MOTORSPORT: Bathurst 12 Hour field set

Picking a winner of the 2024 Repco Bathurst 12 Hour will be a difficult task, with a stacked field set to converge on Mount Panorama over February 17-18 for the once-around-the-clock sports car classic.

More than 30 entries – a dozen of which are in the outright Pro classification – and nine manufacturers are set to face the starter, with Mercedes-AMG, Audi, BMW, Lamborghini, McLaren and Porsche, plus invitational entries from KTM and the French-made Vortex, to be joined by homegrown MARC Cars.

Importantly for this year’s B12H, the event has attracted 11 internationally-sourced crews (four more than last year), as the endurance race continues its post-pandemic rebound.

Leading the charge is a field of 10 Mercedes-AMGs, which cover a spread of classes including GT4.

Hoping to make it three successive wins is the Kenny Habul-led Sunenergy1 squad, in which the Aussie will partner once again with Luca Stolz and the Frenchman gunning for his fourth consecutive Bathurst crown, Jules Gounon.

Elsewhere in the AMG Pro ranks, there is plenty of Aussie flavour.

From the Triple Eight Race Engineering camp, Supercars teammates Will Brown and Broc Feeney will be paired with Canadian Mikaël Grenier, while Craig Lowndes will be joined by Tickford Racing drivers Thomas Randle and Cameron Waters in the Scott Taylor Motorsport entry.

Young gun Jayden Ojeda will link with Maximilian Götz and Daniel Juncadella in the Caltex-backed Craft Bamboo machine, while David Reynolds has been enlisted alongside Felipe Fraga and Maro Engel, who will be looking to break his Bathurst curse.

The leading Audi entries from the Melbourne Performance Centre have employed a similar tactic to last year’s winning combination, with their Pro-ranked cars both carrying an amateur driver, who will not be held to the minimum driving time benchmark that is required in the Pro-Am class.

In one car, Bathurst local Brad Schumacher will be joined by Markus Winkelhock and Ricardo Feller, while the other will see Liam Talbot share driving duties with Kelvin van der Linde and Christopher Haase.

From the Porsche ranks, fresh from outright prototype success at the Daytona 24 Hour, Matt Campbell will spearhead the Manthey EMA ‘Grello’ entry alongside Laurens Vanthoor and Ayhancan Güven.

Also set to feature will be BMW, which returns with a pair of Team WRT M4 GT3s, with Valentino Rossi to once again be the centre of attention.

Other stars on the entry list include IndyCar champion Paul Tracey, former Supercars star Jamie Whincup, plus Chaz Mostert, Nick Percat, Jack Le Brocq, Cameron Hill, Kevin Estre, Luke Youlden, Jaxon Evans, Tony D’Alberto and Grant Denyer, among many others.

The race, which is set for a 5:45am Sunday start, will have its work cut out to beat some of the records set in 2023. Last year 323 laps and 2006.79km were covered at an average speed of 167km/h, and the race ended with a 4hr45min green-flag run to the finish in which the top three cars were covered by only 1.4sec.

The race will be broadcast live on Seven, Fox Sports and Kayo.

Meanwhile, at the same time as the Bathurst 12 Hour, Australia will be represented in the World Rally Championship with the combination of Peter Rullo and Ben Searcy taking on the 70th running of the Rally Sweden.

The Australian Rally Championship regulars will combine in a Toni Gardemeister-prepared Skoda Fabia Rally2 machine for the snow and ice-based event.

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