BMW M6 GT3s qualified well for the 12 Hours of Bathurst on the Mount Panorama Circuit in New South Wales, Australia, but a series of incidents and mechanical setbacks left just one of the four BMWs entered in the race running at the end. DTM champion Marco Wittmann and his two Australian teammates Steve Richards and Mark Winterbottom finished fourteenth in a race won by Ferrari 488 GT3 racers Toni Vilander, Jamie Whincup, and Craig Lowndes.
Vilander qualified the Ferrari on the pole ahead of Australian BMW racer Chaz Mostert in the #90 Marc Cars Australia M6 GT3, while Wittmann qualified third in the #60 BMW Team SRM car. DTM racer Timo Glock qualified seventh in the #7 SRM M6 that he shared with Australian racers Mark Skaife, Russell Ingall and, Tony Longhurst. A fourth M6 GT3, the Walkenhorst Motorsport entry driven by BMW works driver Jörg Müller and BMW Motorsport Juniors Ricky Collard and Nico Menzel, crashed out in qualifying and was unable to start the race.
Mostert led in the second hour of the race, but a broken rear suspension led to a long stop. Eventually the car was retired after a crash by Mostert’s co-driver Max Twigg at about seven hours into the race. The #60 SRM M6 GT3 was set back by a long stop brought on by power steering failure, and the #7 car, with Ingall at the controls, crashed out at about the mid-point of the race.
Wittmann said “This was a tough race – and a great experience here in Australia. This event is just great fun. My first stint was quite okay, the pace was good. But then we suffered a technical problem, which made us lose some ground over the course of the race. We didn’t give up and kept pushing. So we managed to come fourteenth in the end, although we obviously had hoped for more from P3 on the grid. The qualifying performance was really good. We proved that we can be fast at this track. Bathurst was worth the trip.”
The 3.861-mile Mount Panorama Circuit runs up the side of a mountain, across the top, and back down, with 23 turns along the way. There are many easy-to-find videos of a lap around the circuit on YouTube; find one and check out this amazing track. Here’s a link to a lap by a Toyota running in traffic. The 12-hour race starts in the dark at 5:45 AM on Sunday morning and runs through the day. You can add it to the long list of great reasons to visit Australia.—Brian S. Morgan
