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The new battle for Bathurst: The 12 hour or 1000km?

The famous Mount Panorama race track at Bathurst (Photo: Mercedes Benz)
Expert
9th July, 2014
6

Mount Panorama, Bathurst, is a sacred site for Australian motorsport. And like many sacred sites, it’s often the scene of fighting to claim its precious land.

Australia’s Great Race was fought over in the late 1990s, when the V8 Supercars with its Fords and Holdens and the Super Touring two-litre category for the likes of Volvo, Nissan, Renault and Co. staged their own respective 1000-kilometre races weeks apart in both 1997 and 1998.

The V8 Supercars won out in the end, leading to the eventual demise of Super Touring. Ever since, the former has been the dominant motorsport category in Australia, growing its supporter base beyond Bathurst.

Now, V8 Supercars’ marquee event is facing stiff competition from the increasingly popular Bathurst 12 Hour sportscar race.

Benefitting from the rise in manufacturer interest and support for GT racing, the Bathurst 12 Hour has landed a much-improved television deal with Channel Seven from 2015 – V8 Supercars’ current but soon-to-be former host broadcaster.

Scoring a free-to-air commercial television deal is huge for an event like the Bathurst 12 Hour, ensuring Channel Seven’s long association with covering Bathurst races continues beyond its V8 Supercars commitments.

With V8 Supercars moving to Foxtel and Channel Ten from 2015, each respective Bathurst event will have its own commercial network to promote its race. For example, you couldn’t miss Channel Seven’s early promotion of the 2015 Bathurst 12 Hour during the coverage of the recent V8 Supercars event in Townsville!

While some think the two Bathurst events could happily co-exist, considering they represent different racing disciplines and fall on opposite ends of the calendar (Bathurst 12 Hour in February and Bathurst 1000 in October), the television divide has ignited an unfriendly scheduling war.

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V8 Supercars looks set to schedule its pre-season launch/test day on the same weekend as the Bathurst 12 Hour on February 7 to 8, preventing its drivers from competing in the 12 Hour as they would be required to fulfil their regular gig.

This robs the sportscar event of its biggest driver drawcards, such as Craig Lowndes, Shane van Gisbergen, Will Davison and Rick Kelly, who all played a big role in the increased awareness and interest in the 2014 Bathurst 12 Hour.

V8 Supercars claims it has moved its test day forward to avoid a clash with cricket’s World Cup, which starts on February 14. Nevertheless, the timing is intriguing…

So the Bathurst 12 Hour must continue its upward trajectory without Australia’s premier drivers. It will be a test of how popular GT racing truly is, with the cars and international guests set to headline the 2015 event.

In the long-term, could the Bathurst 12 Hour emerge as a genuine threat to the Bathurst 1000 kilometres as Australia’s greatest endurance race?

Much could depend on the future direction of V8 Supercars, which is facing up to post-Holden and Ford Australian production and the demise of the Falcon and Commodore V8s.

Ironically, the future V8 Supercar rulebook, which is likely to be amended to allow two-door coupes and other non-four-door V8 sedans, could increasingly look like GT racing.

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The 1000 kilometres still has the cachet as Australia’s ‘Great Race’. And the decision by V8 Supercars to schedule a clash with the Bathurst 12 Hour should ensure that remains the case next year.

As the history of Bathurst shows, it’s the legends behind the wheel as much as the cars that matter to fans – think Peter Brock, Allan Moffat, Dick Johnson, Larry Perkins, Lowndes etc.

The current household names look set to compete in the 1000 kilometres only in 2015.

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