Bathurst Saturday Notebook

Photo: Gruppe C Photography/SRO

***Jules Gounon broke the unofficial track record for GT cars around Mount Panorama on Saturday morning, having clocked a 1:56.6054 lap in an unrestricted Mercedes-AMG GT3, equipped with DRS and boasting more than 650 horsepower during the on-track demonstration session. The Andorran’s lap, which was some four seconds quicker than the official GT3 record, came prior to brushing the wall at the top of the mountain that resulted in an aborted second run.

***Gounon shattered the previous closed-cockpit track record, a 1:58.690 set by Luke Youlden in a Brabham BT62 in 2019.

***Head of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Christoph Sagemueller told Sportscar365 that Gounon’s time came “pretty close” to the German manufacturer’s simulated projections. “I think he definitely found the limit of what’s capable with these conditions and the car,” Sagemueller said. “But nevertheless, a 1:56.6 is a pretty proper time for a GT3 on this definitely difficult track.”

***Sagemueller said they currently have no plans to take the heavily modified car to other events for potential track record attempts. The record run at Bathurst was done as part of Mercedes-AMG’s 130th anniversary in motorsports celebration.

***Sheldon van der Linde is the second BMW driver to claim pole in the GT3 era of the Bathurst 12 Hour, following Chaz Mostert’s pole run in 2018 in Schnitzer Motorsport’s BMW M6 GT3. He also became the first South African driver to score a pole at Mount Panorama.

***Van der Linde completed only two flying laps for his pole run. “There’s such a big peak on this tire that you can really only do one lap, especially on the BMW,” he explained. “The rear traction drops quite a lot on the second lap so I didn’t feel like I could have done another lap. And I went off on the second push, trying to drive too hard.”

***Matt Campbell told Sportscar365 that the 10 kg of additional weight on the Type-992 Porsche 911 GT3 Rs, as part of a pre-qualifying Balance of Performance adjustment, didn’t have a significant effect on the handling of the car. The Australian, who qualified fourth, indicated that further weight beyond the current change, however, would have a noticeable effect.

***The 10 kg addition was only for the latest-generation Porsche model, as the Type-991.2 car remains at 1280 kg. Both cars started the weekend on the same weight.

***Maro Engel, who set the third quickest time in the Top 10 Shootout in the No. 130 GruppeM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, said he wasn’t expecting his qualifying lap record to be beaten this year given the track conditions. “It’s not surprising,” he admitted. “To be honest, when Shane [van Gisbergen] set his lap record just after the track had been resurfaced, my personal opinion was that we’d never get close to that again, so it was very surprising for me last year that we were actually able to better that.”

***The No. 50 KTM Vantage Racing KTM XBow GT2 and No. 20 T2 Racing IRC GT car, both competing in the Invitational class, were the first to find the walls this weekend in final Free Practice on Saturday morning. Neither entry returned to action for qualifying.

***The No. 46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 was given a ten-minute stop-and-hold penalty during Free Practice 5 due to Valentino Rossi passing a car under the session’s only red flag.

***While having wound down its factory involvement, Audi Sport still has a large presence at Bathurst, through Audi Australia and longtime entrant Melbourne Performance Centre. An Audi spokesperson confirmed to Sportscar365 that Ricardo Feller, Markus Winkelhock and Christopher Haase have remained contracted drivers for 2024 due to existing multi-year deals.

***Winkelhock and Haase, meanwhile, are fresh off victory in last month’s Hankook 24H Dubai at the wheel of Eastalent Racing Team’s Audi.

***Haase told Sportscar365: “It’s definitely still a privilege that we still have this option to [race the Audi]. It’s great. Like I always said, we have such a great car and even if it’s maybe not the youngest, there’s still so much potential to make up.”

***Feller, meanwhile, is already confirmed for a return to DTM with ABT, alongside Kelvin van der Linde, who is also back racing an Audi this weekend despite no longer being under contract with the German manufacturer.

***Head of Audi Sport customer racing Chris Reinke will be on-site for tomorrow’s race. A number of other key motorsports bosses are also present, including Mercedes-AMG’s Sagemueller and Porsche Motorsport Vice President Thomas Laudenbach.

***The last time a non-IGTC nominated car won an IGTC race outright was the 2018 running of the 24 Hours of Spa when Walkenhorst Motorsport’s BMW M6 GT3 Tom Blomqvist, Philipp Eng and Christian Krognes took top honors prior to BMW becoming a registered manufacturer in the globe-trotting GT3 series.

***The Repco Bathurst 12 Hour gets underway Sunday at 5:45 a.m. local time (Saturday, 1:45 p.m. ET) with live coverage available on the Bathurst 12 Hour and SRO GT World YouTube channels, alongside live TV coverage in Australia on Fox Sports, Kayo Sports and Seven Network.

***Chad Neylon leads the broadcast team, with John Hindhaugh, Richard Craill and five-time Bathurst 1000 winner Garth Tander in the booth and Shea Adam and Jack Perkins joining Neylon on pit lane.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John