Craig Lowndes and nearly took his BMW into the wall on the right-hand side.
James Winslow received a lot of damage to the rear of his car and had parts flapping around which meant he had to pit to get them removed, otherwise risk receiving a mechanical black flag.
Garth Tander in car #22 had an accident by running into the back of #19 driven by Danish Kristina Neilson. He had to limp his Audi back to the pits and was soon declared out of the race.
When the accidents started, I thought these are going be expensive repair jobs.
On the race broadcast Chad Neylon, pit reporter for fox/10 used a giant touch screen to explain how he believed the strategies would unfold. It was a great insight.
Mark Dutton, racing engineer and current manager of Triple 8 was the Car Controller for the day, which was cool to see.
Shane Van Gisbergen ran wide at turn 1 due to sitting on the left-hand side of the car and lost the positions he had previously made.
When the sun started to rise the race was still under green. The cars that started further back in the pack now tried to make their move to get inside the top ten.
Braking problems continued to bother the three drivers of the 888 Vodafone Mercedes. The crew were unable to repair the issue and drivers were required to use both feet to apply the brakes. I am sure this did not help their driving form. At the end of the race Shane Van Gisbergen literally rolled out of the car onto the ground in exhaustion.
The funniest part of the weekend was when Chad Neylon gave David Reynolds a lift in the AMG Mercedes Benz Safety Car to the race track. Neylon’s driving caused Reynolds to spill his coffee. Chad Neylon said ‘Lesson learnt, don’t drive to the track in the AMG Safety Car’. Reynolds response was “you’re a bad driver”. LOL
Jamie Whincup was given a Drive Through Penalty for passing the AMG Safety Car. Somehow Roland Dane (triple 8 Owner) flexed his muscles of influence because he got the stewards and officials to negate the penalty.
The last time Jamie Whincup got a Drive Through Penalty was 2015 in the Bathurst 1000 but never in the Bathurst 12 hours.
Towards the end of the of the race Matt Campbell was leading with 2nd and 3rd chasing him down for the win, while Shane Van Gisbergen was on an almighty charge to try to get on the Bathurst 12-hour podium but the top three were not giving up their positions.
38 cars started the race. By the end of the 12 hours of true endurance racing 15 cars had received DNFs. It’s a damned tough race.
Results for the 2019 Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 hours
1st Matt Campbell – Car 912, Porsche 911 GT3-R for Earl Bamber Motorsport
2nd Jake Dennis – Car 62, Aston Martin Vantage for R Motorsport
3rd Raffaele Marcello – Car 999, Mercedes AMG for Mercedes AMG Team GruppeM Racing
4th Shane Van Gisbergen – Car 888, Mercedes AMG Team Vodafone.
The next event is the first race of the V8 Supercars Season, The Superloop Adelaide 500 from the 28th of February to the 3rd of March 2019.