Team TRTPower Rankings: Bathurst International
The 2024 Bathurst International will go down in the books as the end of a significant era in Australian motorsport. Here we break it all down in the only way we know how…
ABOUT THE RANKINGS: The TRT Power Rankings are compiled by your nominations from social media and edited by the TRT editorial team. They’re designed to give a balanced, as fair as possible critical overview of those things that excelled and those things that struggled, at each event. It’s (mostly) a democracy, and what you nominate generates the order, so have your say next event via our social media channels, @theracetorque on Facebook, Twitter and Insta. Look for the call out each evening and get commenting!
HOT
1. The End of an Era
It would have been easy to gloss over the end of the Shannons story, but thankfully, there’s still room for some sentimentality in the sport, which resulted in this broadcast opener, which helped tell the story, we think, well.
In other Hots in this topic, great TV coverage at the weekend saw everyone back on site and in full flight, an appropriate way to sign off that current chapter. While there was criticism of the Shannons TV product, we suspect many national-level categories (especially the ones not going with SRO next year) are only going to realise what they had – in terms of quality and quantity – when it’s gone.
2. GT World Challenge Australia
Will Brown/Brad Schumacher won the first race, Alex Peroni/Mark Rosser the second to claim the round in a highly entertaining affair. Sergio Pires claimed a sweep in the AM classification. Overall for the year, Liam Talbot successfully defended his 2023 title, while Chaz Mostert added a championship win to his resume that also includes the Australian Formula Ford, TCR Australia, and a pair of Bathurst 1000s.
This was blockbuster racing, and it felt like a big weekend for GTWC. It had high stakes, the racing was excellent, and it all points to further growth next year.
3. GT4
Two pole positions, second in the opener and first in the second, George Miedecke/Rylan Gray, were at the top of the pops. Tim Leahey/Cody Burcher won the opener. All told Marcos Flack and Tom Hayman claimed the Silver Cup for the season in what was an incredibly impressive debut season for the category. Onwards and upwards from here.
Special mention to Saturday’s race, which was the best GT4 race of the season by a margin.
4. TCR/Josh Buchan
Old back-to-back Buchan did the job again. People will talk about the car count, but in beating Dylan O’Keeffe, Jordan Cox, Aaron Cameron, Tony D’Alberto, his own teammate Tom Oliphant and a host of other gun drivers, this was no easy feat.
Special reference to Zak Soutar, who went down swinging and produced a spectacular attack this year to very nearly claim the championship as a proper, honest-to-god privateer team. A special year for the Audi driver who showed his class.
5. Trans Am
Two races, two big wins for James Golding, who took home the weekend chocolates from James Moffat and Nathan Herne. Todd Hazelwood holds down a slender series lead heading into the series finale on the streets of Adelaide this weekend, which sounds to us like it has extreme excitement potential.
6. Sports Sedans
Steve Tamasi won the final pair of races to claim the weekend from Ash Jarvis and Steve Lacey. Peter Ingram won the first race, which was enough to seal the title, in a unicorn success for a turbocharged rotary in a world of V8s. Impressive.
7. Production Cars
Three wins for Dean Campbell/Cameron Crick, which gave Campbell the title, with the fourth and final victory going to the Sherrin BMW. A stout field too padded with multiple Mazda RX8 entries, maybe all production car racing should be at Bathurst? Just thinking out loud…
Special bonus hot for Cameron Crick, who responded to some idiot in pit lane post-race four yelling ‘Do a Skid’ by… doing a skid.
8. Passing THERE
Wild stuff in TCR.
9. Radical Cup
Two big wins from pole position for Cooper Cutts. It was a high-quality season for the one-make Radical category, which sported big grids and excellent racing all year.
10. This Ford Fiesta
Also, it has a ‘The Race Torque’ sticker on it.
BONUS HOTS
- Reckless Brewing, because, Obviously. Canny operators did a little deal with Triple Eight race engineering for the weekend, which is pretty impressive for a little brewery from Bathurst to be on the Bumper of a car run by the most successful team in Australian Motorsport for the last two decades…
- Bathurst staple pub The Ox has just about finished its massive upgrade of its downstairs areas, and the joint is deluxe, adding more elements to Bathurst’s broad mix of excellent eating and drinking options.
- Supercheap Auto pushed hard in their activations on the event, and despite the significantly lower profile than the 1000, they still were very visible both at the track and, indeed, around Bathurst. Great that they continue to invest in the sport despite the big spend by their rivals over at Repco. Also, the editor swears he saw a red ‘Make Bathurst SUPER’ hat at one point which may have been an illusion, or just amusing timing given the events in the US of late…
- Cool to see international Aussie Scott Andrews around the paddock all weekend. He’s been on our podcast in the past, it’s worth a listen.
- The weather. Perfection across all three days, save for a brief 30-minute delay for fog on Friday.
WHAT
Road rego for your spaceframe Sports Sedan… keep that sticker on there!
Stunt Driving 101
Who would you talk to, your driver or Greg Rust?
We’d talk to Rusty.
Eddy the Echidna is Back!
Hayfever
NOT sure in the course of human history have so many been so affected by hayfever at any one race meeting. There were countless people with streaming eyes, clogged noses and sneezing that it felt like you were back in the dark days of 2020-21 for a while there.
Not sure what it is about Bathurst in November, but sales of Sudafed definitely increased at the weekend!
HOT!
NOT
1. The End of an Era/Bathurst International
While some will rue the end of ‘The Shannons’ in its current incarnation, at least, we’re less certain many will be sad to see the back of the Bathurst International. On paper, the concept was a winner, but ultimately, the timing was unlucky, and it never delivered on its international promise. Mount Panorama is too special for a stock-standard national-level race meeting, which is what it was this year, so hopefully, some serious thought is placed into what fills the fifth weekend on the Mountain – if anything at all. They have to get it right.
2. John Hollinger Trans Am Shunt
A big one on top of the hill in the first race saw lots of damage.
3. GT World Challenge Sunday Dramas
A five-second penalty for an unsafe release cost Elliott Schutte and Jaxon Evans a surefire win on Sunday, but then their release was due to the hard-launching Audi of Tim Miles, who was subsequently pinged a drive through for breeching their pit stop time by 0.07 seconds. Not sure if the punishment fits the crime there.. anyway, it killed both races for what to that point had been outstanding performances from both cars.
Ash Samadi was fortunate his shunt at the top wasn’t a thousand times larger, either, and while his Audi copped a large hit, there have been worse at that point (YouTube Bathurst 12 hour Saturday 2020..).
4. Rain for Circuit to City
It was a shame for the promoter that what was actually the most diverse Circuit to City ever (with cars from five categories involved) turned into a damp squib on account of plenty of Thursday rain. At least it wasn’t cold, but it killed the vibe.
5. Delayed Starts
Firstly, there was the GT World Challenge opener with timing issues, and then Sunday’s GT4 race was a late starter after Peter Lawrence’s BMW failed to get away.
This is the second GTWC round in a row where timing issues have seriously impeded the act of going car racing, with the enduro race in Sydney run behind the SC for nearly half an hour after timing issues were worked through. This time, more than 10 minutes of green-flag running was lost for an issue we still don’t know the cause of.
There’s nothing against the people actually doing the timing, but the Natsoft system itself here has been around for 10,000 years and is pretty antiquated. Time to investigate change, perhaps?
6. Skippy
Another one for the folder dubbed ‘The Europeans don’t believe we have a flag for Kangaroos on the circuit at Mount Panorama’.
7. Ferrari Qualifying Disqualification
Chaz Mostert was displaced following a tech infringement in his ultimately championship winning Ferrari. A shame, because his 2m00.9 lap was the second quickest ever by a GT3 car (in proper GT3 Balance of Performance trim) on the Mountain to that point. A mega lap the history books won’t record..
8. Stephen Coe Off
Huge off at The Chase that took all of The Chase to get back under control in the class Ferrari in the GT World Challenge first race. Retired from that encounter but bounced back on Sunday.
9. Griffin/Lawrence Crash
GT4 barney at McPhillamy Park was probably unnecessarily spectacular.
10. AMG BBQ
Engine failure ended the weekend and the title hopes for Canberran’s James and Theo Koundouris. Seems expensive.
Practice Blues
A tough end to the weekend for Hadrian Morall came early on Friday, when the Mustang he was to share with Tyler Mecklem found the wall on the entry to The Chase after hitting an oil slick.
SOCIALS
Todd Hazelwood’s Happy Place
FINAL WORD
