A MAJOR crash has caused Friday’s final practice session at the 2023 Bathurst 12 Hour to be declared shortly after its halfway point.
The #52 MARC II V8 with Keith Kassulke aboard went off the road at The Chase, crashing heavily into the tyre barriers and coming to rest upside down in the sand trap with extensive front-end damage.
Vision of the incident on the circuit television feed suggested a mechanical failure was the cause, the car appearing to arrive at the corner without reducing speed before launching over the apex kerb and travelling into the sand trap with its front wheels high in the air.
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Kassulke was communicating with recovery crews before emerging from the car and later cleared of serious injuries.
The incident happened 19 minutes into the 40-minute session, which was not restarted due to the damage done to the tyre barrier by the impact.
At the top of the timesheets was the #999 GruppeM Mercedes-AMG GT3 with a 2m03.9958s time set by Raffaele Marciello.
A total of 25 cars took part in the session with the #66 Sin R1 of Ben Schoots / Dylan Thomas / Shane Woodman not making it out onto the track.
The team struggled with a persistent oil leak during the previous sessions, and were on the pit apron waiting to head out to verify the leak had been fixed when the red flags came out.
Another car that didn’t make it onto the circuit was the #50 KTM GT X-Bow, which suffered an engine problem during Practice 2.
Practice 5 for the 2023 Bathurst 12 Hour gets underway at 8:35am AEDT on Saturday.
