There’s a saying about races at Bathurst. Sometimes, The Mountain chooses its victors.
In 2024, Porsche was chosen; the mixed conditions played perfectly to Matt Campbell and Ayhancan Guven’s strengths in the Manthey EMA #911. Campbell was chosen in 2019 too, when a well-timed safety car closed a significant gap to enable him to strike at the race leader in the last half hour.
2020 also deserves a mention here – Jules Gounon (below) suffered a tyre delamination on his in-lap in the middle of Conrod Straight, which somehow held on long enough for him to bring the #7 Bentley Continental into the pits. He then led the final stint and crossed the line, just as the rain that had threatened all day finally came down. Anywhere else on the track and that tyre delamination could have put the Bentley in the wall.
WRT had been chosen before – in 2018, it was leading the race late when a huge incident brought out a red flag. There was zero chance of the Belgian team’s Audi getting to the end without needing more fuel.
That year, Augusto Farfus watched on from the sidelines after the challenge from BMW M Power M6 came to a grinding halt on the exit of Forest Elbow, tangled in contact while fighting for the podium.
This year though, Farfus, along with Kelvin and Sheldon van der Linde, and BMW, stood as Bathurst 12 Hour champions. Not only was it BMW’s first win in the GT3 era at Bathurst, but it was an emphatic 1-2 for WRT.
“I’m a lucky, lucky man,” Farfus said, post-race. “I’ve been representing BMW for a long time, we’ve come here many times, but BMW has never succeeded here before.”
Farfus and BMW have come close and fallen short on many occasions. In 2019, the car was well poised for the end of the race, but got wrapped up in a battle pack and missed out on a podium. In 2020, an already-reduced Team Schnitzer effort suffered an early morning blow, hitting a kangaroo at dawn, and the resulting damage put the car out of the race.
And in 2023, Farfus’s most recent attempt, the pace disappeared in the heat of the day, and an enforced change of the rear lights dropped the car off the lead lap.
This year though, it was a fairytale run to the end.
“I definitely feel we’ve been chosen to be the winners today,” Farfus said. “We executed a perfect race.
“Being able to put my name in the history of Bathurst, together with BMW, is something very emotional.
“The last 40 minutes it was difficult to hold ourselves [together], because we were hoping for green, and a safety car would have ruined our race.”
A safety car would have ruined our race
As it happened, the last four-and-a-half hours ran green, giving WRT a chance to flex a fuel-saving strategy that had seen it stretch stints longer than anyone else through the day. While most other teams were getting 32 or 33 laps on a stint, WRT had been comfortable setting 34-lap stints in full green conditions.
And on the penultimate stint, they even managed 35.
“We thought we had the same pace as [some of the other teams] on full push, but we didn’t,” Farfus explained. “We were surprised by our competitor’s pace.
“So we practised from day one here on fuel saving, and understanding how to maximise those stint lengths. We thought this race could end up this way.
“I think we were the first ones in the race to fuel save, to optimise our stint length. We managed to stretch our last stint by a lap, and that gave us a shot at the end.”
And it was a tight shot too. Kelvin van der Linde, who took the #32 home to the flag, told the media that he hit the ‘fuel surge’ alarm on his way to the podium. The car wouldn’t have made another lap.
“It was a very tight race,” Farfus continued. “At a certain point, it looked like we would not have made it.”
It was a very fine line, but one that was facilitated by WRT’s strategy during the race. At multiple times, the BMWs managed to gain track positions thanks to Safety Car interventions falling between its competitor’s pit stops and its own, effectively cycling the #32 and #46 to the head of the field.
Then, on the long run to the end, the BMW was the only car that could make the long-run strategy work. Craft Bamboo came closest, with the #77 Mercedes pitting only six minutes from home, while the Arise Racing GT Ferrari #26 and Absolute Racing #911 Porsche had to switch to all-out-attack, knowing they would fall short of the fuel target.
“If you are leading the race, it allows you to manage the fuel save across the lap, which gives you a bit of a buffer,” Farfus explained.
“It’s a moving target – sometimes you have traffic, so then you push. But then you have to save more and the team changes the number. I think we did very well, all of us.”
If you are leading the race, it allows you to manage the fuel save across the lap
It was a strategy that the team committed to early, to great effect, and executed every step of the way. Each pit stop was within a second of the minimum pit stop time, there were no procedural errors under safety car like many other teams encountered, and the cars got stronger as the race progressed.
“They are probably the most successful team in the paddock,” Farfus said of WRT. “And there’s a reason for that.
“WRT has done two other races this year [the Creventic 24 Hours of Dubai and 6 Hours of Yas Marina], and they’ve won all of them.
“From the off-track work, at the workshop, to on-track, race preparation, and then race execution, which is not simple. [Team WRT] mastered today.”
It was a complex puzzle piece that almost came undone in the middle of the race as well – a change of plans for Farfus’s middle stint almost ended in disaster.
“I was supposed to do a single stint in the middle of the race, then the single becomes a double, then two and a half.
“My stint lasted two hours, 29 minutes and 30 seconds. Almost over the driving time [of two hours and 30 minutes].
“If a safety car would have come out, I would have gone over my time.
“Luck was on our side.”
The team benefited from a relaxation of the stint length and pit stop regulations, which enabled teams more ‘creativity’ in devising strategy for the race. And, without it, Farfus wasn’t sure if the BMW had pace alone to win.
“They changed the [pit stop] rules,” Farfus said. “This time, they gave us more freedom.
“I’m in favour of this kind of racing – it gave us this flexibility. If the race would have been down to pace, it would have been very difficult for us.
“I think the Ferrari probably had [better outright pace], but they couldn’t stretch [their stints] as much as we could.
“We didn’t have the pace, but we managed to stretch our stint.”
And with all the preparation, all the planning, all the work on stint lengths, driver changes, pit stops and strategy, WRT was still at the mercy of a possible late-race Safety Car derailing their race.
“In the last 30 minutes, if a safety car would have come, I think it all would have been gone,” Farfus said. “And also the #46 would have been in trouble.
“Sometimes, to win, you need luck.”
And in the end, it all fell their way. The Mountain chose WRT.
