MSR duo out to make Bathurst 12 Hour deliberately difficult

Matt Stone Racing has chosen to enter the 12 Hour for the express purpose of preparation for the Thrifty Bathurst 500, and will field an IRC (nee: MARC) GT in the Invitational class.

The logic is that the IRC is a relatively raw, rear-wheel-drive V8, like the team’s Chevrolet Camaro Supercars.

However, it does boast driver aids such as traction control and ABS, which may be handy for their co-driver, Trans Am racer John Holinger, but are in fact not so helpful for Hill and Percat.

“I’ve always loved the Bathurst 12 Hour race,” said Hill, whose only previous start in the race was in a BMW M4 GT4 in 2018.

“Just trying to last the distance while also managing different class speeds is an exciting challenge. It’s a really cool race run at a very high level nowadays with factory teams coming over to race.

“But for us, we saw it is an important part of our Supercars programme to enter and get the miles around Bathurst.

“It’s not something we’d regularly do, but the fact there is a round of our championship one week later, we thought it was at a disadvantage if we weren’t doing it.

“It’s bonus seat time, but of course, we’ll be aiming to win our class and do the best we can. However, the focus is just getting quality miles around a track that you don’t get to race on every day.

“The car itself is a great package. It’s very user friendly; you jump in and everything makes sense.

“There are driver aids such as traction control and ABS, so you can make it easier or harder to drive, but for when Nick or I are in, all the settings will be quite low to keep it raw for our purposes.

“Overall, it’s fun to drive and it sets some fast times as well.”

MSR tested its IRC, which will sport major backing from Supaglass, at Queensland Raceway in readiness for the Bathurst 12 Hour.

At Mount Panorama, it will be restricted to a minimum lap time of 2:06.00s, a benchmark which applies across the board in Class I.

That is in fact quicker than anyone lapped during the race at the 2023 Bathurst 1000 – by a full second-and-a-half – but drivers were trying to nurse soft tyres on that occasion.

Practice 1 for the 2024 Bathurst 12 Hour starts tomorrow at 08:15 local time/AEDT/UTC +11.