MOTORSPORT: Brabham back to Bathurst
Australia's supercar marque is planning to lower the Mt Panorama track record even furtherBrabham is heading back to Bathurst for another attack on the track record.
The date is still being debated — it could be the Challenge Bathurst event in late November — but David Brabham wants to take his BT62 supercar back to Mount Panorama to improve on the landmark 1min 58.670sec time clocked by Luke Youlden in February during the Bathurst 12-Hour weekend.
The BT62 has a range of customer commitments in Europe in coming months but Brabham and his Adelaide partners in Brabham Automotive know there is more to come at the spiritual home of Australian motorsport.
“It’s unfinished business, isn’t it,” Brabham told carsales yesterday during a visit to the Rolex AustralianF1 Grand Prix paddock with his commercial director, Dan Marks.
Brabham drove demonstration laps in his car at the Adelaide 500 meeting and is already booked to drive the car up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Britain in July. It will also be displayed at the Monaco Grand Prix.
“We’re heading to Europe for several months, and that’s the main target.
“I’m not driving there. But dad won in Monaco, so it’s special,” he said.
Despite the run to the record in February, which eclipsed the fastest GT3 and Supercars laps at the track, the Brabham team has calculated there are several seconds to find in the BT52 at Bathurst. And that’s even without a qualifying-compound tyre from Michelin or one of the company’s super-secret and super-sticky ‘Confidential’ tyres.
“They don’t have a Confidential in the right size. Or a qualifier,” says Brabham.
Asked if he thinks the car could lap as quickly as a 1min 54sec; given several problems with the car including a failure of the traction control during Youlden’s track time, he refused to be specific.
“All I would say is that it’s unfinished business in a way. We know the car could go faster.
“It will be a few seconds quicker. We know we can set a good benchmark so others can have a go.”
But he refuses to give a timetable for the comeback run.
“We haven’t set the date,” Brabham said.
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