Nissan has again won on the Mountain at the Bathurst 12 hour race with Godzilla.
Not since 1992 has the Nissan GTR won a race at Mt Panorama. Back then it was the R32 version and that was in the hands of Jim Richards & Mark Skaife and that was the Bathurst 1000 race. The nickname Godzilla was given to the the R32 by the Australian press back in the 90’s, when the car first went on sale in Australia.

Nissan & Nismo were out to prove themselves this year after last year’s early exit from the event.
The weekend started out with a unique and very cool media call on Thursday morning, the media team for the event has organised for one of each of the brands involved in the event to be driven to the top of the Mountain for a photo call.
It made for an impressive sight with all the cars lined up at the top of the Mountain at Skyline.

The good part of the media call was the fact that we were able to drive on track in front of the group of cars as they were driven both up and down the Mountain. The resulting images looked fantastic as they pull togther some of the most amazing GT3 cars currently racing around the world.
The first images featuring the 2014 race winner, the Maranello Motorsport Ferrari F458. As well as the M-Sport Bentley, Erebus Mercedes SLS AMG, Nismo Nissan GTR and the M-Motorsport Lamborghini Gallardo.

The second shot which was on the way down the Mountain after the call features the Bentley Continental GT3, Audi R8 LMS and the Nissan GTR GT3. In the second row you have a McLaren MP12C and a Porsche 911 GT3R. An impressive sight seeing all these GT3’s head down Conrod Straight with the top of Mount Panorama in the background.

The events attracts some of the best drivers from around the world, but this year it also had a celebrity racing. Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper, he is best known for his RedBull sponsored Stratos project where we he from a helium balloon 39km above the earth’s surface.
Now Baumgartner has turned to Motor racing, Audi Sport in Europe invited him to race at the  24 Hours of Nurburgring.
So it was great to see that for his second ever race, Audi Sport invited him to race with the Phoenix Race Team at the 12hr at Bathurst.


As mentioned earlier there was a massive cross section of GT3 cars competing at this years race. Here is a look a the brands represented.
First up we have the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Craft Bambo Racing, who brought not one but two of these cars to Bathurst.

The MARC Cars Australia are an interesting car, up until recently they were solely based on the Ford Focus, which was then fitted with a Ford Coyote V8 Engine. It sounds just like a V8 Supercar but in a compact car body.

But this year the team at MARC have created a new version based on a Mazda 3, whilst its weekend did not finish well, the car ended up crashing at the top of the Mountain. It was still nice to see a new version of the car evolve.

The Mercedes SLS AMG were again in strong numbers with three in attendance this year.
First there was the private entry of Dean Grant, who’s car was virtually brand new as it had only previously done one event in Malaysia.

The weekend for these guys did not end well as the car finished up hitting the wall after being collected by another car going into the chase.

The other two SLS AMG’s belonged to the Erebus Motorsport team. Which has a good weekend, the #36 car held the lead of the race for while and ended up finishing 5th outright.
This year was first year we have seen Bentley Continental GT’s on the Mountain for the 12hr and this year we has three of them. Two from the Bentley Team M Sport and one from the Aussie Flying B Team. The cars looked and sound amazing as they raced around the Mountain.

There is a whole class dedicated to Porsche Cup Car’s as the 12hr, that is class B. But two of the most aggressive Porsche’s were in Class A.
One of those was the stunning wide bodied Ice Break sponsored Porsche 911 GT3R, one of the three drivers for the #12 Porsche was factory racer Pat Long.

Whilst Porsche was the strongest marque represented in the event, due to the Porsche only class B.
The next strongest represented brand was Audi, which had 7 different R8 LMS’s entered across 5 different teams.
So the team from Audi Sport Customer support were very busy acorss the weekend. Also it was one of the last races for the currents R8 as the new road and race car will be launch at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

The Phoenix Racing team which has support from Audi Australia, ran two R8’s. Both cars had very unique paint jobs. The #15 car ran, what has become the traditional  Kangaroo sign on the car. The sister car the #16 ran a very different paint scheme.

Where the #15 car paid tribute to the Kangaroo, the #16 Audi paid tribute to the crocodile, the basis of the scheme goes back to the 2000 when the Race of a Thousand Year was held in Adelaide as the last round of the American  Le Mans series. Audi Sport North America ran a Audi R8 with a crocodile livery then.

Ferrari also had a strong presence at this years event. 6 cars took the start line on race day, but one did not make it. The #88 Maranello was involved in an accident during Friday practise and was damaged so badly that it was unable to continue in the event.
The strongest finishing Ferrari Team was the local Aussie team of Vicious Rumour Racing, they finished 6th.

Lamborghini was represented by two teams, both were driving Gallardo’s
The highest finisher was the #32 JBS Australia car which finished 7th

Two other interesting cars worth mentioning included the Mazda RX8 which was raced by Patrick Dempsey in the Tudour series in the USA, before being bought out to Australia Featuring a Triple Rotor 20B engine, the cars are always guaranteed to put on a flame show.

The last of our car features is the McLaren MC-12C of the VIP Pet Foods team, what a difference a year makes. In 2014 this car was challenging for the win. This year the car struggled with set up and aero issues, so we didn’t really get to see it at its full potential and it retired on lap 80.

The race this year started at 5:50am so it was pitch black when the cars started the race. Even though it was an early start there were still lots of people around and Pit Lane and the Grid were full of people.



Total darkness allows for some light trail shots of the cars going across the top of the Mountain.

Once the sun starts to come up the light over the mountain is just awesome.

After 12 hours of racing, with multiple lead changes and incidents, the entire race came down to a 15 minute dash to the finish between the #10 Bentley, the #15 Audi and the #35 GTR.
The race hosted an amazing 20 safety cars across its duration – surpassing the previous record for number of safety car periods, previously 15 for the 2013 race.
The last few laps were extremely exciting to watch, and after the Nissan got past the Bentley and the Audi it just ran away with lead and increased its gap to the finish.
The Nismo Nissan GTR crosses the line, much to the delight of the team and the fans. Australian’s really have a love for Godzilla.

The Nismo Nissan drivers were very pleased to not only be on the podium but to be able to celebrate the win considering last year and the weekends earlier crash.

The all conquering Nissan GTR GT3 with its haul of trophies from the weekend.

The Nissan Nismo Team drivers with “Godzilla”.

It will be interesting to see if Nissan/Nismo will be back to defend their title in 2016. As no team has successfully defended their title in the last few years, not since the Audi team of  Christopher Miles and Darryl O’Young in 2011/2012.
Bring on 2016.
You can watch the thrilling last few laps right here too.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOtZiCZmVA4[/youtube]
Full results of the race are below.