Australia’s greatest endurance race is underway, and over the next rotation of the sun I’ll be updating you on the hectic happenings of the 2025 Bathurst 12 Hours. I’m back, and here’s the major happenings through the day.

Both the no.888 GruppeM Mercedes and the no.183 Audi are out, with Wall Racing’s Lamborghini nearly suffering the same fate after an excursion in the gravel trap. Jamec’s Audi shot off the side of the chase with an unspecified issue, but were never able to get going, and GruppeM crashed at exactly the same place.

In the race as it stands, the top four are split by no more than three seconds. WRT’s no.32 car lead ahead of Craft-Bamboo’s no.77 Mercedes, while Chaz Mostert in Arise Racing’s no.26 machine and Ayhancan Guven runs fourth in Absolute Racing’s no.911.

GT4 has a new leader: incredibly, the no.24 Mclaren Artura has overtaken the much delayed Team Nineteen Mercedes, as Pro/Am is still headed up by the no.91 Manthey car of Sam Shahin. Bronze is still in the hands of Heart of Racing with Zacharie Robichon, while Silver is headed up by the no.14 Aston Martin of Mateo Villagomez.

A tremendous battle emerged between Will Brown of Arise Racing’s no.26 car and Alessio Picariello at the helm of Absolute Racing in the no.911 car, as the two ran virtually nose to tail for lap after lap.

Then the Volante Rosso Aston Martin pitted off schedule and went into its garage, with no obvious issue, before Alessio Picariello finally gave up the ghost in his defence against Will Brown, running wide through the final corner and letting the Ferrari through.

The two battling cars from earlier pitted with just two and a half hours to go, with Will Brown stepping aside for Daniel Serra to take the wheel of the no.26 Ferrari, with Alessio Picariello staying in that car for a triple stint.

Maxi Gotz was the next car to pit in, as Craft Bamboo replaced him with Lucas Auer and gave the car four fresh tires in the car’s penultimate pitstop

A great stint from Valentino Rossi saw him pit, who’d fuel saved and pitted laps later than the rest of the field, but on pit entry nudged the outside wall of the pits as he stormed in. 

At this stage its Sheldon Van De Linde for WRT BMW’s no.32 car leading the race overall, while in Pro/Am its the no.36 Arise Racing Ferrari in the lead. Heart of Racing are still top of the pecking order in Bronze and after the Rosso Volante Aston Martin went into the garage it’s now Brendon Leitch for Wall Racing’s Lamborghini that leads in Silver. GT4 is still the no.24 Mclaren, roughly three laps ahead of the only other GT4 car still left.

thumbnail photo credit – Ted Barrett, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons