Bathurst 12 Hour: Now the dust has settled

COMMENT

The commentary box has been the best place to watch the growth of the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour since the GT cars came to play in 2011.

From the glass-bound confines of the small room hanging out over Mt Panorama’s pit lane, we’ve watched the spectator hills fill with fans, the campgrounds become more vibrant, the surrounds of Australia’s most iconic racetrack become ever more bustling and a growing number of fans become interested in what was once motorsport’s best-kept secret.

Best of all, we’ve also seen an on-track product that I don’t think much in the world can match when it comes to providing compelling drama over a 12-hour period.

Yesterday’s 2017 race was the seventh time GT3 cars have been the headline act in February’s Bathurst enduro and it was unquestionably another classic.

You could take that hero-versus-villain script to Hollywood and they’d laugh you out of town!

The storylines in the last hour alone were enough to sustain Sunday’s event: the fact there was a continued stream of them throughout the entire race (the entire weekend, for that matter!) makes it even more remarkable.

Be it the Ferrari victory, SVG (Shane van Gisbergen) throwing it away in the final minutes, Audi’s dramas or the rash of key contenders falling by the wayside -- it was 12 hours of near insanity and from behind the microphone it was almost impossible to keep on top of it all.

Just as we’d work out one team’s strategy, the Safety Car would emerge and throw the running order into disarray and we’d have to start from scratch.

But it was a great race and I’m very happy for Maranello Motorsport’s boss, Mark Coffey, who spends most of his year working out how to win the race, and the rest of it doing it.

The package he put together this year was superb and their preparation ensured that their 488 (a car that hasn’t showered itself in glory since its GT3 introduction) was faultless all weekend.

And of course Craig Lowdnes, Jamie Whincup and the breathtakingly fast Toni Vilander (whose middle stint of the race, where he was routinely 1.5sec faster than anyone else, was beyond belief) were unstoppable.

It was an incredibly well-earned victory. One for the ages.

Diversity rules
Diversity is absolutely the number one appeal of the Bathurst 12 Hour for me.

There’s a certain joy in watching Whincup come to grips with a Ferrari 488 GT3, when all he’s ever driven here is an Aussie Supercar. Yes, it was Jamie’s first ever GT3 race!

And then there’s the wide-eyed bewilderment from internationals -- like when they reach Skyline at 220km/h and see the world disappear beneath them for the first time on a flyer.

Or watching one of GT racing greats like Vilander describe the event as “one that was missing from his career”.

To outsiders that might not mean much, but to those who know the sport it’s a validation that this race is now truly something important on the global stage.

It’s gone from low-key blast to major international event and a race people now have as a ‘must win’ in their career.

The 12 Hour is a melting pot of international talent and stunning cars and I think that is absolutely the attribute that makes it so appealing to such a diverse and growing array of fans -- from here and around the world.

I might be fortunate enough to work in the sport, but in the end I’m just a punter who loves and wants to be entertained by the sport. And for me the Bathurst 12 Hour ticks all the boxes.

There’s nothing quite like watching a Bentley chase down a Ferrari in the early hours of Sunday morning at The Mountain.

Risk and reward
The race has come a long way since the early days of the GT era, when fields were thin and the crowds were yet to discover the appeal of the race.

But the people that backed the race stuck with it and their reward has been to establish something I think will still be here in 50 years.

It’s been interesting to watch the advances the event has taken each year both on track and off — from Audi Sport stepping up to the plate in the early years, to Lowndes’ victory in 2014, and from the first few campers on top of The Mountain to the live television coverage on Aussie free-to-air.

It feels like it’s been a gradual climb but both the crowd and the grid has doubled in five years. Clearly something is working.

At the start of this I wrote that the Bathurst 12 Hour was once Australia’s best-kept racing secret, but I think it’s safe to say that the secret is out…

Here’s to another 50 years of the same remarkable, compelling drama that this year’s edition provided.
Richard Craill is the communications director for the Bathurst 12 Hour and part of the RadioLeMans commentary team at the event