At the conclusion of 12 hours of racing around Australia’s famed Mount Panorama Circuit, Ferrari took their first ever overall victory in the 13th running of the Bathurst 12 Hour. The team of current V8 Supercars driver Craig Lowndes, former F1 driver Mika Salo, John Bowe and Peter Edwards took their Ferrari F458 to the Class A and overall victory with a race-record 296 laps for a distance of nearly 1,850 kilometers. Second place by just 0.414 seconds went to the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG of Maximilian Buhk, Thomas Jäger and Harold Primat team of HTP Motorsport. The McLaren MP-4 12C of V8 Supercar driver Shane Van Gisbergen set a new closed-roof lap record at the circuit with a 2:03.851 that blistered the old record set by the late Allan Simonsen 2 years ago. Simonsen was set to run in the race-winning Maranello Ferrari before an early accident claimed his life in last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
The early portion of the race saw the Class B-leading Lamborghini of JBS Swift lose a 5 second per lap advantage when a kangaroo hopped across the track into it’s path. After 12 hours of running the Class B victory went to the Porsche 997 Cup from Grove Motorsport piloted by Stephen Grove, Earl Bamber and Ben Barker by a lap over McElrea Racing’s Porsche 997 Cup. Class C went to the Donut King Lotus Exige Cup R of Tony Alford, Peter Leemhuis and Mark O’Connor as one of the final cars running. Richard Billington, Lewis Scott and Stuart Owers took the Class D win over Peter O’Donnell’s BMW 355i with their Seat Leon Supercopa. And finally Class F was a sweep by the Fiat Abarth 500s as they were the only entries in class.