MOTORSPORT: Record 61 cars for Bathurst 12-Hour

Entries have closed for the Bathurst 12-Hour race, with a record 61 cars – 37 of them GT3s representing 10 car brands.

The enduro at the mighty Mt Panorama circuit is now barely six weeks away on Sunday, February 5 and many top Supercars drivers, as well as ace internationals, will tackle The Mountain that weekend.

The final driver line-ups – while largely known – are yet to be added to the official entry sheet.

Three of the last entries before last Friday’s deadline were GT3 race cars.

They are a third BMW M6 entered by Germany’s Walkenhorst Motorsport, after the two local entries by BMW Team SRM (Steven Richards Motorsport). There's also a second Porsche 911R from the Walkinshaw operation in Melbourne; and Melbourne businessman Peter Edwards’ Heretic Autosport entered its Bentley Continental GT3, joining the two Bentley Team M-Sport cars from overseas.

The GT3 entry boasts seven Audis, six Porsches, four McLarens, three Mercedes AMGs and three Lamborghinis, two Ferraris and two Aston-Martins.

The 12-Hour race has four classes and each car can have three or four drivers. The 61-car entry tops the previous best of 55.

The GT3s in Class A must have drivers categorised by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) driver ranking system as either platinum, gold, silver or bronze.

Platinum and gold drivers are considered ‘seeded’, silver and bronze are ‘unseeded’.

Class A is divided into three sub-classes – Pro, for cars with all drivers professional; Pro-AM, for entries with a maximum of two professional or seeded drivers; and Am, for cars with no more than one professional or seeded driver.

Class B is the domain of Porsche’s GT3 Cup Car seen at other times in the Carrera Cup, but even after a late entry from SRM of a current-spec 991 there are only four cars in that class.

The new GT4 class (C) is the “baby brother” of GT3 for more production-based GT cars complying to global regulations.

A pair of Ginetta G55s from Sydney’s RA Motorsport (the NSW distributor of Radical Sports Cars) has boosted the Class C entry to eight cars, with four makes. The others are Aston Martin, Porsche and KTM – the latter the eye-catching X-Bow – from international and local teams.

Then there’s the invitational class, with 12 entries. We're looking at eight V8s from MARC Cars Australia, six with the Ford Focus body shape and two as Mazda 3s, as well as a Mazda RX-7, Aston Martin Vantage GT8, Daytona Coupe and BMW 335i.

While the 12-Hour organiser – an arm of Supercars for the second year – was obviously chuffed to announce a 61-car field it said: "The final entry list is subject to change with several pending entries yet to formally complete the entry process."

The 2016 Bathurst 12-Hour was won by McLaren. Full event information can be found at Bathurst12hour.com.au.

Entry list for February 3-5, 2017, Bathurst 12-Hour
(at December 16, 2016, deadline)