Revised Bathurst 12H Regs “Took All the Strategy Away”

Photo: Gruppe C Photography/SRO

Revised sporting regulations for last weekend’s Repco Bathurst 12 Hour “took all the strategy away” according to SunEnergy1 Racing team owner/driver Kenny Habul, who along with Kelvin van der Linde and race winner Matt Campbell, spoke out on the changes.

A tightened up set of rules for the Intercontinental GT Challenge season opener saw the return of a 85-second minimum pit stop time for full service stops, a mandated maximum fuel stint length of 32 laps and other elements that were brought into the race for this year’s addition.

Van der Linde, who was part of the third-place finishing Melbourne Performance Centre Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II squad, admitted that he felt like he was just “driving in a train and waiting” for the closing stages of the race, which featured 11 safety car periods.

The changes resulted in teams not being able to employ fuel saving tactics or make different strategy calls in pit lane.

“I have to say from a driver’s perspective, being brutally honest, I think the rules for this year have been pretty disappointing in terms of the entertainment factor,” the South African said.

“I think Bathurst is always a race we look forward to which had a bit of strategy in there, a bit of fuel saving, and really challenged the teams and drivers to do things out of the box.

“It felt, at times during the race, we were just driving in a train and waiting.

“I was basically just looking on the dash and counting the minutes down to the pit stop, which is at times quite frustrating for us.

“Hopefully we can do better and just give better entertainment for the crowd next year. I think that’s what we got to work on.”

Race winner Campbell said he missed the race’s usual fuel-saving strategy that added a special element to the enduro unlike other GT3 races around the world that now utilize similar regulations.

“I sort of missed the more strategy input from the team and also that requires more effort from the driver as well with fuel management and everything like that,” he said.

“I really like that style of racing. I think that’s proper endurance [racing].

“Obviously in this day and age the cars can last 12, 24 hours no problem. Bringing this aspect back, I really enjoy it.

“It’s closer to the style of IMSA racing with a little bit more going on behind the scenes. I really enjoy this factor.”

SunEnergy1 Racing’s Habul went as far to say that the adjustments in the regulations was ‘not the right thing to do’ but believes that a middle ground can be achieved in future editions.

“It sort of leveled the field out,” he said. “It didn’t matter what sort of car you had or if you were normally a 20th place car, they took all the advantage away from everybody to keep everybody at the end on the last lap to give it a show.

“To be honest, the theory of that is fine but I think there’s a way to find something in the middle where you can have a pit stop control time but not as long as this one, or you can have other things where you have some control and you help other teams who’d normally finish eighth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth to give them a chance.

“But this was… It took all the strategy away. It took everything away and it just really mattered that in the end if you were there or not.

“To me it was a little bit too far, too radical and really started looking like an Am race. That was difficult.

“But I think there’s a balance. I see what they’re trying to do. You want everyone there at the end for a fight and it was pretty good. There was still six or seven cars at the end and it was exciting.

“It took a lot of normal racing strategy and technique and the dynamic of racing away.”

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