With less than 10 minutes to go in the race, the Safety Car was drawn when the #9 Class A2 Ford Mustang buried itself in the gravel trap at The Chase.
It was quickly retrieved and set the stage for a one-lap, winner-takes-all shootout between race leader Cameron Crick and Jayden Ojeda.
With just a few minutes left on the clock, race control raised the stakes when it ordered Ojeda to pass the three lapped cars ahead of him.
That put the #1 BMW M4 behind the #118 BMW M2 in the queue.
“They’ve moved the lap cars out of the way, essentially, and they’ve done that by just telling car #1 to move up, is what I’m understanding,” said Richard Craill in commentary.
“So the message from race control is that rather than waving those cars past. The interesting thing is they’ve not done that today at any point for a restart.”
Co-commentator Jason Bargwanna was just as bemused.
“I’m not sure where that rule fits in,” said the 2000 Bathurst 1000 winner.
“We might have to get some paper out here and read that one. I didn’t think they could do that, but clearly, obviously, they’ve had some instruction to move that car up into the position right behind #118.
“We’ve seen that often in a situation where a car is in between the leaders at the end of the race can get waved through, but in this case they haven’t waved them through, they’ve just moved the #1 car up.
“What we spoke about there is those cars in between. It doesn’t exist any more. Now we’ve got the leader and P2 nose-to-tail.”
What was the deal with getting rid of the lapped cars between 1st and 2nd for a 1 lap restart but not moving any lappers between 2nd and 3rd or 3rd and 4th!?
— Jack Perkins (@jack_perkins) April 20, 2025
Ultimately, Ojeda couldn’t pass Crick in the dash to the flag. Nevertheless, the moment raised eyebrows considering the circumstances and the possible fallout from a lead change.
The Bathurst 6 Hour doesn’t have a baked-in wave-by rule in its regulations, per se. However, cars do get waved by to allow the Safety Car to pick up the race leader.
The race-ending scenes were especially unusual given Ojeda was told to pass the lapped cars, rather than allowing the lapped cars to pass the Safety Car in a typically wave-by procedure.
For comparison, Supercars has provision in its rules for the wave-by — but it has a unique solution should a Safety Car be deployed late in the race.
With either eight laps to go or 10 minutes from the scheduled finish time, cars that are a lap can be sent through the pit lane and shuffled to the back behind cars on the lead lap.
Such a solution for the Bathurst 6 Hour could potentially be viewed as problematic given only four cars finished on the lead lap, and simply shuffling the cars on track is at the least simple and straightforward.
In any case, this year’s finish raises questions about fairness and integrity — and whether entertainment should be put first.
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