Opinion: 2014 Bathurst 12 Hour An Astounding Success

It’s nice every now and again to see an motorsports event in Australia that doesn’t involve the limelight-hogging V8 Supercar Series. As a keen observer of European and North American sports car racing, it’s refreshing to occasionally see a sports car event capture the imagination of Australia’s motorsports fraternity.

We’ll see it again, abroad, in June, when Mark Webber and the factory Porsche squad tackle the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans, but yesterday, around 6.213km of public road in Bathurst, NSW, a thrilling and epic motor race played out, one that didn’t feature the taxicab-like, lumbering V8 Supercars, but, instead, a fleet of the world’s most expensive and beautiful sports cars.

For twelve hours from just after dawn until the early stages of a long summer sunset, Australia’s famed Mount Panorama was the sports car centre of the world, thanks to the Bathurst 12 Hour, the growing GT endurance event that, with every passing year, makes a bigger mark on the world of sports car racing, drawing ever more impressive drivers to tackle our most gruelling racetrack in a fleet of high-performance machines that make the V8 Supercars that race around Bathurst in October seem slow. They aren’t, of course, but the machines we saw on the Mountain yesterday are impossibly, lethally fast, smashing the lap record like nobody’s business.

Last year was a break-out year for Australia’s longest motor race, the Bathurst enduro given something of a stamp of approval by the appearance of the famed Radio Le Mans team, who broadcast the race back to Europe and, indeed, around the world. That broadcast, helmed by the brilliant John Hindaugh and Paul Truswell, was the first indicator for many that a twelve-hour race existed in Bathurst.

That it was considered enough of a blue chip event that Radio Le Mans came all the way out to Australia was, for many, the first real tick of approval, and doubtless the rave reviews of last year’s race brought out more international drivers for the 2014 edition. One can only imagine what sort of wonderful things will be said back in Europe about the twelve-hour slugfest we saw yesterday.

It was thrilling stuff from green to checkers, with a popular winner in Australia’s Craig Lowndes, who shared a Ferrari F458 for Maranello Motorsports with Finnish sports car ace Mika Salo, former Bathurst winner John Bowe and the car’s owner, Peter Edwards. This was the team for whom the late Alan Simonsen, tragically killed at Le Mans last year, raced for over many years, and yesterday’s win was dedicated to the memory of the affable Dane, who had just about become part-Australian over his years racing here in GT cars and, often, V8 Supercars.

Contrary to what the V8 Supercar people would have you believe, their cars do not produce the best racing in Australia. The last thirty minutes of yesterday’s race were far better than anything the V8s have ever produced at Bathurst. Lowndes had the lead, was cruising towards a win when the caution flag came out with less than thirty minutes to go, setting the stage

Lowndes was as good as we’ve ever seen him in five Bathurst 1000 victories, making that beautiful Ferrari seem about as wide as an aircraft carrier, surviving a bout of intense pressure from the eventual second-placed car, the HTP Mercedes-Benz SLS of Maximilian Buhk, Thomas Jaeger and Harold Primat. Buhk was the man in the car at the end, giving the Aussie champ all he could handle, trying a daring pass around the outside at Griffin’s Bend on the second-last lap of the race, and very nearly pulling it off.

Yet, it was not to be, and the international trio had to settle for the second step of the podium, coming home just 0.4 seconds behind the Lowndes Ferrari. Third was an Erebus Motorsport Mercedes-Benz SLS featuring Australia’s Will Davison (the new signing for Erebus Racing’s V8 Supercar team) with Jack Le Brocq and journeyman Tasmanian Greg Crick.

The Erebus machine barely held off the hard-charging McLaren MP4-12C of V8 Supercar regular Shane Van Gisbergen and the father/son combination of Tony and Klark Quinn with Scotland’s Andrew Kirkaldy. The Giz managed a new Mt Panorama lap record, recording a blistering 2.03.85, a little faster than a similarly-blistering qualifying lap. His McLaren was easily the fastest late in the race, and had he been given a little more time, it might’ve been a different team standing atop the podium. Instead, the McLaren team finished an unlucky fourth. It was yet another one of those great Bathurst ‘what if’ scenarios.

Whilst the late caution denied Lowndes the luxury of cruising to the checkered flag on the back of the solid lead he and his teammates had built up late in the afternoon, it revved up the action, not that there’d been many quiet moments during the race. As far as incidents go, the Bathurst 12 Hour had a bit of everything, including kangaroos invading the track, insane side-by-side racing between through the Dipper and the Esses.

However, the day’s most frightening accident was the one involving the Clearwater Ferrari of Hiroshi Hamaguchi and the awesome NISMO Nissan GTR driven by Katsumasa Chiyo, which ploughed heavily into the stricken Ferrari at McPhillamy Park, resulting in one of the worst accidents we’ve seen in many years at Bathurst.

All the drama seemed to resonate with fans, and on Monday morning, SBS, who broadcast the final three hours of the race from 3.30pm – the first time there has been live free-to-air coverage of Australia’s only endurance sports car event – announced that the telecast had drawn an incredible 225,000 viewers.

With good reason, for the coverage helmed by sometime V8 Supercar commentator Aaron Noonan and featuring Australia’s Richard Craill alongside international visitors Truswell and Hindaugh was fantastic. They did a good job of highlighting the ever-present action on the track, without taking over the broadcast.

SBS will be incredibly happy with the numbers, which will likely pique some interest at the V8 Supercar headquarters. Considering there was very little promotion, and considering SBS isn’t the most visible of networks at the best of times, you can’t ask for more. This is an astounding result, and proof positive that Australian motorsports fans are after

There was plenty to like about the crowd of more than 26,000 for the weekend, many of whom braved impossible hot conditions – 38 degrees air temperature, and more than fifty degrees on the track – to watch one of the best motor races Australia has ever seen. Anyone who tuned in or watched from Mount Panorama could not have asked for a better product. Organisers will understandably be crowing. 2014 was a success in every possible way.

With the promise of bigger international names coming out for the 2015 edition of the Bathurst 12 Hour, the future is bright for our own GT endurance test, which should further cement itself amongst the best,’ must-compete’ long-distance races like Le Mans, Daytona, Sebring, Spa and the Petit Le Mans event at Road Atlanta.

Strap in, Australia: the Bathurst 12 Hour is only going to get bigger and better!