THIS year’s Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 Hour marked the 20th running of the once-around-the-clock endurance classic at Mount Panorama and it saw a range of records broken and established.
The winning SunEnergy1 Mercedes-Benz AMG GT3 of Jules Gounon, Luca Stolz and American-based Aussie Kenny Habul completed a total of 323 laps, a distance of 2006.799-kilometres, the most completed by a Bathurst 12 Hour-winning car in the event’s history.
It broke the previous record of 314 laps (1950.882-kilometres) set in the 2020 race won by Gounon, Jordan Pepper and Maxime Soulet in their Bentley Continental GT3.
Gounon became the first three-time winner of the Bathurst 12 Hour, having won in 2020 with Bentley and in 2022 and 2023 aboard SunEnergy1 Mercedes-Benz AMGs (there was no race in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions).
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He, Habul and Stolz drove two different chassis to their 12 Hour wins, each making their racing debut with victory at Bathurst.
The 2022 race-winning chassis is understood to have been retained by Habul in the United States.
While both cars were run under the #75 SunEnergy1 Racing banner, they were run by different teams.
Last year the winning car was run by Triple Eight Race Engineering for Habul and this year’s winning car was run by the Akkodis ASP Team.
The race ran under green flag conditions from lap 188 through to the end on lap 323 in a 136-lap (844.968-kilometres) stretch that was the longest without a caution period in the history of the Bathurst 12 Hour.
Event promoter Supercars also announced a record three-day crowd of 53,446 fans attending the 2023 event.
The previous record was 49,495 set in 2019 when the event ran over four days.
