MOTORSPORT: Mt Panorama's Easter production
Now in its fourth year, can any other make challenge BMW’s dominance of the Bathurst Six-Hour?Easter is no holiday for Australia’s top production car racers – they’re at Bathurst’s Mt Panorama for a six-hour race on Sunday.
It’s the fourth running of the six-hour – the third annual enduro at The Mountain now along with the Bathurst 1000 in October and the 12-Hour in February.
The NSW central west city also now hosts Challenge Bathurst each November – an opportunity to drive, but not race, your street or track car on the famous 6.2km public road course – and there may well be another race meeting next year, with expressions of interest for a fifth annual event closing with the Bathurst Regional Council next Tuesday.
The talk is of another Supercar event or an enduro for the new TCR 2.0-litre touring car category that begins in Australia next month.
The six-hour has been won by BMWs in all its three previous years – different models each time and one-two finishes in 2016 and 2018 – and the German marque again dominates the entry list this weekend.
A quarter of the 44 entries are Bimmers – five of them in Class A1 for extreme performance forced-induction cars vying for outright honours.
They include the M4 of Queensland brothers Grant and Iain Sherrin that won last Easter after a charge from fourth in the final 10 minutes following the last of the day’s safety cars.
The big threat to the Sherrins becoming the first winners of the six-hour to successfully defend their crown is likely to come from the M3 driven by Beric Lynton and Tim Leahey that was the fastest car last Easter but broke its right rear wheel half an hour from the finish.
Although this year’s entry is down on the 56 cars that started a year ago, event director James O’Brien is intent on keeping the six-hour a traditional production car race rather than open it up to sports and utility vehicles.
Mitsubishi Lancer Evos have twice finished on the podium and a Ford Focus RS and a Mercedes-AMG A 45 also have featured among the top three.
The 16-car A2 entry this Easter has six Evos and two Subaru WRXs, there’s a Merc A45 again, as well as local muscle in the form of a Holden HSV VF GTS with John Bowe one of its three drivers and a Ford FPV GT-F which father and son Andrew and George Miedecke are sharing with Jeremy Gray.
The other classes are A2 (extreme performance naturally-aspirated) with five Holdens and a BMW, B (high performance) with a Volkswagen Golf, a Subaru and a Holden up against three BMWs, C (performance) with two new Hyundai i30Ns among the seven entries, D (production) with five Toyota 86s and a Honda Intregra, and E (compact) with a couple of Mazda3s and a Suzuki Swift.
It is the first Easter in a five-year deal for India’s MRF brand as the control tyre for the six-hour, with cars allowed six sets for practice, qualifying and the race, which starts at 11.30am eastern time on Sunday. MRF already is the control tyre in the Australian Rally Championship.
Support categories at Bathurst this weekend are heritage touring cars (a field of 26 Group C and Group A machinery from the 1970s and ’80s), improved production and Hyundai Excels – each with three sprint races – while NSW production sports cars have one-hour races on Saturday and Sunday and the Porsche Club of NSW four regularity trials.
Fox Sports 506 will screen the six-hour live and it will be streamed on the new Kayo Sports direct to mobile devices, but there won’t be a free live stream on the event website in Australia – although there will be for anyone interested overseas.
However, the event will be replayed free on the site on Monday and there will be a two-hour highlights package on SBS Speedweek on Sunday, May 5.
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