Sportscar365’s Race of the Year

Sportscar365 is recognizing the top performers and moments from the 2023 sports car racing season. Next up is the Race of the Year, as selected by website staff.

Race of the Year – Bathurst 12 Hour

It was a case of quality over quantity at this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour, which had only 24 cars on the grid but managed to produce the most exciting endurance race finish of 2023.

The return of Pro lineups helped to stoke the fire as Mercedes-AMG, BMW and Porsche brought an armory of factory drivers to the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli season-opener in Australia.

The smaller-than-desired car count, a lingering effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, ended up fuelling a grandstand finish as the spread-out field produced fewer incidents in the second half and gave almost five hours of green flag running to the checkered flag.

It facilitated a flat-out fight between GruppeM Racing, Manthey EMA and defending winner SunEnergy1 Racing, which counted Bronze-rated Kenny Habul among its drivers.

Those three entries shrugged off the early challenge from BMW M Team WRT, with the GruppeM Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo drawing clear until it lost a half-minute lead when it was forced to change a faulty event-supplied data logger.

That laid the foundations for a track battle between GruppeM and SunEnergy1 that culminated in Engel making contact with fellow Mercedes-AMG factory driver Jules Gounon at the Chase. Gounon continued for SunEnergy1 as Engel received a penalty.

That enabled Manthey EMA to get a sniff of victory and Matt Campbell produced a fine closing stint to bring its Porsche 911 GT3 R to within a second of Gounon at the line.

While other races boasted larger car counts and flashier occasions, this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour was simply professional GT3 racing at its absolute best.

Honorable Mentions

***The 100th-anniversary 24 Hours of Le Mans was a blockbuster event that lived up to the hype of an expanded Hypercar field and the centennial occasion. After an unexpectedly strong run from Peugeot, Ferrari and Toyota emerged as the contenders for the overall win. The No. 51 Ferrari 499P prevailed in an intense race, taking the Italian manufacturer’s first Le Mans victory in 58 years and ending Toyota’s five-year streak. A pre-event Balance of Performance change was the talk of the build-up, angering Toyota, although it’s hard to argue against this being one of the year’s standout races.

***The best IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race in the first year of the new GTP class was also the shortest. Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet won the 100-minute Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on a single set of Michelin tires, earning the first victory for a Porsche 963. Jaminet was battling with Ricky Taylor, whose Acura ARX-06 had fresher tires and was recovering from a slow pit stop, and came out best when Taylor nosed into the Turn 1 barriers with two laps to go.

***SUPER GT’s annual visit to Autopolis was one of the most memorable races the series has produced in recent memory. For the first time, the event was held over 450km, giving teams some major strategy and tire preservation headaches. After some thrilling battles and memorable overtakes in the early stages, the race boiled down to a three-way fight between the No. 36 TOM’S Toyota, No. 16 ARTA Honda and No. 3 NDDP Racing Nissan, with TOM’S duo Ritomo Miyata and Sho Tsuboi completing a remarkable comeback from 12th on the grid to win.

***The second 60-minute GT4 European Series race at Paul Ricard was a dry-to-wet spectacular. After a standard opening half, several competitors remained on slick tires after the pit stops but their pace slumped when the heavens opened. One of those, Antoine Potty, masterfully tiptoed Xwift Racing’s Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO to the line in one of the slowest winning laps ever seen, after his rivals close behind slid off at Signes on the last lap. The drivers who switched to wets came to the fore as the rain covered the circuit, but ultimately came up short.