M-Sport Confident No. 8 Bentley Will Be Repaired for Race

Team M-Sport is confident the No. 8 Bentley Continental GT3 will be repaired for Sunday’s Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour following a heavy crash for Oliver Jarvis in final practice.

A brake problem caused Jarvis to spear across the grass at high speed at The Chase and impact the tire wall in the final minutes of Practice 5, with the Brit walking away from the incident.

Team boss Malcom Wilson confirmed to Sportscar365 that Jarvis is “fine” and believes they will be able to repair the battered No. 8 Bentley in time for the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli season-opener, however, the team is still assessing the damage.

“I’m pretty confident [it will be back out],” Wilson told Sportscar365. “Obviously they’re still going through the workload at the moment; for sure we will miss qualifying but I think we’ll be okay for tomorrow.

“The biggest damage is the rear chassis length, but that can be repaired. Okay, there’s a lot of other broken components: suspension wishbone, but fortunately, there’s none of the structural chassis at the moment that appears to be damaged. Just mechanical parts that can be replaced.”

Bentley made a “precautionary” engine change on the sister No. 7 on Friday after the car bizarrely got “really hot”, though did not lose water or oil.

Meanwhile, the No. 8 car also had troubles on Friday with Wilson reporting that a fly-by=wire throttle issue kept that entry in the garage for most of the afternoon.

Qualifying is scheduled to start at 12:40 p.m. local time.