Bathurst needs a 24-hour event

By Scott Pryde / Expert

Over the weekend we saw another incredible Le Mans 24 hour event, which once again proved that 24 hour racing is the pinnacle of the endurance races.

There is nothing more incredible in motor racing than watching drivers go round Le Mans under the cover of darkness. This brings me to a simple hypothesis. Bathurst, Mount Panorama or whatever you want to call it needs its 24-hour race back.

As good as the 12-hour race that it holds is, 24-hour racing is the pinnacle of endurance and motor racing.

The 12-hour event is growing in popularity on the mountain with every year that goes by and this should be used to springboard into a 24 hour event over the next couple of years.

While a 24-hour event will never have the popularity that the event at Le Mans does it could become the biggest motorsport event on our shores in Australia.

Bathurst actually has a brief history with the 24-hour type event. Way back in 2002 and 2003 an unsuccessful foray into hosting a 24-hour event came to the mountain. Under the management of the PROCAR company, two 24-hour events were run both won by the Holden Monaro under the Garry Rogers Motorsport.

However, Australia is in a different landscape when it comes to motorsport now. With V8 Supercars’ Foxtel only TV deal, it is making things very hard for fans to have a real keen interest in the series, meaning the potential for interest in a one-off 24 hour event is growing.

This growing interest in endurance racing can be shown by the sharp increase in crowds for the 12-hour event currently being run over the last couple of years. The crowd for the 2015 event was substantially larger than that of the 2014 event, and the 2014 event again larger than that of the 2013 event.

With this increase in crowd figures we can see a real potential for Bathurst to up its game and hold a 24 hour event. The growing crowd figures, each year can be backed up by a new television deal to Channel Seven which came into effect for the 2015 version of the race, bringing all of the race to Digital TV.

This was a major plus for the 12-hour race and again points to growing interest in endurance racing with a failing V8 Supercars series.

Another major plus of shifting the focus of a Bathurst endurance event to the 24 hour model would be the potential to join the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). Although it could be done with a 12-hour event, shifting the focus towards the 24-hour event would encourage all the best endurance drivers from all over the world to come down under and take on the Mountain. This again would see a major jump in crowds and set up a very interesting race.

Bathurst certainly has the potential to be one of the best endurance tracks in the world, and it already is hosting the Bathurst 12 hour and the Bathurst 1000 in the V8 Supercars Series. You just have to feel there is something missing from Bathurst and the Australian motorsport picture, that is the 24 hour event.

So Roarers what do you reckon? Should Bathurst hold a 24-hour event, or stick to the current model of the 12-hour event?

The Crowd Says:

2017-11-02T18:32:07+00:00

Peter

Guest


If there was ever an FIA GT3 World Championship series then maybe they could look at turning the 12 Hour into a 24 Hour race, though for now I wouldn't change it from what it is with its growing popularity and international acclaim. But I can't see them running a WEC race at Bathurst. The money needed to stage such an event, especially so early in the year, would be astronomical. Ross Palmer, a self-made multi-millionaire in his own right, literally had to pull the pin on both the Procar series with Nations Cup, GT Performance etc and the Bathurst 24 Hour simply because of the cost involved in running the show and not being able to find a major sponsor to help underwrite it all. Contrary to popular belief among some fans, Procar's demise wasn't the result of the Monaro's running larger engines than their road going cousins. In fact, the Monaro's and the addition of Peter Brock to the series in one of them brought more fans through the gates than the series had ever seen to their stand alone rounds (they did run at the Clipsal 500 and Indy at times) as well as national television coverage from Seven. It was simply that Palmer's accountants did the sums and they added up to losses because he was funding it all without a major sponsor, and that wasn't good. In saying all of that though, it would be good to see the current GT3's racing for 24 hours around The Mountain. They could easily do so, after all the GT3's or similar run 24 hours at Daytona, Le Mans and Spa.

2015-06-23T23:50:00+00:00

Andrew Kitchener

Roar Guru


We need a few more years of status quo to further embed the idea of an early-season endurance race, and then switch over if popularity continues to rise. That said, there's little to not like about the 12-hour event at the moment, so, you know, if it ain't broke

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