A safety car with 45 minutes to go closed the top five up for a sprint to the finish for the 2015 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hours.
The top five, featuring five different manufacturers had all completed their final stops and were on the same lap. Some were on new tyres like Craft Bamboo and Phoenix, where others including Bentley were on worn rubber.
After a late spin, the Craft-Bamboo was sitting in fifth some one and a half minutes from the lead. The Erebus Motorsports Mercedes made the first, final pitstop, meaning they would be very lean on fuel but sat in fourth as the flag went to green.
In third was the Nissan Motorsports with Katsumasa Chiyo behind the wheel. The rapid Japanese driver was looking to make up a minute on the field before the flag.
In second was the fastest man in competition at the Mountain, Laurens Vanthoor in the Phoenix Audi who was just four seconds behind Matt Bell in the Bentley, and closing.
In a strange twist of fate, the yellow flag was brought out by the #11 Bentley grinding to a halt, putting at risk the lead of the #10 Bentley.
Bell got an excellent restart but during the first green flag lap Mucke got past LeBrocq for fourth but David Brabham in the Flying B Motorsports Bentley who had a little help and tagged the wall at the Cutting, bringing out another yellow.
The green came out with 14:30 left and immediately Vanthoor made a move of the Bentley and truied to pass around the outside into turn two. Amazingly both cars made it through but the Bell in the Bentley retained the lead.
The two leaders were joined by the Nissan for a fight for the lead. The three were in a train and Chiyo-san tried for second at the first opportunity but couldn’t make it at the Chase.
A grandstand finish was almost grabbed away with the 20th safety car as the Class B leader, the Grove Porsche spun on his own at the final corner. The marshals though did a stellar job to get the car out of the gravel and with four minutes to go, the track went green.
The top three were line astern and fourth and fifth weren’t far away.
Chiyo-san took second place on the line in risky move that could get him a restart penalty.
He then immediately took the Bentley on Mountain straight to take two places immediately and pulled out six car lengths.
Matt Bell then had to hold on for second with Vanthoor trying at every opportunity.
With the final lap Chiyo extended a lead but the remainder of the podium spots were still up for grabs. Mucke closing on Vanthoor who was closing on Bell.
Vanthoor tried around the the outside oat the Chase and Mucke took advantage to drag down the Conrod for second but Vanthoor was not done and in the final corners, with some contact, took both the Mucke Aston and Bell Bentley to take second.
In the end Nissan won from Audi and Aston Martin. It was heartbreak for Bentley who were the ones who had to lose out on a podium, Matt Bell hung on brilliantly and will consider himself more than unlucky after being rudely bundled out of second at the final turn.
The official Class A Pro winners were the Phoenix Audi with Marco Mapelli, Laurens Vanthoor and Markus Winkelhock.
The winners of Class A Am were Nismo Nissan with Florian Strauss, Katsumasa Chiyo and Wolfgang Reip
The Class B battle went to James Koundouris, Theo Koundouris, Marcus Marshall and Sam Power in the Superbarn Supermarkets after the capulation of Ben Barker in the Grove Porsche who finished second in class.
Class C was taken by Tony Alford, Mark O’Connor, Peter Leemhuis in the Donut King Lotus after a dominant weekend.
Class D was won by Ric Shaw, Jake Williams, Matt Chahda, Steve Devjak in the GWS BMW.
Class I was taken by the dominant #93 MARC Cars Focus V8 with Garry Jacobson, Ben Gersekowski and Adam Gowans.
While the finish was exciting, the final three hours all saw its fair share of action, in particular a frightening crash between the #16 Phoenix Audi who tagged the MARC Cars Mazda 3. The rear end of the Mazda was destroyed, hitting the wall so hard a tractor was needed to retrieve pieces of the car.
The driver, Ivo Breukers was straight out of the car and the safety cell was not compromised, a true testament of the strength of these privately designed, manufactured and entered cars.
The only other major incident was for the #6 Safe-N-Stop Class B Porsche that spun at the Chase but was able to continue.
Overall the race came to a thrilling end with a couple of records, one for the amount of safety cars at 20 and an outright lap record.
Astonishing again!
Sam Tickell
