The 2024 season of the Intercontinental GT Challenge kicks off as per tradition with the Bathurst 12h, where the battle for the title between BMW, Porsche and Mercedes-AMG will begin next weekend.
On the legendary Mount Panorama there will be 14 GT3 cars entered in the SRO Motorsports Group series, characterized by the white sunshade band of the sponsor Fanatec applied on the windscreen, while for the cars that will be on the grid as competitors of the GT World Challenge Australia this will be black.
We remind you that from this year it will not be necessary for manufacturers to nominate the cars with which they want to score points, but that all the cars entered by the brand will be in the running.
The points will still be given to the best two classified, while for the drivers they will be considered those who return to the Top10.
#75 Sun Energy 1 Mercedes-AMG GT3: Kenny Habul, Jules Gounon, Luca Stolz
Photo by: Gruppe C GmbH
Mercedes Motorsport presents itself with a battalion of 9 AMG GT3s to begin the defense of the title it won a couple of months ago in Abu Dhabi Jules Gounon, captain of the #75 of the PRO Class Sun Energy 1 Racing teamed with Luca Stolz and Kenny Habul.
In the same category we will also see Götz/Juncadella/Ojeda on the #77 of Craft-Bamboo Racing, Engel/Fraga/Reynolds with the #130 of GruppeM Racing, local idols Waters/Lowndes/Randle on board the #222 of Scott Taylor Motorsport and Feeney/Brown/Grenier in the #888 for National Storage Racing.
Triple Eight JMR will bring a PRO-AM Class car with the #88 for Whincup/Ibrahim/Love, as will MMotorsport with the #48 for Walden/Wood/Le Broq/McMillan and SPS Automotive Performance-Heart Of Racing with #27 by Riberas/Gunn/James.
Finally, the #47 driven by T.Koundouris/J.Koundouris/Russell/Webb will be in contention for the Silver Class.
Great anticipation at BMW M Motorsport for Valentino Rossi's return to Oceania at the wheel of the PRO Class M4 GT3 #46 prepared by Team WRT; the 'Doctor' will share the cockpit with the usual Maxime Martin and above all Raffaele Marciello, also starting to work from a GT World Challenge Europe perspective given that the three will participate in the Endurance Cup this year.
The BMW #32 of Van Der Linde/Vanthoor/Weerts could not miss defending the colors of the Bavarian company, eager to get off to a good start in its second year of collaboration with the Belgian team.
#912 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3R: Matt Campbell, Mathieu Jaminet, Thomas Preining
Photo by: SRO
Among the Porsches we unfortunately lost the HubAuto Racing car that the three officials Estre/Pilet/Bachler should have driven; the 911 GT3-R 992 suffered major delays in shipping, so the team preferred to give up rather than hope for a miracle which would then have forced them into a race against time to participate in the various sessions.
“I cannot describe the anger and disappointment that the teams, drivers and Porsche are feeling right now,” said team boss Morris Chen. “Over the last month we have experienced numerous significant delays in shipping our car and equipment from Asia”.
“We have worked tirelessly with Supercars, SRO, transport companies, the NSW Government and other local and international GT teams to be present and ready to race the Bathurst 12 Hour.”
“Unfortunately, circumstances beyond our control have forced us to withdraw from the event. We apologize for the disappointment this may cause our supporters; we were looking forward to returning to Bathurst and hope to be able to attend in 2025. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all parties involved for their invaluable support and assistance.”
This means that the hopes of PRO success for Weissach will be placed in the #13 of Phantom Global Racing (Buus/Eriksson/Evans) and in the #912 of Manthey EMA with the trio of Campbell/Vanthoor/Güven, while in PRO-AM there will be #911 of The Bend Manthey EMA with Picariello/King/Shahin.
#46 Team WRT, BMW M4 GT3: Valentino Rossi, Augusto Farfus, Maxime Martin
Photo by: BMW Motorsport
THE PROGRAM
With a 10 hour time difference with Bathurst, the sessions will be held at night owl times for Italian fans.
There will be a total of six Free Practices, two of which will also give space to less experienced drivers with a Bronze licence, then there will be Qualifying divided into two groups to avoid traffic and problems of possible accidents.
Followed by an assault on Pole Position with the Shootout reserved for the Top10, also in two parts, while the race will still start in the dark on Sunday morning in Australia, i.e. Saturday evening here.
Let's see what all the times of the activities on the track are according to our watch.
Thursday 15 February
Free Practice 1: 10.15pm – 10.55pm
Free Practice 2: 11.50pm – 12.30am (Bronze drivers only)
Friday 16 February
Free Practice 3: 3.30 – 4.10
Free Practice 4: 6.10 – 6.50 (Bronze drivers only)
Free Practice 5: 10.05pm – 11.05pm
Saturday 17 February
Free Practice 6: 00.00 – 1.00
Qualifying 1: 2.40 – 3.10 (LIVE on MOTORSPORT.COM)
Qualifying 2: 3.30 – 4.00 (LIVE on MOTORSPORT.COM)
Top10 Shootout 1: 6.05 – 6.20 (LIVE on MOTORSPORT.COM)
Top10 Shootout 2: 6.30 – 6.45 (LIVE on MOTORSPORT.COM)
Race: 7.45pm (LIVE on MOTORSPORT.COM)
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