Bathurst Battle Brewing for GT Rivals Competitors

As the inaugural SRO America GT Rivals esports invitational heads into the final rounds, the series shifts to Mount Panorama in virtual Australia on Sunday.

Thirty-five real world pro drivers and sim racers will go to battle one last time before the Grand Finals in Assetto Corsa Competizione.

GT Rivals airs at 3 p.m. ET across SRO’s GT World YouTube channel, SRO Motorsports Twitch channel, and GT World Challenge America powered by AWS Facebook page.

Winner of five of the six events, Bryan Heitkotter has topped the standings in all but one event this season, although he will again face stiff competition.

David Perel is back, fresh off a second-place finish at Barcelona, while fellow GT Academy winner, Nick McMillan, showed strong pace and a threat to Heitkotter as well.

CrowdStrike Racing’s Kevin Boehm held off Heitkotter for half of the Barcelona contest before getting clipped by a back-marker, taking him out of contention.

Walkenhorst Motorsport sim racer Scott Michaels makes his debut in GT Rivals. With a recent second place finish at the virtual Nürburgring Nordschleife endurance race, he’ll look to bring that momentum for his first start in Assetto Corsa Competizione.

Looking back at this year’s Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour, Bentley took the overall victory in style. Could we see K-PAX Racing’s Guy Cosmo fighting for the podium after his strong charge to sixth overall last weekend?

McLaren was a threat all race long which could play into the hands of Andretti Autosport driver Colin Mullan. Running in the top 5 at Barcelona, the Pirelli GT4 America driver will have a great shot at a solid finish on the Mountain.

The Acura NSX GT3 Evo was also particularly strong at the 12 Hour this year before mechanical gremlins.

Racers Edge Motorsports drivers Shelby Blackstock and Kyle Marcelli will be in Acuras along with HPD GT3 Academy driver Karl Wittmer and Tom O’Gorman.

Barcelona third place finisher Jon Miller will look to recreate Porsche’s previous success at Bathurst in his ST Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R. TC America racer Tomas Mejia will make his first GT Rivals start, also driving Porsche machinery.

Sunday’s Bathurst race will be followed by a grand finale on May 31 at Kyalami, which will see the top 5 finishers from each round this season earn automatic invites, with a qualifying race to be held prior to the feature race to fill out the rest of the grid.