MOTORSPORT: Supercars superstars are the Bathurst 12 Hour target

Any team with a combined total of 22 victories at Mount Panorama is going to take a power of beating in the Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 Hour sportscar endurance race that opens Australia’s professional motorsport season this weekend.

Roland Dane knows it, which is why the Supercars supremo has extracted all the key elements from his Triple Eight Race Engineering (T8) supercars outfit for the team’s first full-scale assault on the 12 Hour and added them to a Mercedes-AMG GT from Scott Taylor Racing.

The tip of the T8 spear is a driving line-up that combines Supercar stars Jamie Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen with recently retired (as a full-timer at least), Craig Lowndes.

But there are also engineers, strategists and mechanics (as well as Dane himself as pitlane general) for a race which is rapidly becoming one of the world’s long-distance classics.

“I think our team is the best in terms of driving talent, but there are others with more experience of the event,” says Dane.

“It's very difficult to pick a single favourite. I think there are a whole bunch of cars that look very strong.

“There are the BMWs. Maybe the Nissan GT-R. There are several other strong Mercedes, several strong Audis. The Bentleys have plenty of experience to learn from, and a new car,” Dane hedged.

Bentley is fielding a second-generation Continental GT for the first time at Bathurst, in a field with 10 different manufacturers and close to two dozen GT3 contenders. The Brit brand made an early commitment to the Mount Panorama event back in 2015.

“Bathurst is an incredible race, I love it,” says the man who leads the official Bentley effort at the 12-hour, M-Sport owner Malcolm Wilson.

“We are back. It’s our first race this year with the new car,” Wilson says.

“We will be bringing the new car this year. We would have used it last year in Bathurst, but they don’t allow new cars.”

The Bathurst 12 Hour, like all GT3 races, is built around an equivalency package called the Balance of Performance (BoP). It’s a way to even out the performance of cars with vastly different engines, layouts, body styles and drivelines, and the BoP is set early each year ahead of the Northern Hemisphere start for the season.

The Bentley, like the Ferrari F488, was untested for BoP for the 2018 Bathurst 12-Hour year but is now ready to roll.

Under the BoP calculations, which uses weight, engine inlet restrictors, ride heights, fuel-rig restrictors and turbo boost limits, the lightest GT3 car in the field is the Porsche 911 GT3 R, while the Mercedes-AMG GT3 is heaviest – 95kg over the Porsche. But Audi R8s have been slugged with an extra 50kg of weight and the Aston Martins, which are racing for the last time before a model change, must carry 80kg.

Triple Eight is confident after a pre-race test at Phillip Island but David Reynolds, who has won the Bathurst 1000 and is back in a Benz with his champion co-driver carsales’ own Luke Youlden and the Erebus Racing team, says nothing is certain at Mount Panorama.

“Yes, they are going to be hard to beat. But you never know,” says Reynolds.

The third member of their driver roster is amateur Yasser Shahin, which could handicap them a little, but Reynolds knows how to win.

“Luke is probably faster than me in these cars but for us to win we need to stay on the lead lap, which can be a bit difficult,” the 2017 Bathurst champion stated.

Even so, he says the 12 Hour is one of his favourite races.

“It’s like a double Bathurst. It’s one of the more enjoyable ones for me.

“It’s a cool race, because if you do the first stint you start in the pitch black. It’s fun, but kindy scary and annoying. You’re going as fast as you can, you can’t see anything because there is no track lighting, and there are 50 blokes behind you with their lights on high team.”

With so many potential winners, and Audi as the only repeat champion on The Mountain in the GT3 era, after a victory by the factory R8 team from Belgium in 2018, even T8’s Dane is not getting carried away.

“Hindsight will be a wonderful thing on Sunday night,” Dane laughs.

“There is a formidable line-up and it’s a long race. Thankfully there is less shrapnel this year, not really any of the really slow stuff we’ve seen in the past, so that should lead to less yellow flags and a better flow to the race.

“As a race, the 12 Hour is really only second to the Spa 24-Hours in terms of a GT3 race. So it’s one we obviously want to win.”

Practice for the 12-Hour starts on Friday, with the race running from 5.45am on Sunday morning until 5.45pm, and live coverage on 7mate.