The weekend may have started with racing woe for one Aston Martin Racing powered team, it ended happily for the other as the Violante Rosso Vantage GT3 crew secured a much-deserved class podium finish at the end of today’s 12Hours of Bathurst.
Whilst the Vantage GT4 powered Team New Zealand entry of Graham Dowsett, Romain Leroux and Chris Van Der Drift were forced to lament there early exit from the event after a Free Practice accident for Dowsett saw the car receive non-repairable damage, things were certainly different a few garages up the pit lane for the Sydney based Volante Rosso team as The Mountain experience within the team certainly paid off.
Bryce Fullwood qualified the #14 car just ahead of the Heart of Racing crew (again competing within a Mercedes AMG GT3), P27 overall and third within Pro-Am as their attention soon turned to the early start to the race on Sunday.
With the thirty-four remaining cars taking the start around the unlit circuit, it was long before the characteristics of the circuit with one entry being literally taken out by a member of the local wildlife in what could have been a more horrifying than it already was accident. A second, non-related incident put paid to almost the first hour of racing with the race (proper) then restarting as the sun began to make an appearance of the horizon.
A brief spell of racing saw the #14 car move up the order several places before another sizeable off for another car around the top of the mountain saw the race again pulled back under the control of the Safety Car and there was still over ten hours to go but getting back to green saw Maxime Robin circulating within the top ten of runners!
As the race eventually settled down into a rhythm and the faster Intercontinental GT Challenge runners re-established their positions at the head of the pack, the #14 car again dropped back into the mid-pack as Andres Pato and Damien Hamilton took their turns behind the wheel as the race finally moved into its second half but not without further incident and accident on track.
The biggest drama for the team came just after the eight-hour mark as the #14 car was blocked on track by a spinning #79 Porsche only for the that car to be collected hard by the then race leading Mercedes that saw both cars destroyed and the track littered with debris, something which forced the race to be red flagged. Luckily, the #14 was no damaged within that incident despite being so close to the Porsche.
Losing eighty minutes to that clean-up operation, the race was back to green with 2.5 hours to go and too many laps difference between them and their class peers in front, it was a simply case for the team to keep running to earn themselves a Pro-Am podium finish at the end as their next class rival was another two laps back – which is what they did by finishing P19 overall for a job well done.
Photo credits – Team / Series / social media