Engel finally wins Bathurst 12 Hour in remarkable comeback

The decisive moment of the race came after the penultimate Safety Car with 40 minutes to go when the #32 Team WRT BMW M4 elected to stay out and rocketed to the lead.

Kelvin van der Linde led the 75 Express Mercedes-AMG driven by Jule Gounon to the green flag before all hell broke loose.

Gounon looked to go down the inside of the preceding BMW at Hell Corner, but van der Linde blocked. The German made nose-to-tail contact with his South African rival, and the pair pushed wide.

That opened the door for third-placed Maxime Martin in the #888 Team GMR Mercedes-AMG to shoot through and take the lead.

From there, the Belgian driver was unchallenged and brought home victory with Germany’s Engel and Canada’s Mikael Grenier.

Gounon into Van der Linde and GMR leads!

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It was a remarkable result for the trio, who began the race in a lowly 29th after technical troubles befell their Mercedes-AMG during qualifying a day prior.

“It’s amazing,” said Martin.

“To be honest, starting the weekend, I don’t think we were expected to win.

“But the last restart, I was just patient. They were quite hot and at the end, my team did zero mistakes, fantastic race and first victory for us three.”

Engel, who lived in Australia during what turned out to be a single-season Supercars career with Erebus Motorsport in 2013, was thrilled with the result.

“I’ve waited a long time for this and it’s every bit as special as I dreamt it would be,” he said.

“It’s not at all the weekend and the run plan that we had planned, lots of improvisation starting obviously with qualifying but the end result, we won the race.

“I’m so happy. Big thank you to Mercedes-AMG, Team GMR, to my fantastic teammates, they drove their hearts out. It feels really good.”

Second place went to Bronze squad High Class Racing, shared by Dorian Boccolacci, Anders Fjordbach, and Kerong Li who started the #86 Porsche 911 in 30th.

It’s the first time a Bronze entry has ever finished on the Bathurst 12 Hour podium.

Third place went the way of Team WRT with its other BMW M4 led by Augusto Farfus, Raffaele Marciello, and Valentino Rossi. It’s the second year straight that the #46 has finished just short of the win.

Results: Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour (provisional)