BATHURST 12 HOUR FROM THE INSIDE: Bucket Listing

Our hired gun got out of the car shaking his head. The day after a second placing at the Gold Coast 600, the talented V8 Supercar driver was not happy.

The reason: a wild ride at a tangent from the apex of Phillip Island's super-quick Turn One…

The factory-fresh white Fiat 695 Abarth Assetto Corse returned with a liberal coating of grass and mud but fortunately every panel was still straight.

He'd taken it easy for a couple of laps to warm the tyres, started to come up to speed. Then in what essentially was the car's first corner in anger, it had swapped ends in an instant.

And we were going to have to qualify and drive these cars at Bathurst. Against some of the best GT3 drivers on the planet.

Gulp. Welcome to the big game, boys...

A sobering 170km/h spin was among the events that introduced us to our Abarth racers at a Phillip Island test day in late October. But the reason we were there goes back a might longer.

Then Fiat Chrysler Group Australia boss, Clyde Campbell, came up with the plot while chatting to colleagues Hagon and Dowling at the Detroit show in January 2013.

Over a few drinks the talk was about bucket lists -- the Bathurst 12 Hour came up and that was it. The next morning, a slightly blurry Campbell said he was serious.

My call-up itself didn't come until late in 2013. It took me barely a second and a half to say yes and the race was on -- not only to get the Abarths to Australia and ready for the event, but to tune up the drivers.

Bathurst requires a full national CAMS racing licence, which in turn stipulates a minimum number of race meetings be completed each year. My national rally licence didn't cut it -- and the rest of the squad was at the very least in the same boat.

Thereafter it was a case of beg, borrow, steal or, as it turned out, lease a couple of racecars; clear the calendar where possible and hit the track. The three race meetings it took to get our licences and the cars we drove have been covered separately.

If it did nothing else, however, it whet the appetite...

TESTING TIMES
It’s been a rollercoaster ride to even get this far. The Fiat Australia Abarth racers first hit the track in October, fresh out of their air-freight crates and with only basic fettling from Alan Heaphy’s Performance Parts and Engineering outfit.

The purpose of Test One was twofold, to understand what we'd have to change in the cars for Bathurst, but even more importantly, to establish a baseline time for the cars and determine whether the car in professional hands would be fast enough to qualify. After all, what hope did us journo drivers have if the good guys couldn't hit the marks?

Cute, may have been the way my partner described the look of the pristine white Abarth racers when she first spied them. After three installation laps at Phillip Island back in October, however, it wasn't the word that immediately came to mind.

Like that classic ‘90s fantasy/horror flick Gremlins, the Abarths turned from cuddly house pets in the pits to teeth-gnashing, flesh eating mini-monsters on the track. In the first few laps I seriously considered saying ‘thanks, but no thanks’. I questioned whether I even had the level of skill to drive these things quick;y.

And then our pro (let's call him Luke Youlden) had his little adventure and I redoubled my doubt. Double gulp!

Handling all over the place, steering that loaded up to the point of almost locking in the fast corners and then there's the brakes... No feel and so much assistance from the booster than locking the rear wheels was almost a given and locking all four was barely a toe twitch away.

Then in the patchy damp conditions colleague Gover went straight on at MG Corner and became a passenger, eventually clouting the wall in a slow motion slide that seemed to go on forever.

In a few laps we'd biffed one car and all had desperate moments -- even our two professional drives, Youlden and MINI and open-wheeler ace, Paul Stokell. Triple gulp.

Then the sun started to come out and the team pulled a fast one... Disconnecting the brake boosters would mean it required a real push on the pedal to pull the cars up, but at least the results would be more predictable.

Stokell and Youlden did their stuff and reeled off a string of 1:48 laps -- almost five seconds inside the 1:52.48 lap that represented 130 per cent of the qualifying time of the Australian GT Championship cars that would be the fastest at Bathurst.

The cars (and pros) at least were fast enough to go to The Mountain. Hurdle one crossed.

FIRST BLOOD
If the first outing of the Abarths claimed one car, albeit in a superficial manner, the toll from Test Day 2 in November was a whole lot more serious.

Clyde hadn't been in the car for long when a very slight oops on the super-fast Turn 12 coming onto Phillip Island's main straight turned into a major moment. In the blink of an eye the car was around, over the kerb and darting back across the track, making very heavy contact with the wall.

In truth, what happened to Clyde could have caught any of us out. He was unhurt but on our second full day of testing I swore the little Abarths were doing their best to kill us.

After the challenges of our first experience with the cars, the team went looking for settings to make the cars easier to drive quickly. The ride height was raised, different springs installed and shocks adjusted.

The result? The cars were definitely different -- but not necessarily in a good way. In fact, they were arguably harder to drive as the front and then rear found and lost grip in PI's super-fast corners.

Yours truly went 1.5 seconds a lap quicker in two short sessions but it felt like I was driving 10 seconds faster. A half spin on an early lap under brakes into Honda Corner, countless moments over Lukey Heights, in Turn One and also Turn Eight, the infamous Hayshed... It was not pleasant.

And when the off stopped proceedings temporarily and the rain set in, team boss Heaphy pulled stumps.

My two sessions at least gave me some data to work from. Contrasting my data with Youlden's was encouraging -- in most cases my corner apex speeds were up to pace.

Indeed, in a classic demonstration of why the phrase "slow in, fast out" will always ring true, however, I was braking too late for the slow corners and loosing time on the exit as a result.

In the two turns I thought I was losing the most time, Turn One and over Lukey heights, it turned out I was plenty fast enough mid-corner. The task next test was to get into the fast corners a touch deeper, get the car turned a touch more briskly and get back on to the throttle earlier. It sounds so easy when you write it down.

A MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB
Meantime the team was making progress on mechanical changes to create mini-GT3s out of the Abarths, and at our third test day at Winton in December, that’s what we witnessed and experienced for the first time.

Heaphy and the squad’s magic was clearly paying benefits. Though there was still work to do, all of a sudden here were cars that at last wanted to go fast. And were happier to turn, stop and perform.

The light at the end of the tunnel was no longer a Fiat-shaped express train coming the other way…

This weekend therefore is the culmination of a very significant effort from Fiat Australia and, especially, Alan Heaphy’s Performance Parts and Engineering outfit. In near-record time, PPE has transformed three Abarth one-make series 695s into proper endurance-racing pocket-rockets.

As you read this we’re about to embark on the minor issue of qualifying for the 2014 Bathurst 12 Hour -- although our entries are in the race program, the cars and every driver in them still needs to lap within 130 per cent of whatever time the pole-sitter sets come Saturday evening.

Consider that some pundits are tipping the fastest GT cars (think Nismo GT-R, Ferrari 458 GT3 or Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS) will be up to eight seconds a lap faster than the best V8 Supercars, you’ll understand we have more than one mountain to climb…

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

Don't forget to register to comment on this article.