Geoffrey Harris•11 Feb 2013
NEWS
MOTORSPORT: Mercedes conquers the mountain with AMG SLS
Three different manufacturers on the podium at the expanded and enthralling Bathurst 12-Hour, but none of them Audis this timeFull gallery at motoring.com.au for Bathurst 12 Hour 2013 photos
Mt Panorama's other enduro makes quantum leap
Australia has a new Great Race – at Bathurst, where else! – and the winners are AMG Mercedes-Benz and Erebus Motorsport with the SLS Gullwing.
The Bathurst 12-hour was made great by a field of 53 cars, almost twice the size of a V8 Supercar grid and much of the machinery exotic, a great tussle between manufacturers (almost exclusively European in the outright category), and everything Mt Panorama tosses up, including torrential rain in the second last hour and more rain and hurricane-like winds in the final minutes.
And despite a record 15 stints behind the safety car for a record 43 laps!
The victorious SLS, entered by Australian team Erebus but with strong support from AMG Customer Sports in Germany (the combination coming into V8 Supercars soon in association with former Ford team Stone Brothers Racing) completed 268 laps of the 6.23km circuit, winning by a lap from a Ferrari 458 and a Porsche 911.
Despite seven R8s starting, Audi could not complete the hat-trick it had two-thirds achieved the previous two years – the best of them two laps down in fourth, with another five laps down in fifth. The Craig Lowndes, Warren Luff and Rod Salmon R8 was among the 19 non-finishers.
The attendance was up on the previous 10 Bathurst 12-Hours but still modest and comparatively few will have seen it on the internet, but the three-hour highlights package on SBS TV next Sunday should make excellent viewing.
The SLS was driven by German trio Bernd Schneider, the world's top gun at this form of racing, Thomas Jaeger and Alex Roloff, who did a fine final stint having lost radio contact with the pit crew. A second Erebus SLS driven by Australians Tim Slade, Lee Holdsworth and Peter Hackett was on course to make it an AMG Mercedes quinella until its front wheel assembly was damaged 70 minutes from the end on a restart in the rain. The Mercs had been running two laps clear. The Aussie-driven SLS lost 18 minutes in its garage and wound up sixth.
Although the victorious car's winning margin was a lot greater than that traditionally in the V8 Supercar 1000, it was an intriguing and ultimately electrifying race with a finish made nail-biting by the possibility that Roloff could have made a mistake and blown it as Craig Baird charged in the Ferrari. Roloff said he had not felt any pressure in the difficult conditions and on debut at the mountain.
"I had rain tyres on," he said. Yes, but that was only in the closing minutes as the second storm worsened.
He had not contemplated pitting earlier to switch tyres, even knowing he had the buffer of a lap's lead had it been the wrong choice. He said the SLS had been fine on the damp track on slick rubber – indeed the only alarm was when he subsequently ran a little wide at the circuit's final corner on wets.
Schneider, who had been to Bathurst before but not to race, called Mt Panorama "really special" and said that, despite his nonchalance, Roloff had been under pressure at the end.
"There was a little pressure on Alex but he did a perfect job," Schneider said.
"This is such a difficult place. We couldn't learn the circuit (in the lead-up to race day) because of the 'traffic' (slower cars preventing clear running at top pace)."
Baird set the fastest lap of the race – 2 minutes 6.8714 seconds – in the Ferrari he shared with Matt Griffin and Mok Weng Sun.
The third-placed Porsche was driven by Shane Van Gisbergen, who opted not to join Erebus in V8 Supercars and instead go to Holden team Tekno Autosports, Klark Quinn and Mat Kingsley, who replaced Tony Quinn after the latter's Aston Martin hit the wall in the GT Championship round that ran in conjunction with the first hour of the round-the-clock race.
On hand at Bathurst, but not driving, was Van Gisbergen's replacement at Erebus/Stone Bros, German-born Monaco resident Maro Engel, who raced in the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) for four years until 2011. Engel will be a star in V8s if his ability in any way matches his marketing professionalism.
Other 12-hour category winners were:
Class B - GT3: Porsche 997 (David Russell, Steven Johnson, Jonny Reid), 9th outright.
Class C - GT4: Lotus Exige S (Robert Thomson, Liam Talbot, Romano Sartori), 19th outright.
Class D - Production (High Performance): BMW 335i (Peter O'Donnell, Andre Heimgartner, Anthony Gilbertson), 29th outright.
Class E - Production (Performance): Holden Astra HSV VXR (Ivo Breukers, Morgan Haber, Damien Ward), 18th outright.
Invitational Class 1: Peugeot RCZ Cup (Bruce Jouanny, David Wall, Andrew Jones), 16th outright.
Invitational Class 2: Seat Leon Supercopa (Malcolm Niall, Clint Harvey, Brett Niall), 20th outright.
Invitational Class 3: Holden Commodore VY (Mal Rose, Adam Wallis, Aaron Tebb), 12th outright.
Full results here
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Written byGeoffrey Harris
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