Hours three and four were all about the fight between the #1 Erebus Mercedes of Bernd Schneider and the McLaren GTR of Shane van Gisbergen.
During his stint he was able to close down a 24 second lead that the Erebus machine held with a stunning series of quick laps, one of which would have snared pole position. On lap 98, Van Gisbergen put in a lap of 2:03.850.
He did put his car at risk too though, with a risky and unsuccessful move through the esses to lap the Maranello 458 on the Mountain. The Maranello machine had no where to go and van Gisbergen had to put two wheels on the grass and got out of shape.
Maranello driver, John Bowe was watching having just given the car to Mika Salo.
“It was probably a bit opportune on Shane’s part. It isn’t somewhere I’d try to pass an equal car,” Bowe said.
At the end of the six hours, though Andrew Kirkaldy had a stint and while being quick could not hold off the Erebus Mercedes with Nico Bastian in the lead, the Mercedes team turning their car around a full 10 seconds faster than the McLaren boys.
The tactics however are in play with the McLaren having completed a pitstop under yellow, now having completed seven stops to the Erebus’ five.
There are only three cars on the lead lap. The other car was the Maranello Ferrari, having got its lap back through the pitstop cycles. Mika Salo was at the wheel and with the pro drivers of Salo and Craig Lowndes looking to finish out the race, the Italian machine cannot be written off.
During hour four, the Phoenix Audi picked up a rear puncture and and to make a pitstop.
In hour five, the Maranello Ferrari picked up a speeding penalty being some 2km/h off the pace. Bowe is hoping for something special to overcome that penalty.
“We have a really good car. It is as good as anything on the track. We had a problem with officialdom. We got pinged for 42km/h instead of 40. In my view, it is like the Victorian Police – it is a bit finer tolerance and it has hurt us quite badly. There is a long way to go. We can hope for miracles in motorsport,” he said.
Problems also fell the Rotek Audi who had a valve spring problem in their Audi and were forced to give up their Group B leading position.
The fellow American car – the Pat Long/Alex Davison and David Calvert-Jones car suffered a puncture and were forced to limp round most of a lap on that tyre.
It was also a difficult hour for the Motionsport Lotus. They suffered a damper failure which in turn killed an ABS sensor and sheared a driveshaft. While they repaired the driveshaft and sent Gordon Shedden out, he reported the car undrivable with the ABS sensor missing, the tyres were locking, particularly over the top of the Mountain and in the Chase. With two spins, the difficulty was clear. Finally the car lost drive again and was forced to return to the pits for repair.
By halfway, the Rotek team were forced to retire, this time with electrical issues. They joined the #48 Lamborghini that crashed heavily while trying to get out of the way of the leading cars.
And at the end of hour six, Rentcorp #45 Porsche had a scary moment coming into the Chase, spinning across the track and flying a small way through the air before ending in the gravel. This incident brought out the safety car.
The MARC Focuses also found trouble, nurfing the wall. They have been able to continue and are running a strong pace. Driver and TV personality, Grant Denyer is impressed with the efforts to date.
“It is an epic little machine. It has that Australian sound to it, it is the only Australian car out there. There is a lot of exotic machines around us – to be racing around this place with Mercs, Ferraris and Lambos is great. It is a very solid thing, it is built with Supercar heritage in it. Our game is about reliability’
“We are in 14th and started 20th. Chipping through. It is a very easy car to drive. It is nice and aggressive. It is a mans man car to look and drive but it is easy to park”
“It is good. It was chaotic this morning. Really aggressive traffic – whether you are going forward or backwards there were cars three wide and chopping one another, dive bombs. There were blokes that you thought had seen you or they changed their mind. It was like anything that could go wrong did go wrong. That is Bathurst isn’t it?”
Sam Tickell
