Bathurst 12 Hour: all to play for with 3 hours remaining.
Stefan Mucke said that this race is like a sprint, five or six laps of green and a yellow. It has made it exciting and that trend followed throughout the third quarter of the 2015 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hours.
With three hours left any one from Craft-Bamboo Aston Martin, Phoenix Audi, Erebus Motorsport, Nissan and Bentley are in with a shot of victory.
After nine hours the Craft Bamboo #97 led Class A with Darryl O’Young at the wheel.
Like the rest of the race though the third quarter was filled with safety car periods and and with still more than a quarter of the race to go a race record was set for safety car periods.
The leaders at the start of the quarter, the #36 Erebus Racing Mercedes SLS GT3 were given a drive through penalty for a contact with the AF Corse Ferrari at the exit of turn 1. The ensuing spin and contact with the wall eliminated the AF Corse car.
That safety car led to a massive battle between the Phoenix, Erebus and the Nissan where were all within a few seconds of each other on track.
Indeed it led to a brave but fantastic move by Katsumasa Chiyo to pass Stefan Mucke around the outside for third position. Alex MacDowell had been in the Craft Bamboo car for three hours and forced the car to second position – showing the excellent handling over the mountain that the car has.
Another yellow flag appeared for the #63 Erebus Motorsport Mercedes, not the one fighting for the win as a rear tyre delamination threw the car into the wall at Forest Elbow. The car was able to limp back to the pits but the damage was done.
It allowed the fight at the front to get ever more fierce. Mucke was piling on the pressure but Chiyo was unflappable.
There were yellow flags for a small spin for the compareinsurace.com Aston Matin that got stuck in the gravel.
That turned the Aston/Nissan battle to a Mercedes/Nissan battle for the lead with Canto having recovered from his earlier drive through.
A final safety car for the period was for the #73 Ginetta who had siginficant engine problems on the way to the Chase and parked in the gravel.
There were many more restart infractions with the Clearwater Ferrari and #10 Bentley amongst those getting punished by the stewards.
It undoubtedly hurt the Clearwater team as they fought back through the field. Equally, the Vicious Rumour car was having troubles getting their tyres to work acorss the top of the Mountain, hamstinging their fight through the field.
At half distance, Class B was led by Sam Power, Class C led by the Donut King Lotus, Class D by Beric Lynton’s BMW after mechanical issues struck the dominant Daytona Coupe and Class I by #93 MARC Ford Focus.
Sam Tickell
