Van der Linde vaulted to the front of the pack when Team WRT elected not to pit the #32 BMW under Safety Car with just under an hour remaining – gambling the economical M4 could make it to the finish.
Gounon, whose 75 Express Mercedes had led the way prior to the stops, took the restart second and elected to pounce immediately.
But as the Andorran dived to the inside at Hell Corner, his South African rival moved to defend – causing both to run wide and gifting the lead to Team GMR’s Maxime Martin.
Martin went on to win the race while Gounon and van der Linde finished seventh and 12th respectively, nursing wounded cars to the chequered flag.
“I knew that with the BMW, it will be difficult for me to pass because they have a good straight line performance, which is not our case,” Gounon told Speedcafe.
“We are good in the corners. We produce over our whole lap time by the corners. They produce it in the straight. So I knew that I was not going to get many chances.
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“He had a very poor restart and he started to close a bit the inside. I didn’t show anything, and then I went for the move, and he moved, he reacted to my move.
“Once to go for a move and somebody react to it, it’s too late. You cannot do anything about it, so I’m very disappointed by his driving behaviour.”
Gounon into Van der Linde and GMR leads!
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Van der Linde, who went unpenalised for his late block, said Gounon should have been more patient.
“I probably expect it from a driver of his calibre to know that he had fresh tyres and probably have a much faster car,” van der Linde told Speedcafe.
“I was definitely going to try for a win here. You can see it whatever way you want, we’re racing for a win. I expect him to be a bit more clever than that.”
The #32 Team WRT entry had dropped off the lead lap earlier in the day following a pitstop to fix damage sustained at the first corner and in a later kangaroo strike.
Having fought their way back into contention, van der Linde said the decision not to pit under the final yellow was a “pure gamble” for the car he shared with Jordan Pepper and Charles Weerts.
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“I think for this race you obviously go all-out, you want to win or you don’t really care,” he said.
“To be honest, especially coming here defending the title, the only real reward would have been to defend it for us, so we went all-in and that was the result.”
Gounon was hunting his fourth Bathurst 12 Hour victory and third in five years alongside Luca Stolz and car owner Kenny Habul.
“Today I felt we had it. I was comfortable in the front,” said Gounon.
“Unfortunately, the Safety Car, we shuffle the cards. They went full gambling, trying to not stop, go to the end with the fuel.
“From our calculation, they were going to make it to the end, so I had to do something. I didn’t want to die wondering and finish P2 after the great race that we produced.
“But then you spent 40 minutes thinking, ‘maybe I should have waited to see a bit’. So that’s my only regret.
“The move, I don’t regret, because at the end of the day, I think it was a good move, just he reacted to it, and then you cannot do anything about it.”
Asked if he’d speak to van der Linde about the incident, Gounon said: “No, he always races like that, but at the end of the day, it’s costing his race and my race too.
“I understand we are all here to go for the win, but we should play by the book and the book says that you can move only once, the line, and today he moved twice.”
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