A drivers perspective on the Bathurst 12 hour
Three Kiwi drivers, Scott O'Connell, Bob Grove and Alan Dippie recently tackled the Bathurst 12 hour, finishing in thirteenth position, and third in Class C. Here's a drivers reflection on the weekend........
It's great to be back in NZ …here is what happened at Bathurst …
The week before the race the car and its spare parts and all the team equipment landed in Sydney safely and David and his team got it all unpacked and delivered to Bathurst which is about 200km away …the weather was lovely and fine at this point and we were indeed wondering how we would cope with the race car heat ….especially me as id left my cool suit (pumps ice cold water around you) at home.
I arrived at the track on Tuesday evening and much to my surprise was able to take the rental car around it as it is a public road and hadn’t been closed for race preparations as yet …well what a track ,I’ve seen it all my life on TV but nothing prepares you for how steep it is and how narrow …”there are very few places to have a safe accident” was my overriding impression.
After a few laps I dialled the address of our hotel into the GPS and much to my surprise the address number 1 Conrod straight is right there beside the track at between the chase and the turn on to the front straight …this is without doubt the best hotel in the whole world …brand new and amazing . Karly Simon whom booked it for us did a superb job here .
Next morning the track was closed so I did a lap of it in my jandals …it took one and a half hours and I carefully examined every corner . In the next two days I got my lap time down to under an hour on foot then we purchased a mountain bike from K mart and 15 minutes was a good time .
On Friday we had two practice sessions and Scott, Bob and myself got a bit of time in the car in both wet and dry conditions and the car felt pretty good ... the next day was practice again …and again in the rain …and we buggered about with different tyre theories as by this time severe flooding was forecast over Bathurst ...
Qualifying for the race was mid afternoon and Scott just had time to do this on a semi dry track before the heavens opened ….most of the support races that day were then cancelled or featured huge crash spectaculars or both…this made us slightly nervous about the race which was due to start at 6.30am the next morning …in some ways we wanted it to keep raining as we knew that being from NZ we would have seen more rain in our lives than the average Aussie…….. but in other ways it certainly increased our chance of having a rather dramatic high speed accident and wrecking the Virgin black BMW in its first ever race ...
We qualified 34th out of 46 starters and next morning Scott lined up on the grid in that position under dark grey wet skys...The car looked really sharp in its Jet black Lone Star colours with a huge silver fern …being the only NZ team there it would have been appropriate to play the national anthem ,certainly was a case of national pride and all or Motorsport services team secretly had a tear in their eye as the lonely NZ BMW lined up alongside the big Australian teams many of which had a line up of class drivers whom are household names across Australia.
Scott delivered an amazing first session in the race steadily working his way thru the field with some of the field steadily working themselves out of the race given the very difficult conditions wall meeting race car and the concrete winning …this brought out safety cars …saved our fuel …and delayed our need to change drivers all at the expense of Scott’s incredibly sore arse that he repeatedly reported was “rapidly deteriorating” over race radio much to the teams unkind amusement….however the track was “rapidly improving” a dry line emerging . After 2 hrs a safety car gave Scott’s bottom some relief as the car was called in for refuelling and driver change ...
Bob was in the car next and as the track started to dry out got down to some very fast and consistent laps and we got maximum attack on the field getting up to 11th position at one stage before fuel needed and again we were able to pit window under a safety car.
Allan was in… and the skys were darkening …and the team more nervous. Dry to semi dry to wet to very wet to crashes to safety car to flooding across track …all very quickly and a very very long period of safety car meant I was able to stay in the car for over 3 hrs ..we circulated til nearly out of fuel and passed the car back to Scott, again taking advantage of the safety car situation.
The next thing that happened was quite unusual …..a massive gum tree fell right across the track at the entrance to Conrod straight scattering koala bears just everywhere!...no I’m not joking this is fair dinkum true and all the cars , the entire field, was caught stranded on the track .
As you can imagine this isn’t the best thing to happen to a race and I don’t think its happened before in the history of the sport …and the gum tree looked so large as we looked at it on our TV pit monitors we wondered if the race would be able to restart …other immediate thoughts were on the fate of the dying koala bears but more towards Scott’s backside as he sat stranded and alone in his race car up at skyline.
Amazingly and as if by magic all manner of heavy equipment just appeared and the next half an hour was like a texas chainsaw massacre with the track cleared in record time and the race restarted as teams now scrambled to work at a new race strategy ...
We worked out if we kept Scott in the car to its absolute last gasp of fuel we had a chance of finishing the 12 hours with just one more driver change and essentially a 4 pitstop race ….by the time our fuel was nearly out it was raining incredibly heavily and Scott was doing a great job just keeping off the walls..other drivers were failing at this …another safety car and in huge rain back to Allan with just 2 hours to go in the race .
At this stage in the race and a position way better than we could have ever dreamed about there is more than some pressure on you “not to f... it all up” …thankfully that didn’t happen and the little black BMW, perhaps not quite as much a virgin as it once was, ( a heavy poke up the backside from a Mitsubishi evo certainly not helping in this session) flew over the line at 12hrs and two minutes in 13th position overall and 3rd in its production class.
This effort didn’t go unnoticed and it was great that David Taylor and Motorsport Services were also awarded a trophy for the best prepared and most professional race team…all of which we already knew and what a great car these BMWs are to drive and so reliable too…the bonnet of this car was not lifted once during the race!
The “self proclaimed adventure tourists” are now off to find another international adventure….
Rgrds
Big Al Racing ...
