Eventful qualifying overnight at Bathurst 12Hr

Having unfortunatley had to disconnect from the live stream from Bathurst after the final Free Practice session last night, it appears that we missed out on some very dramatic events later in into the events proceedings.

Finishing seventh in that final FP session, the #62 R-Motorsport Aston Martin Racing V12 Vantage GT3 of Jake Dennis, Mathieu Vaxivierre and Marvin Kirchhofer had been progressing their car through the days proceedings to maintain a comfortable top 10 finish as the schedule then turned to the Qualifying sessions this afternoon.


Qualifying 1 was for all runners - the #62 car claimed top spot in that session with the teams sister #760 car of Florian Kamelger, Andreas Baenziger, Peter Leemhuis and Matt Parry claiming P10.

Qualifying 2 was just for GT3 based cars so both R-Motorsport cars ran again with Dennis again claiming top spot with a then provisional lap record. New team member Matt Parry would run the lap for the #760 car to finish a commendable P17 at his first visit to The Mountain - that would be their final starting position for Sundays race whilst the #62 would carry on into the Top 10 Shoot out.


This was however kind of where the drama started to unfold as Dennis put in another lap of all laps to  initially claim overall pole position and the Allan Simonsen Trophy with it, but a previous pit speed violation would see that car get a two place grid penalty meaning that they would actually be starting the race from P3.

Well, thats not too bad considering but ....................


It was only after post Qualifying that checks were again made to the cars that an unintentional technical violation of the cars homologation was discovered within the #62 car that meant all lap times would be deleted from the Shoot Out meaning that the car would drop to the back of that pack - that and the previous awarded 2 grid slot penalty meant that the #62 car would indeed start from P12 on tomorrows grid. They also loose out on the Allan Simonsen Trophy as well.

Bitter disappointment for the multi national team running the venerable V12 Vantages for their final time as a factory supported platform. Hopefully, todays disappointing events can be channeled by their drivers into placing the last of the V12 screamers onto the top step of either Pro or Pro-Am Class at the end of Sundays 12 hour endurance race.

The race starts in little over an hour from now!!

Photo credits - R-Motorsport / Bathurst 12