zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Racing
/
Your Guide To Following And Understanding The Bathurst 12 Hour, One Of Australia's Wildest Races
Your Guide To Following And Understanding The Bathurst 12 Hour, One Of Australia's Wildest Races-September 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:11:17

Australia’s Mount Panorama Circuit is known as of the toughest places in the world to race. This weekend, will make laps out there for a full 12 hours. You should tune in.

If you’re still on an endurance high from the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona last weekend and want to watch more cars lap a circuit for unnatural lengths of time, Bathurst is the place to do it. The track is hardcore, and so are the races. The first one of the season takes place this weekend: the Bathurst 12 Hour.

What Is The Bathurst 12 Hour?

Bathurst, in general, is wild. during the race, cars by an unforgiving circuit, , cars stubbornly hold their own , , and it’s all, really, an incredible thing to watch. After all, Australia is the land of the —a celebration that involves drinking out of a gross, sweaty shoe. It’s bound to be a fun time there.

The Bathurst 12 Hour is a sports-car endurance race that includes cars, as well as other production-based and specialized endurance race cars. It takes place at Mount Panorama Circuit, which is usually a public road that gets converted into a race track for a each year.

Unlike a lot of tracks, there’s not much runoff area on Mount Panorama. That’s because it’s a road most of the time, and the lack of runoff has, over the years, led to the track . Motorcycles off the track, and without it, racing them becomes more dangerous. But the is part of what makes Bathurst what it is for car races, and it certainly doesn’t go easy on the cars that get out of line.

Mount Panorama is a nearly 3.9-mile circuit with varying elevation—it’s just under 600 feet from the lowest point of the race circuit to the highest, according to its . Certain parts are geometric and straight, while others have small kinks for drivers to navigate.

It’s a rural area with residences and businesses nearby, since it spends most days as a normal road. Races run counter-clockwise around the track, and the speed limit when it’s a public road is under 40 mph.

The course transitions from road to track pretty well, as you can see in this intense on-board footage from an Audi R8 LMS at last year’s Bathurst 12 Hour:

Each car has three or four drivers who trade off over the course of the 12 hours, typical for endurance racing. Race officials divide the cars into four different classes, meaning, like the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona last weekend, varying speed and skill are circling each other on the track for the entire race.

What Are The Different Classes?

There are more than 50 cars entered in this year’s race, and they’ll fall into one of four different classes. That means there are four leaders at any given time in the race, which can get a little confusing.

Here’s a breakdown of how to know which class is which.

The GT3 class has a ton of manufacturers and a ton of talent levels, and is the biggest class by far on this year’s . More than half of all of the entires entered are under the “Class A” designation, with race cars from Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes, McLaren, BMW and Bentley all on the list.

Part of what makes the GT3 class so big is that it’s divided into three more class designations, based on drivers entered in the car and the FIA’s ranking system for skill levels. The Bathurst 12 Hour divides the FIA’s Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze rankings into the categories “seeded” and “unseeded.” The top two are seeded, while the bottom two are unseeded.

The GT3 Pro class is for cars with an all-professional lineup in terms of the FIA system, and the GT3 Pro-Am class mandates no more than two professional, or seeded, drivers on a team. The GT3 Am class doesn’t allow any seeded drivers, but at least one of the drivers on each team must have a Bronze FIA ranking.

On the current entry list, there are 12 GT3 Pro entries, 13 Pro-Am entries and three in the Am class.

Ever heard of a ? That’s what this class is all about. There are currently five cars entered in this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour in Class B.

Worldwide, are a step under GT3 cars. There are 10 of them in the Bathurst 12 Hour this year, including Ginetta, KTM, Porsche and BMW race cars.

The Class I cars are the ones that got invited to race the Bathurst 12 Hours. Race organizers decide which cars are eligible, and they compete against each other. It’s the wild-card class, really.

This year, 10 Class I cars are on the list. That includes MARC Mazda V8s, MARC Focus V8s, MARC II V8s, a Dodge Viper and a Daytona Coupe. If you’ve never heard of those first three, is an engineering and manufacturing firm that competes in international sports-car racing.

When Is The Race And Is It On Television?

The race starts at 5:45 a.m. local time Sunday in Bathurst, which is in Australian Eastern Daylight Time. That means the race starts at 1:45 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time on Saturday. Live streams and television coverage start 15 minutes before the race does.

If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, the race will be on regular television. Sky Sports will show the whole race live in New Zealand, and the Seven Network will have it in Australia. Seven Network’s 7mate channel plans to show the full 12 hours live in Australia, plus qualifying the day before.

And while that’s usually the ultimate sign that everyone else in the world will have to pay to watch the race, not this time. of all of the race sessions, including Saturday’s practice and qualifying—which happen on Friday in America.

Friday coverage, in America, starts at 1:30 p.m. ET on the . There’s live timing and scoring, too, in case you need to drop the stream for a bit but still want to follow along.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Racing
Blink And You'll Miss The Fastest NHRA Funny Car Run Of All Time
Blink And You'll Miss The Fastest NHRA Funny Car Run Of All Time
19-time NHRA Funny Car winner, 2012 national champion and cancer survivor Jack Beckman is used to beating things, but may not have expected to add “national record” to the list. This 323.43 mph, 3.921 second run last Friday at Sonoma Raceway was the fastest in Funny Car history. The pass...
Sep 12, 2025
Fake Niki Lauda Is Now On Twitter And Nobody Can Tell Him What To Do [Updated]
Fake Niki Lauda Is Now On Twitter And Nobody Can Tell Him What To Do [Updated]
You heard the [fake] man. He does what he wants. You can do that when you’re [pretending to be] a three-time Formula One world champion, I guess. Follow [the fake] him [or unfollow him, whatever] on Twitter . : Via Auto Motor und Sport’s , this account is . This...
Sep 12, 2025
Street Outlaws Star Daddy Dave Flips Six Times During Amarillo Drag Race
Street Outlaws Star Daddy Dave Flips Six Times During Amarillo Drag Race
“Daddy Dave” Comstock is best known for an on a show that’s , but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the stars . Unfortunately, Daddy Dave’s latest Chevy II Nova build, crashed at Amarillo Dragway, injuring Comstock. Amarillo Dragway was hosting a no-prep night. “No-prep” refers to the condition...
Sep 12, 2025
How Do You Win The 24 Hours Of Le Mans? Ask The Guys Who Did It
How Do You Win The 24 Hours Of Le Mans? Ask The Guys Who Did It
For two winners of this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, this was one of the most uneventful races they’ve ever driven—and for that, they’re grateful. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a top-level Le Mans prototype or a road-car-based Corvette: the key to winning is to do everything as...
Sep 12, 2025
When Mario Andretti Tells You To Rev Your Engine, You Do It
When Mario Andretti Tells You To Rev Your Engine, You Do It
Don’t ask questions, just do it. Who are you to question Mario Andretti? Fortunately, this S2000 owner and friend of Jalopnik gave the racing legend exactly what he asked for. Here’s the backstory: As they’ve done for years now, Mid-Ohio invited a bunch of Honda S2000 owners to do the...
Sep 12, 2025
Mike Hull Flattered By IndyCar Leadership Rumors, But Dismisses Idea
Mike Hull Flattered By IndyCar Leadership Rumors, But Dismisses Idea
There’s been one rumor that’s stuck around despite Chip Ganassi Racing Managing Director Mike Hull’s : that Hull is one of the candidates to Derrick Walker’s role as IndyCar’s president of competition and operations. Hull insists someone else is needed in the role. “I’m very flattered that people think I’m...
Sep 12, 2025
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved