Bathurst 12 Hour Deja Vu
Last weekend Peter competed for the second time at the legendary Bathurst track at Mount Panorama for the Bathurst 12 hour race.
The race has grown massively in popularity over the last years and especially this years race saw a big grow in numbers of the "A class" cars, better known as GT3's who are the fastest class.
Peter was send out by Reiter Engineering to compete for customer team Lago Racing to share there Lamborghini GT3 LP 600+ together with car owner Roger Lago and V8 Super Car star David Russel.
The format of the weekend don't allow for a lot of free practice to do set up and circle the drivers trough to give them "track time", however the team had a professional approach and went through the program what they wanted to achieve promptly!
Saturday the two qualifying sessions should determine the grid positions, although it was very clear that the first morning session would be the faster one.
The most important thing was to try and get "a clear lap", which was going to be very difficult as there were 55 cars entered and the speed differences were big.
If you catch cars going up the mountain, you were going to loose a lot of time, this of course counted for everybody!
Therefor there were 24 hour Nürburgring "characteristics" going on, in a way that teams were parking there cars up very early at the end of the pit lane for the first session to at least try to get a clear lap!
The team opted to let Dave Russel give the best shot at this session as he is a very fast driver and mightly experienced around Mount Panorama.
He was immediately on the pace and the Gallardo was immediately in the top positions in the session, which was obviously important to get at least "a banker lap" in so that a good grid position was assured.
Peter went out second and had initially aboard his run for a red flag, but on his second run dipped under the 2.07 mark and secured a fourth position for the team.
He was happy with the lap, because had would have been considerably faster if he didn't had traffic in turn 2 and was held up unsporting by an other competitor.
Roger would end the session familiarizing himself with "green"(new) tyres leaving the pits, as there are no tyre heaters allowed.
Fourth place on the grid was not a bad position to start this race from.
Dave was going to start the race and as he is Rogers's teammate in the Australian GT Championship, they were then eligible for points for this Championship as there was a separate classification after the first 50 minutes of the first 12 hours.
At the start he lost a place and was "hanging" behind the Schneider/Jaeger/Roloff Mercedes for the opening laps. Clearly faster, but overtaking is a different story, especially at Bathurst.
Traffic and "cutting" trough it would be massively important and not without risks with these immense speed differences and amount of cars.
The team therefor anticipated for sure safety car situations in the beginning of the race, which duly happened after 25minutes.
Immediately they brought the car in for a refuel and sent it swiftly out again, still being in the top ten!
In doing so as first of the front runners they gained track position, and if it would stay green at the normal first pit window they would have been in the lead!
Unfortunately it never came that far.. A few minutes later there was another caution and when it went green David got hit on the opening lap and the Gallardo had contact with the wall, which ended the race for them right there and then!
A very sad end to what could have been a good result. The car was competitive, the crew was working very professional all weekend and the driver pairing was strong enough for an equal result.
So, as last year, Peter was already at Sydney airport before the race wasn't even finished!
It felt as a "Deja Vu", competing twice at this fantastic venue, without doing a single lap in the race...
Peter commented: It's a long way for such a result, but it's worth coming back to try again! Never give up, never...
