MOTORSPORT: BMW’s Bathurst 6 Hour hat-trick

Three times the Bathurst 6 Hour has been run – and three times it’s been won by BMWs.

This time it was the turn of Queensland brothers Grant and Iain Sherrin, the reigning Australian Production Car Series champions, in an M4 after three lead changes in the dying minutes after the last of 11 safety car interventions.

The M4 had been back in fifth and 40 seconds off the lead with half an hour to go after a drive-through penalty for an infringement on a previous restart, but the last safety car worked hugely to their advantage and they picked off those ahead of them in the final 10- minute sprint to the finish.

Second place went to another BMW, a 1M Coupe, prepared by MARC Cars and driven by Americans Brett Strom and Daren Jorgensen after a thrilling battle – decided only at the last corner – with a Garth Walden Racing Mercedes A45 AMG piloted by Steve Johnson, Rob Woods and Marcel Zalloua.

The race had looked to be going the way of yet another BMW, the M3 of former production car champion Beric Lynton and Tim Leahey, until its right rear wheel broke loose at the top of Mt Panorama, bringing out the last safety car.

That was five laps after the M3 had set the fastest lap of the race at 2:26.027.

Leahey had qualified the car on pole position with a 2:22.904, almost two seconds faster than the Sherrin M4 in a ‘Beemer’ lock-out of the front row of the grid.

But on race day fortune was with the Sherrin brothers, despite still being fourth at the last restart 10 minutes from the chequered flag.

“It’s very emotional because we’ve been coming here for years,” Iain Sherrin said.

“We’d just never cracked that outright victory we’d been hunting. It’s been a lot of hard work.”

Brother Grant, who drove the final stint and took the chequered flag 3.277 seconds clear, said they had “pulled a rabbit out of the hat there at the end”.

Of the 62 cars entered this year, 56 started the race and 41 were classified as finishers.

The top five completed 109 laps, compared to the 113 of the victorious BMW M135i of Luke Searle and Paul Morris last year and the 125 laps of the 335i of Chaz Mostert and Nathan Morcom in 2016.

American Strom was hugely excited at holding off Johnson for second in their dice over the closing laps this time.

“There were like eight corners when we were side by side,” Strom said. “He was quicker down the straight but was slower getting out of the corners.”

The Mercedes had started from the pit lane after an electronics problem on the formation lap, battled heat issues in the late stages and Johnson opted for caution as he came across a backmarker at the end.

“I saw the BMW on my right and the slow car on my left and thought that I’d better lift or it’d end up like [Greg] Murphy and [Marcos] Ambrose [in the 2005 Bathurst 1000],” Johnson said.

“I decided to lift and give Rob [Woods] a podium he deserved after missing out last year.”

Rod Salmon and Leigh Burges finished fourth in another A45 while the first Mitsubishi to finish, an Evo X RS in fifth after coming back from a lap down, was driven by Jimmy Vernon, Paul Liaocono and Peter Lown.

Garth Walden and Craig Baird had been contenders in their A45 until a coil problem dropped them a lap down and they wound up sixth.

Karl Begg and Justin Anthony won the A2 class for normally-aspirated extreme performance cars in a Mercedes C63 and were seventh outright despite losing a lap early on when Begg pitted under green flag conditions feeling unwell.

Class B1 for high-performance forced-induction cars went to Scott Gore, Keith Bensley and Patrick Galang in a BMW 135i.

B2 for high-performance naturally-aspirated cars was won by Tony Virag, Joe Krinelos and Brett Howard in a VF Holden Commodore SS.

Kevin Stoopman, Andrew Williams and Gavin Ross won class C (performance) in a Subaru Impreza WRX and the Honda Integra Type R of David Baker, Matt Windsor and Brian Callaghan class D (production).

Andrew McMaster, David Noble and David Worrell took class E (compact) in a Mazda 3 after Mark Griffith and Kyle Alford were cruelly robbed of victory when their Toyota Echo retired on the final lap.

The first of the day’s safety cars came after just six laps when the Renault Megane RS 265 Trophy R of Colin Osborne and Hadrian Morrall crashed at Forrest’s Elbow. The field was red-flagged and held in pit lane, without work on the cars allowed, while the damaged tyre barrier was hastily repaired.

Chaz Mostert and his mate Nathan Morcom finished three laps down in 16th this year in the Ford Focus RS in which they were runners-up last year.

The other Supercar regular in the field, Tim Slade, was stranded on the grid with a flat battery in the Mitsubishi Evo X RS he shared with Dylan Thomas as the formation lap began. It was bump-started and began at the back of the field but expired after 30 laps – 10 more than last year.

Images courtesy of Hi-Tec Oils Bathurst 6 Hour