PHIL BRANAGAN
INTERCONTINENTAL GT CHALLENGEMOUNT PANORAMA (AUS)
18 FEBRUARY
ROUND 1/4
A lap around the clock at Mount Panorama can feature all manner of things and, in the 2024 edition of the Bathurst 12 Hour, all manner of things is just what the spectators witnessed.
In changeable conditions – the first half of the race was run in the dry, and most of the last half on a wet track – Porsche took its second win in the event when Manthey EMA Racing’s 911 GT3-R sped to a narrow victory. It was an effort started by Laurens Vanthoor, finally a winner down under after seven attempts (and whose brother Dries won the 2018 event), anchored by a very impressive Bathurst rookie in Ayhancan Guven, and closed out in style by Matt Campbell, the Australian adding the Bathurst trophy to the Daytona 24 Hours hardware he won earlier this month.
On paper, the ‘Grello’ 992 dominated the race, leading 195 of the 275 laps (a record) and setting the fastest lap, a first for a Porsche in the event. But the drivers had to work especially hard, firstly to come back from not one but two pitlane drive-through penalties, and then Campbell had a comfortable 12-second lead erased by a final safety car, leaving him to rebuild a small but telling margin in the final 30 minutes of the race.
“To Larry [Vanthoor] and Ayhancan, they did a fantastic job,” beamed Campbell after the race, which featured 13 safety car periods (for a total of 28 laps). “We kept it off the walls… phenomenal. Second win, it’s unreal.”
Second place was a fine reward for the SunEnergy1 Mercedes-AMG team, which was shooting for a hat-trick of wins in the event. After team owner/driver Kenny Habul’s Plan A to race a fresh car came to nought, the US-based Australian calmly retrieved his double race-winning car from a static display in the US and suited up with Jules Gounon and Luca Stolz, their bid for a three-peat (and four in a row for Gounon) falling a mere 2.6s short of rewriting the history books.
If the top two looked in contention for most of the 12 hours, the battle for the final step of the podium was far from straightforward. It was only in the final minutes that Audi’s Christopher Haase, who with co-drivers Kelvin van der Linde and Liam Talbot had been just inside the top 10 for most of the race, charged through from fifth to third in the Jamec Racing/MPC R8 LMS in a single move.
