After winning 1–2 at the 2011 Bathurst 12 Hours in its first foray, Audi returned to New South Wales to defend its title at one of Australia’s most picturesque and challenging tracks, the Mount Panorama circuit.
Audi didn’t quite equal its 2011 feat, but the German auto maker did achieve its most important objective: winning the 2012 Bathurst 12 Hours.
Audi customer team Phoenix Racing faced fierce competition from Mercedes Benz, Lamborghini, and Ferrari, and had to meet its rivals on a sodden, slippery, fog-obscured track. After 12 hours of challenging and often dangerous racing, Phoenix Racing’s 1 Audi R8 LMS completed 270 laps—1677 km—and finished 1:16 ahead of its nearest competitor.
With two-thirds of its 2011 driving team—Christian Mies and Darrell O'Young— plus newcomer Christer Joens, Audi proved that on this day at least, it had the fastest car and the fastest drivers.
The driving team of Mies, O'Young, and Joens were not perfect—Mies managed to slide backwards into a gravel trap, and it was only luck that a tow truck was able to get the car out before it lost a lap.
That was the only mistake the team made. With a slight edge in top speed and power out of the corners to offset lower fuel economy, the three drivers threaded through traffic on the slippery track, never setting another wheel wrong.
Darrell O'Young drove the final stint, responding to pressure from the pursuing Mercedes by matching his opponent’s lap times, going fast enough to win and slow enough to finish. After the race he told Speed TV that conditions were difficult for all the drivers.
“Everybody had different conditions, Christer Joens had slicks in the rain, and there was aquaplaning with the rain tires for me and Christian Mies was going from dry to wet—everybody had different scenarios and it was real tough.”
O'Young’s teammmate Christopher Mies daid in a post-race press release, “ At the end, I had tears in my eyes because this victory was the result of an ultra-tough battle in incredibly bad weather against strong rivals.”
Intermittent local showers made things exceptionally treacherous, he said; it could be dry on one stretch of track and a river a few yards down the road. It was a local shower which took out the 2 Audi, he said.
Despite the weather, he was glad he came. “All the guys did so much work—all of Team Phoenix, my two teammates. It’s been an adventurous race. I’m glad we came back and were able to help Audi do a repeat.”
The other Audi, driven by Aussie V8 hero Craig Lowndes, Warren Luff, and Mark Eddy, lasted and often led until the 6:45 mark when Eddy got caught in a sudden shower near McPhillamy Park and hit the wall hard enough to end the day for his team.
Second on the podium was the 20 Erebus Racing Mercedes SLS AMG driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen, Tim Slade, Peter Hackett, and Bret Curtis. The Erebus SLS outperformed the Audis on slicks when the track was damp, but in the dry or on rain tires, didn’t quite have the pace. The team used pit strategy, balancing performance against fuel consumption, to try to get a pit stop ahead of its rivals.
The strategy played out as planned, but didn’t deliver enough of an advantage; Bleekemolen pushed as hard as he dared in the final laps, but the Audi’s speed advantage was too much. He could match, but not beat, his rivals’ lap times.
Despite finishing second, Bleekemolen said he was pleased with his team’s performance and enjoyed the race.
“I hope to be back here,” he told Speed TV. It was great I drove close to the maximum driving time I wanted to do as many laps here as possible. We came pretty close. We'll be back to try to win it.
“The team did a great job; they prepared the car well; we didn’t have the pace. The Audis were a little bit faster out of the corners and on the straights, in the wet we were almost able to match them but, generally their car was a bit stronger. The balance of performance was in their favor at this race; we will try to catch them at the next one.”
The Clearwater Racing Ferrari, a local team, finished third despite being ill-suited to the conditions. The car worked well in the dry, but was not set up top deal with water running across the track. Nonetheless, the Clearwater team pressed on, finishing two laps down to their much better funded rivals.
Darrel O'Young, Jeroen Bleekemolen, and their teammates came from around the world to race at Bathurst. Because the 6.2-km. Bathurst circuit is so beautiful and so challenging—it literally climbs a mountain, crosses the peak and drops down the other side, presenting difficult ascending and descending twists like Cutting, Dipper, and Falken Elbow, plus frightening flat-out corners like the Chase— the track is gaining a reputation as one of the places to put on a driver’s wish list.
Next: The Other Classes The Other Classes
Six classes of cars compete in the Bathurst 12 Hours.. Class A attracted the international stars in their exotic cars. Most of the lower classes were filled with local teams driving fairly pedestrian cars, albeit driving them flat-out for 12 hours
Fourth and fifth, and first in Class B, were a pair of Porsches; older models which lacked the speed of the top-ranked cars, but scored well because of their reliability. The Hunter Sports Porsche completed 254 laps, winning its class by ten laps.
Class C went to the Donut King Nissan R35 GTR; its all-wheel-drive capability serving it well in the rain. This car completed 237 laps.
A very normal car, the Racer Industries Holden HSV VX-R—an Australian GM econobox—won Class E, finishing 231 laps and beating Class D (and some B- and C-class) cars.
The Racer Industries Holden proved that endurance is the key to endurance racing; the crew had no mechanical issues, coped with the weather, and passed its faster competitors while they were getting repaired.
Class D was won by another Holden, the Boss Plaster HSV-GTS. This car won the same way as the Racers Industries car—it didn’t break or crash while its opponents did.
Honorable Mention goes to the Maximum Motorsports Subaru. It completed 211 laps, 11 fewer than the class winner, but it also overcame severe mechanical troubles, changing its turbocharger in 20 minutes when most teams would have surrendered.
The final class, the invitational performance class, was the class no one seemed to want to win. Each of the three cars took turns breaking down more horribly than the others. In the end, the 24hrseries.com Seat Leon, a tiny turbodiesel, managed to complete 166 laps. Its nearest competitor managed only 82.
A Really Good Race
It is easy to call a race “epic;” so easy it has become the norm. The 2012 Bathurst 12 Hours wasn’t “epic.” It was long enough, and it was tough enough—but all 12-hour races are tough. The standard has to be higher.
The setting is certainly worthy. Lush, tree-lined, and seriously challenging, the Mt. Panorama circuit is as good as any of the better-known European circuits.
The starting grid was a little small—only 25 cars took the green flag and only 18 were running at the end. The next one will doubtlessly be larger. Manufacturers and drivers have discovered the race, which has only run in its current form for six years; now that word is spreading, it will likely become part of many teams’ schedules.
Had the field been larger, the loss of some of the front-runners wouldn’t have impacted the finish so much. Even so the race wasn’t decided until the final forty minutes, but a few more Class A cars would have spiced things up.
The weather was bad, but not “epic;” at least not by Bathurst standards. In 2002, the rain was so bad it blew a tree across the track, stopping the race while lumberjacks were recruited. Torrential downpours are considered normal, as is blazing heat, at Bathurst—just part of it all.
The race wasn’t epic, and it didn’t need to be. It was simply a really good race. It offered drivers and teams a chance to showcase their talents under very difficult circumstances. As with any good endurance race, talented pit crews and mechanics kept some cars in the race despite serious breakdowns.
Strategy as well as speed played roles in determining the finishing order. Racing is a team sport and a thinking man’s sport, and this year’s Bathurst 12 Hours showed the parts both play.
The 2012 Bathurst 12 Hours was a tough, challenging hard-fought race that kept fans interested until the checkered flag waved. It was a really good race. So was last years; so probably will be next year’s. Race fans, mark your calendars and if you can, make travel plans. This one is worth it.
Next: Full Results
| 2012 Bathurst 12 Hours Final Results | ||||||
|
| Team |
| Drivers | Car | Class | Laps |
| 1 | Phoenix Racing | 1 | C.Mies/D.O'Young/C.Joens | Audi R8 LMS | A | 270 |
| 2 | Erebus Racing | 20 | T.Slade/J.Bleekemolen/P.Hackett/B.Curtis | Mercedes Benz SLS AM | A | 270 |
| 3 | Clearwater Racing | 33 | M.Sun/C.Baird/M.Griffin | Ferrari 458 GT3 | A | 268 |
| 4 | Hunter Sports Group | 3 | N.Tinkler/S.Johnson/S.Richards | Porsche 997 GT3 Cup | B | 254 |
| 5 | Southern Cross Lubes | 65 | S.O'Donnell/B.Niall/S.McLennon | Porsche 997 GT3 Cup | B | 244 |
| 6 | Donut King | 54 | A.Alford/P.Leemhuis/A.Beechey | Nissan R35 GTR | C | 237 |
| 7 | Racer Industries | 50 | S.Pye/E.Barbour/C.Pither | Holden HSV VX-R | E | 231 |
| 8 | Motorsport Services Ltd | 66 | B.Thomlinson/A.Dippie/M.Maddren | Porsche 997 GT3 Cup | B | 228 |
| 9 | queenslandhouseandland.com | 62 | R.Thomson/C.Klien/S.Harley | Lotus Exige S | C | 227 |
| 10 | Boss Plaster | 53 | R.Newman/D.Lillie/J.Atkinson | Holden HSV GTS | D | 222 |
| 11 | GWS Personnel / Safe T Stop | 26 | R.Gartner/T.Prior/A.Chapel | BMW 130i | E | 218 |
| 12 | Maximum Motorsport | 7 | D.Herridge/J.O'Dowd/A.Kennard | Subaru WRX Sti | D | 211 |
| 13 | GWS Personnel | 28 | P.O‘Donnell/C.D’Agostin/G.Duffy | BMW 335i | D | 205 |
| 14 | The Shire Conveyancer/Subway B | 27 | A.Shephard/K.Booker/C.Oberhauser | BMW 130i | E | 200 |
| 15 | Motorsport Services Ltd | 67 | T.Murphy/T.Head/J.Veth/L.Scott | BMW 135i | D | 198 |
| 16 | www.24hseries.com | 14 | I.Breukers/H.Thijssen/M.Bailey | Seat Leon TDI | I | 166 |
| 17 | Motorsport Services Ltd | 68 | D.Glasson/D.Roderick/A.Harris | BMW 135i | D | 162 |
| 18 | Massel | 32 | M.Caine/G.Murphy/J.Pollicina | Mazda RX-7 | I | 82 |
| Ret | United Autosports | 22 | M.Patterson/A.Li/F.Yu | Audi R8 LMS | A | 59 |
| Ret | Black Falcon | 21 | S.Breslin/S.Breslin | Mercedes Benz SLS AM | A | 52 |
| Ret | Sennheiser | 35 | D.Padayachee/J.Parish/P.Alexander | Mazda RX-7 | I | 53 |
| Ret | JBS | 23 | R.Lago/D.Russell/W.Park | Lamborghini LP 600 G | A | 103 |
| Ret | Simply Sports Cars | 10 | A.Gowans/R.Meins/C.Lillington-Pri | Lotus Exige S | C | 69 |
| Ret | Phoenix Racing | 2 | C.Lowndes/W.Luff/M.Eddy | Audi R8 LMS | A | 156 |
| Ret | II Bello Rosso | 17 | A.Simonsen/D.Farnbacher/J.Bowe | Ferrari 458 GT3 | A | 114 |
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