Brabham and Youlden chasing record

Bathurst champion Luke Youlden is intent on putting Brabham into the record books at Mount Panorama this weekend with the fastest lap in the history of the track.

As reported here exclusively, Youlden is spearheading a tilt on the mark at the BT62's first visit to the track. He equalled the existing mark on Thursday with a lap time of 1min 59.3sec during his first Bathurst hit-out in the $1.8m-plus Brabham supercar and says there is more to come.

Youlden is confident the car can lap in the 1min 57sec bracket before the weekend is done. That would be nearly five seconds quicker than the fastest cars in the weekend’s Bathurst 12 Hour contest for international GT3 sports cars and even faster than the V8 Supercars that contest the Bathurst 1000 each October.

“It feels very fast. It’s fun, for sure, but stressful at the same time,” reports Youlden.

“There is definitely still some time left in me and some time in the car.”

The carsales.com.au track tester has driven the Brabham before at other tracks including The Bend in South Australia but has only managed three laps at Bathurst ahead of his final hit-out on Saturday morning.

Those laps came on Thursday when the track was still relatively dusty and he was restricted to a single dedicated 15-minute session, which will be repeated tomorrow (Sat).

Youlden is aiming to beat the time set in November by German driver Christopher Mies, driving a de-restricted Audi R8.

The GT3 car was stripped of its power-sapping inlet restrictors and clocked 1min 59.291sec during the Challenge Bathurst event.

It stands as the record because it was set in a CAMS sanctioned event, even though the car was not running to GT3 regulations. The Mountain’s unofficial mark is the 1min 48sec set by Jenson Button, during a Formula One McLaren during a demonstration run in 2016.

“We’re on track again tomorrow at 10.30am. I think we definitely should be able to do a 1:57 if everything is right,” says Youlden.

“We had a few problems on Thursday and the track should be better. But you never know, as the GT3 cars have been a bit slower than we expected today.

“You come to Bathurst with a bit of an idea from simulations on the ride-height and the gearing and wing angles, then adjust from there. I think we can optimise the car for the final run.”

Youlden reports that the Brabham feels easily the quickest car he has driven at Mount Panorama.

“It’s a racecar and it feels like a racecar. It’s about 20km/h quicker than a GT3 car everywhere. And even quicker again than a Supercar.

“It moves around a bit, but it feels planted all at the same time. You feel the bumps more, you feel the camber more. It’s light at only 1000kg.

“They [Supercars] roll around more where this car sits nicely. And it sounds amazing,” Youlden stated.