Bathurst 12 Hour 2025
Bathurst – Bath-hurts
Orange Army and the Battle of Bathurst
Australia is a rugged and touch environment where everything in nature seems hellbent on killing you. The circuit at Mount Panaroma takes on the same ethos and tries to break any of the drivers bold enough to take up some of the most challenging corners in motorsport, as Orange Army Racing team were about to discover.
On the back of a successful completion of the Daytona 24hrs, and their first win in official GT3 endurance series, the team approached the weekend in a buoyant mood, feeling quietly confident that they could weather any storm that the 12hr event could throw at them. As it turned out, weathering the storm became a lot more literal than anyone had planned.
Both cars opted to do the full qualifying. With the weather already looking grim, the teams opted for a wet qualification setup, and in the tough conditions, Richardson put in banker lap of 2:23.363. But, in what was to be a recurring theme of the finest of margins having severest of consequences, a slight graze of the wall on the second flying lap, meant it would be invalid and the team would start from tenth place. Unfortunately, things weren’t much better for Team 1, who, with Nunn at the wheel, struggled to set a good qualifying time and had to settle for a P28 start. But things were only going to get tougher.
As the first hour of the race unfolded, all teams watched the weather radar where a sense of trepidation was rapidly being replaced with an impending sense of doom. A heavy weather front looked destined for the track and crew chiefs were anxiously warning their drivers out on the circuit, and when it hit, it was of biblical proportions.
With visibility being almost zero, all teams were struggling and the incidents started to rack up. Richardson for Team 2 had managed to work his way up to third place, before an incident with a back marker took out the leading pack and put positions 2,3,4, and 5 into pits with damage. Team 1 were fighting to keep the car out of the pits, with multiple incidents happening in the opening stints.
However, even with the cloudburst over, the track was still perilous, as all of the teams were to discover. Standing water was simply not drying out. The wet surface and seemingly innocuous puddles started to claim multiple victims. Drivers in the middle stints, Clarkson (Team1) and Ogley(Team2) were trying hard to stabilize the incidents. But perhaps feeling that with the end of the rain, teams were starting to push, race harder, and take more risks, and for many, the gamble did not pay off.
The turn at Skyline had water on the apex and on the outside, only a thin racing line was left, and hitting it, lap after lap, was getting increasingly demanding. The warning signs were there to see but went unheeded. In the middle stints, Ogley driving for Team 2, went wide a number of times, riding his luck, avoiding the wall, until inevitably the luck ran out, and he ended up as one of the many casualties of the corner. Across all teams, it was a similar story. It was Skyline and not the notorious and infamous ‘Dipper’ that was decimating the field. In both of the heats in which the two Orange Army teams were competing, just under half of the teams failed to finish.
And so it continued throughout, both teams were picking places as other teams fell, only to lose places again, when they were involved in incidents of their own. It was proving to be the toughest race of the fledgling team’s career. But it wasn’t going to stop the Orange Army, who after every incident, picked themselves up and kept on going. And with the final hours approaching, Bathurst had one final cruel twist for Team 2.
After Gregory had fallen foul of the water at Skyline, whilst putting in some fast laps, the car was brought in for repairs. With only 40 seconds left before leaving before leaving the pits with the car fixed, for reasons still unknown, the engine blew up. 40 seconds became 40 minutes.
After 10 grueling hours, this felt like a kick in the teeth. For most, this would have been the moment to pull the shutters and call it quits. As it was, Team 1 was also in the pits for repairs, and the drivers got together in a virtual lounge to regroup, chat, and even share a few laughs about the state of the race. It was just what was needed.
Revitalised, the drivers restarted their respective races. For team 1, Webb, took to the wheel to take the car through the last hour, to finish with a flourish and an incident free stint. In team 2, team captain, Gregory, handed the car back to Richardson who started to attack the circuit with renewed determination. At this stage, mathematically, there was only a single place that the team could recover, and Team 2 went after it. Despite everything Bathurst had thrown at them, the team were going down racing to the end. And, with just a few laps left from the 259 they were to eventually complete, Richardson got the place back. It may have been a pyrrhic victory, but just to complete the 12 hours on the mountain, felt like a triumph, and it was duly celebrated with Richardson choosing to perform doughnuts in front of the virtual.
In the end, Team 1 (Webb, Nunn, Cookson) finished P29 after completing 261 laps. Team 2 (Gregory, Richardson, Ogley) finished P28 after completing 259 laps. It was a bruising, demanding, and punishing race. The toughest the teams have faced. But neither team gave up. Many, many others did. This had been a battle and neither team fell. Team manager, Webb summed it up after the race, ‘When it goes wrong, keep trying’.
Randy Pausch famously said, ‘Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted’, and while the teams didn’t get the results they wanted, they have walked away with bucketloads of experience here which will serve them well in future races.
The teams now return to the weekly duty of the 3hr endurance races with only the last two rounds at Hockenheim and Motegi remaining. After that, they will start preparing for the next 12hr event. After being battered at Bathurst, the teams are determined not to suffer at Sebring.