6 hours Ago
BMW has won the 2025 Bathurst 12 Hour, with the WRT BMW M4 GT3 of Kelvin van der Linde, Sheldon van der Linde and Augusto Farfus taking its maiden win in the race's GT3 era and leading a 1-2 finish. Two of the changes in the race regulations since 2024 proved to be crucial and went some way in determining the winner of the race, held in hot and dry conditions at the 3.86-mile/6.
213km Mount Panorama circuit. In previous years drivers had been limited to stints of no more than 32 laps before refuelling, and had to serve a minimum number of stops. But those windows were wide open this year and BMW made the best use of the changes, and that made the difference.
Sheldon van der Linde handed the car over to his brother Kelvin with just over an hour of the race remaining, with a charging Chaz Mostert-driven Ferrari close behind him. But everyone at WRT – and Mostert – knew that the Italian car would need a lot of Safety Car laps to make the finish without another pitstop. Even after Mostert took the lead at The Chase with 37 minutes of the race remaining, no Safety Cars appeared in the final half-hour and that sealed the deal for the Belgian team.
Mostert pitted from the lead with 22 minutes of the race to run, resumed in sixth and moved up places when Matt Campbell and Lucas Auer, who were also out of their final fuel windows, pitted late in the race. In the other BMW, Raffaele Marciello was on a charge, steaming around the outside of Jules Gounun' Mercedes-AMG at The Chase to take third, and then chased after the other car to make the best of its fuel, the Craft-Bamboo Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Auer. But the Mercedes also fell foul of its fuel window, pitting with six minutes left on the clock and promoting the second BMW of Marciello/Valentino Rossi/Charles Weerts to second.
“It was the hardest two hours of my life,” said Kelvin after a 10.25s victory. “We were fuel-saving, especially when Chaz was coming, and it was so hard.
We are very proud.” Farfus added: “We have been so close, so far and we wound up having a fast car and we executed a perfect race.” Sheldon echoed his brother’s words: “I have to say it is brilliant, I think we were flawless from the get-go this morning.
I have no words. We have been trying to win this race for three years!” The BMW result was not without some good fortune. Rossi drove swiftly, but was spotted passing a slower GT4 entry under yellow flags.
Straight afterwards, while Weerts was completing the consequent drive-through penalty, another Safety Car period for a separate incident allowed him to minimise the loss of track position and stay with the leaders, even if it dropped the car from second to eighth at the time. What the race came down to was the six leading cars: both BMWs; the 75 Express Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Gounon, Luca Stolz and Kenny Habul; Mostert, Will Brown and Daniel Serra in the Arise Racing Ferrari 296 GT3; the Craft-Bamboo Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Auer, Maxi Gotz and Jayden Ojeda and the Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of defending winners Campbell and Ayhancan Guven, and Alessio Picariello. They finished in that order.
The best of the non-Pro entries in seventh outright turned out to be the Heart of Racing Mercedes-AMG of Ross Gunn, Ian James and Zach Robichon, which took out the Bronze class. The Pro Am class winner was the second Arise Ferrari, driven by Jaxon Evans, Alessio Rovera, Brad Schumacher and Elliot Schutte, which got the better of the Manthey EMA Porsche. In the opening half of the race, the Porsche’s Pro drivers Laurin Heinrich and Morris Schuring were right among the Pro entries but the car lost pace during the stints of Bronze drivers Sam and Yasser Shahin.
In the Silver class and ninth outright was the #93 Wall Racing Lamborghini Brendon Leitch, Tony D’Alberto, Adrian Dietz and Australian television personality Grant Denyer . The Adam Christodolou/Daniel Bilksi/Mark Griffith McLaren was the sole finisher in the GT4 class. The David Crampton/Trent Harrison/Glen Wood KTM X-bow took out the Invitational Class, in spite of the sole entrant in the class losing 20-plus laps while crash damage was repaired.
Results to follow In this article Phil Branagan GT Endurance Intercontinental GT Challenge Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics Subscribe to news alerts.
