MOTORSPORT: Bathurst 12-Hour on world stage

Next year's Bathurst 12-Hour will be part of a new international series of GT3 racing.

The Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA)-sanctioned GT racing promoter, Frenchman Stephane Ratel, announced the four-race series at the weekend.

Apart from the Bathurst 12-Hour on February 7, it will comprise the Spa 24-Hour in Belgium, the Sepang 12-Hour in Malaysia and a new three-hour race at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas.

The Stephane Ratel Organisation will encourage all manufacturers participating in the Spa 24-Hour to support the other three events, but not by flying cars to those races.

Instead it wants them to support local teams on those continents racing their brands, while flying in top drivers and engineers.

It is likely to mean the end of gentlemen drivers in GT3 cars at the Bathurst 12-Hour and it is not clear yet how much scope there will be for top Australian professional drivers in this concept.

"What I've learned from a difficult experience with the [short-lived] FIA GT1 World Championship is that the logistical side of things can be very expensive," Ratel said.

"It's a lot better to transport drivers, engineers and our concept is to tell the manufacturers to use their best local teams."

Supercar Events, an offshoot of the V8 Supercar organisation, recently took over promotion of the Bathurst 12-Hour from long-time organiser Yeehah Events, headed by James O'Brien.

John Casey of Supercar Events said: "We are very excited about the possibility of the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12-Hour being a part of the intercontinental challenge. The details will need to be worked out, but we are confident this can be done."

All four races will use SRO's balance-of-performance regulations, with common sporting regulations envisaged from 2017.

More details on the new series are expected to be announced next month.

Ratel, who also runs the Blancpain GT series in Europe, has also been working on an Asia-Pacific series that also would include the Bathurst and Sepang 12-Hours and two other races.

Where those plans stand in light of the weekend's announcement of the broader GT3 championship is not yet clear, but may be clarified in the anticipated October announcement.

V8 Supercar driver Shane van Gisbergen has co-driven a McLaren 650S in some of this year's Blancpain races for the Von Ryan Racing team and was part of the victorious combination at the weekend's season finale at Nurburgring in Germany, sharing the car with Kevin Estre and Englishman Rob Bell.

However, the series title went to Nissan trio Katsumasa Chiyo, Wolfgang Reip and Alex Buncombe. Japan’s Chiyo and Belgian computer game graduate Reip were two of the drivers in Nissan’s GT-R that famously won this year’s Bathurst 12-Hour.

Brit Buncombe missed that race because of the birth of a child, but is driving for Nissan Motorsport in Australia’s V8 Supercar endurance races and now returns to Australia to partner Todd Kelly in the carsales.com.au Nissan Altima in the Bathurst 1000 on October 11 and Gold Coast 600 two weeks later.
The GT-R trio finished third in the three-hour race at Nurburgring overnight.

Buncombe fought an hour-long battle in the final stint with the Bentley of Steve Kane, which overtook him in the closing stages but needed to catch and pass the McLaren too if it was to claim the championship.

“I thought that I had to keep the Bentley behind me so I didn’t know we had won the title [when crossing the finish line],” Buncombe said.

“It feels unbelievable to win.

“It’s probably the best day of my life, apart from the day my son was born!

“It was definitely the hardest stint of my life.

“It was full pressure from the word go ... and I couldn’t be happier with the result.”

NISMO global head of brand, marketing and sales Darren Cox said the success had been a “truly global effort with drivers, engineers, mechanics, coming together from all over the world”.