The Motorsport Brief | Bathurst 12 hour preview with John Hindhaugh
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Concept
Bathurst 12 Hour
The Bathurst 12 Hour is a famous car race that takes place in Australia. It's a long race where different teams compete in sports cars on a challenging track.
Concept
IMSA Sports Car Racing
IMSA Sports Car Racing is a racing series in North America where different types of sports cars compete against each other. It's popular for its exciting races and variety of cars.
Car
Chickadee Commodore
The Chickadee Commodore is a special version of a car called the Holden Commodore. It was used in car races in Australia, especially in a famous race called the Great Race.
Concept
Dubai 24 Hours
The Dubai 24 Hours is a long car race that lasts for 24 hours. Many different cars race against each other, and it’s a test of how fast and reliable they are over a full day.
Concept
New Zealand Grand Prix
The New Zealand Grand Prix is a famous car race in New Zealand. It features different types of racing cars and is a popular event for fans of motorsports.
Concept
supercars
Supercars are very fast and expensive cars that are built for high performance. They are known for their sleek designs and powerful engines, making them popular among car enthusiasts.
Car
Ford Cortina
The Ford Cortina is a car that Ford made in the UK for about 20 years. It was known for being a good family car and also did well in racing.
Term
V6
A V6 is a type of engine that has six cylinders arranged in a V shape. It's popular because it's powerful but also not too big.
Concept
American Le Mans series
The American Le Mans Series was a type of car racing in the U.S. where different car manufacturers raced against each other in long-distance events. It was popular for its exciting races and advanced car technology.
Concept
GT3 racing
GT3 racing is a type of car racing that uses special versions of regular sports cars. These cars are modified to make them faster and safer for racing on tracks.
Car
Porsche 911 GT3
The Porsche 911 GT3 is a special version of the 911 sports car that is built for speed and performance, especially on racetracks. It has a powerful engine and is designed to handle very well.
Car
Ferrari 360
The Ferrari 360 is a sports car made by Ferrari that was popular in the early 2000s. It has a powerful engine and is known for its stylish look and fast speed.
Car
Ferrari 296
The Ferrari 296 is a new sports car from Ferrari that uses both a traditional engine and electric power to be faster and more efficient.
Car
Porsche 718 Cayman GT4
The Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 is a fast sports car designed for racing and performance. It's known for its great handling and speed on the track.
Concept
multi-class racing
Multi-class racing means that different kinds of race cars are racing together on the same track. Some cars might be faster or slower than others, making it more challenging for the drivers.
Concept
12-hour races
A 12-hour race is a long car race where teams compete to see who can cover the most distance in that time. It's a test of both the cars and the drivers' stamina.
Concept
24-hour races
A 24-hour race is a very long car race that lasts an entire day. Teams take turns driving to see how far they can go in that time, testing the cars and the drivers' endurance.
Concept
WAC
WAC is a racing series where cars compete in long races, often lasting several hours. It's known for its tough competition and includes famous races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Concept
GT racing
GT racing is a type of car racing that uses special sports cars. These cars are built for speed and performance, and the races can be very exciting to watch.
Concept
GT4
GT4 is another type of car racing similar to GT3, but it uses cars that are closer to what you might find on the road. These cars are still fast but not as heavily modified as GT3 cars.
Term
Formula racing
Formula racing is a type of car racing that uses single-seat cars with open wheels. It's known for its high speeds and strict rules about how the cars can be built.
Concept
world endurance championship
The World Endurance Championship is a series of long-distance car races, including famous events like Le Mans. Cars race for many hours to see who can go the farthest in that time.
Concept
Barcelona 24 hours
The Barcelona 24 hours is another long car race that lasts for a full day. It happens at a racetrack in Spain and involves many different cars racing against each other.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and stylish car that many people love to drive. It's known for being a great sports car that you can buy without spending as much as you would on some other fancy cars.
Car
Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang is a popular car that looks cool and goes really fast. It's been around for a long time and is loved by many people for its sporty style and fun driving experience.
Car
BMW New Bmw
The BMW New Class was a group of cars made by BMW that changed how people thought about their cars. They were sporty and stylish, helping the company become popular for making fun and nice cars.
LIVE
It is kind of the proper start of the Aussie motor racing season.
For this edition of the Motorsport Brief, we're at the mountain ahead of the Bathurst
12 hour.
Good day everybody, Rusty with you for this edition of the Motorsport Brief, joining us
on Rusty's garage today.
The voice of Radio Lamont John Hindoff, you know him of course from Imsa Sports Car Racing,
the American Lamont series, his voice is indelibly linked to GT and Sports Car Racing
Worldwide.
Fantastic to have him on.
Just before we start our preview of the Maguire's Bathurst 12 hour, a reminder too about the
feature EPP with Will Davison that we recorded over summer in the library.
You'll enjoy that.
We did that while he was racing in New Zealand and we've just dropped one too with Craig
Denier.
His son Grant is racing in the 12 hour this weekend but Craig's done some amazing things
on the administrative side with TA2 and V8 youths in this country.
And he's got his own racing story to tell, including a very funny story, a good story
around the win by Alan Grice in the great race in the mid 80s in the Chickadee Commodore
and how a bombscare internationally almost thwarted his travel plans to get here for
the great race.
He still went on and won it.
Remarkable.
Mate, welcome to you.
Thank you for being on the podcast.
What a summer you've had.
It's literally my pleasure.
I left home 5th of January.
It was minus six in the middle of the UK when I left, minus six Celsius of course.
So that was Abu Dhabi six hours, 66 cars, 33 GT8 race.
The Michelin Dubai 24 hours, 60 cars, 30 GT8 race.
Dear Torna, 60 cars again, that was three consecutive weekends and a fair bit of flying.
And then met up with you somewhere where I wasn't expecting to go down to Highlands
Motorsport Park on the South Island for the New Zealand Grand Prix, which you really enjoyed.
I loved it.
I did a very, very, very, very tiny amount of work with the NZ GT series and basically
the rest of it.
I was a punter.
I was wandering around, trying pies, getting the hospitality, the stuff that I don't normally
get to do and meeting up with some good old friends and it was an absolute ball, fell
in love with the South Island, fell in love with the New Zealand attitude.
Very much reminds me of the northeast of England where I came from, where strangers are just
friends that you haven't said good day to yet.
It really was like that.
I mean, if we ever go back, I can't say I'll ever have to pay for accommodation again because
pretty much everybody has only come and stay with us.
No, no, come and stay with us.
It was brilliant.
Really enjoyed it.
And then a weekend off, which I went up to the Hunter Valley, met some friends in New
Castle, New Castle, New South Wales and then here for the Maguire's 12 and then I'm going
to do some touristy things for a weekend and because I realised, for a few days rather,
because I realised how the calendars fell, I'm staying on for supercars.
Well-plied.
Oh, well-plied.
Never seen supercars life.
Never seen supercars.
And I know that the night race in particular on Saturday night at Sydney Motorsport Park,
which I want to call Eastern Creek, I'm of an age, I just thought, what's another four
or five days?
Yeah.
When they've been away for seven weeks.
Great stuff.
You'll thoroughly enjoy that.
I'm so pleased you're going to get to take another bucket list along the way.
You would have seen the Highlands Museum and your travels there in NZ, but we are recording
this episode at the National Motor Racing Museum at Bathurst at the very bottom of the
mountain, right by the final turn there.
Brad and the team are so good, so accommodating.
Little Birdie tells me you've already been in for a look last night.
Is this true?
Well, that is true.
It's become a bit of a tradition in the last 10 years I saw since Brad took over.
Because it changes every time, every year, doesn't it?
Every time I'm here, there's something different, there's some cars that are the same.
It's 100 years of Ford in Australia, of course, and that was put together for the 1000 last
year, and most of the cars are still here.
There's a fantastic exhibit for long distance rallying, as you come in, where they've got
some of the old, basically the old Grand Tour, the Round Australia Tour, the Trial, brilliant.
And very, very interesting look at the difference between the Ford and the Holden mentality on
the car.
Brocky won the version that we're talking about, I think it was 1979, those cars are.
And Brocky's car is literally, as it came off the end of the rally, and it's bent and
knackered in places.
The Ford that couldn't, perhaps, should have won, it wasn't quite as well prepared.
Ford Cortina, Fordo, Mark IV, I guess that would have been in those days, with a straight
six, which we didn't get here, we didn't get the straight six, it was a four-cylinder
or a V6.
That one's been restored and looks pristine, and it didn't actually finish the rally, but
the contrast is great.
But you're right, coming here, this celebrates all of Australian motorsport, two and four
wheels, on and off-road.
Speedway, all sorts, yeah.
The Speedway bites right up my alley, right up my alley.
When I was young and at school, I used to go and do what was then Newcastle diamonds,
they became Newcastle larder diamonds back in the day, and it was a badge of honour to
get as close as you could to the fence and maybe get a bit of Cinder rash on your face
when you went back to school the next day.
Now, I love this place, and we've always done an inside story for Radio Show Limit Days,
and the one that I recorded yesterday, that'll be out before the race starts on Saturday.
Well done.
So we are now in the build-up to a huge weekend of racing.
It's the other big race at the mountain.
They sort of book in the calendar year, if you will.
Where does this one rank for you?
What number is this for you, in terms of how many times you've been coming to the mountain?
And I mean, we're here, we're local, I guess you could say.
I feel like it's got a great vibe ahead of the 2026 running.
What is it?
36 cars, 12 different marks, it's going to be huge, isn't it?
I first came here, this will be my 15th event, sort of 14 years ago.
It took me 50 years to go to Australia in my life, and that was probably 48 years too
long.
Don't even get me started about taking 60 odd years to get down to New Zealand.
This, in terms of our global audience at Radio Show Limit and Radio Limon, and you've detailed
some of the things that we cover now, but even a decade and a half ago, this was the
race that our listeners said, you should be covering that.
Even though it was in its nascent years, James O'Brien, Yihar, he started it off.
We were put in touch with him by the guys at Craventic who do the Michelin 24 Hours
series, so Abu Dhabi did buy all those great races in Europe that we still do.
And we eventually had a chat with James, and it was, I think it was probably only
a second and a third year, because there was one 24 hour race, and that didn't really
work out.
And I think it was his second or his third year, and we put something together, I spent
some of my air like miles, we brought a small crew down, and did some of the early session
coverage, and then we did, I'm trying to even remember what TV, each channel, we streamed
it.
I mean, that was quite innovative then, we were streaming video, and I always remember
saying to James, when we put this on, by the way, you're going to need X amount of
service base.
And he said, how many people is that that's going to be watching?
And I said, oh, probably 10 or 20,000, so he went, well, we'll not get that.
I said, no, you will.
So he put on enough, I think, 5000 simultaneous views, and the first time we turned the cameras
on and turned the video on, we absolutely crashed the server.
Crazy.
And James, to his undying credit, said, right, sport to his IT people, put on all the servers,
and every time we get to 85%, put another server on, because I do not want to crash
in June the race.
We did it with SBS TV, it was a very different production to what supercars do now, and obviously
national television has been a part of that, and the international feed has always been
without commercial and available everywhere outside of New Zealand and Australia.
We still do the audio for the early sessions that aren't televised, and of course all switches
on on Saturday.
I think, I remember, I think it was the first year, it was the first year.
We came down, when we came down here, and there was, I think we brought three people
that year, and I bumped into me, Osalo, in the pits, and he went, yeah, he looked at
me, looked at the team, looked at his teammates, he meant this must be a proper race of these
guys out here, which was a really nice thing for him to say for us, but that's exactly
what James wanted.
And James was building this ultimately to a product he realized he couldn't take any
further, and we'd already, we were on national television by then, and it was an absolute,
I think an absolute no-brainer for supercars to come along and say, look, we've got an
events department that, all right, is building the start of the supercar season, but we've
got some spare capacity.
This is in our wheelhouse, isn't it?
This is absolutely in the wheelhouse.
And what's more, quite a lot of their drivers were already there because they wanted to
prove themselves.
There was this ridiculous, and I mean this ridiculous, I've, Creelty'll tell you, Richard
Creel, who we work with, obviously.
It does an excellent job too.
Oh, she was brilliant.
He'll tell you that I've been watching supercars for years.
We saw the great race in the UK as a highlights package round about January or February, and
it was brilliant.
And all the innovation that that brought in car cameras, moving cameras, I remember a
three-way split-screen one year with your Prime Minister, which I guess would have been
Bob Hawke that year, pretty sure it was broccoli in the car, and the America's Cup captain
out on the world.
And I'm sitting at home in the northeast of England going, how is this possible?
What is this?
Because that just didn't exist in British motorsport or sports coverage.
So, I knew about Bathurst.
Coming here has never disappointed.
The supercars coverage is taking, it's supercars TV coverage, taking it to a new level.
And by the way, anybody who thinks that supercars got involved with this race in order to shut
it down, no, no, no, no, it didn't.
That's one idea of that, one idea of that.
Completely.
There's no point in them doing that.
The parallel I'll draw here, Rusty, is in the American Le Mans series in the Grand
Dam days.
Everybody said, well, dear Tauna's only taken over Dr Don to shut it down.
They don't want it to be, sports cars are not in their wheelhouse.
They'll stay in their lane, it's all about NASCAR.
Look where IMSA is right now.
Look at the money that it's bringing in for dear Tauna, for that group.
Look at the amount of manufacturers that they've got there across the series.
This, this was a smart move by supercars.
It absolutely fit what they're doing.
It allows them to highlight their stars.
And again, another thing, there was a, I think a misconception about some of these
supercars that we've got behind us were, and I use the word unique properly.
It was a unique formula.
There was nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
A lot of people were a bit sniffing about that and said, these drivers,
these Aussie drivers, they can only drive these cars.
There won't be able to drive anything else.
And when the early pioneers like Chazzy Mustard, SVG, obviously drivers,
Supermarket, Shopping, Trolleying, racing around the corners and all began to get
into GT3 racing, even before this race was as big as it is now, people went,
Oh, they're proper.
They're proper.
They can drive.
And we often talked in the early years, even in the early years of supercars
about, right, who has the advantage?
Is it the guys from Australia and New Zealand who race on the mountain
and know the track?
Is it the internationals who know the cars?
That's, you can't have that argument anymore now, because some of the
internationals have been coming in for 10 years or more and some of the guys here,
the drivers from here have been driving GT3s for eight, 10 years.
So it's leveled the playing field in every sense.
And that, I think, is why people are drawn to it.
And it's the mountain.
Yes, the mountain.
Yeah, that naturally leads me to the question about it's, I mean,
Shane Ruddson, the team have taken it, doing great things with it from an event
perspective. You just said it's an iconic location or venue.
Where does it stack up for you relative to a spa, relative to a Nurburgring?
And all of those places have their own unique things that make them special.
But we're super proud of the fact that Bathurst is held by these
internationals in a similar kind of regard.
I'll go back to that first year, talking to Mika Salor.
Obviously, he was driving a Ferrari that year.
Was that as far back as the 360?
It might have been.
Whatever Ferrari it was, he was driving.
I said to him, what's it like then?
He went, oh, he said, I think it's scarier than the Nurburgring.
And I went, what?
He said, well, he said, think about it, at the Nurburgring,
you get to the really scary bits once every eight and a half or nine minutes.
Here, it's every minute and a half or two minutes.
And I thought, he's got a point there.
And when you look, and I make this comparison purely for the reason
that will become clear, when you look at the lap times between supercars here
and even the new generation of supercars, which have moved on a lot
since even I first came here and the GT3 cars, which have moved on a lot.
You look at the 296 now.
That is a GT3 car that is built using a mentality and a mindset of prototype
reason in the way the cars put together, the modular nature of it,
the way the aero works.
The difference in time, because GTs aren't as quick down the tubes,
down Conrod as the supercars, the big V8, but all the time is over the top.
And watching, I've always loved watching the supercars over the top.
Watching them float and the really best drivers getting the best out of them
and making it look so easy.
You look at the GT3 cars across, that's brutal.
Yes.
It's brutal.
They are flat for such a long time and a tiny bit offline,
a tiny little mistake in where you turn in and you're going to have a big,
big incident and we've seen some other way.
And I made that comparison just because it's the same track.
It's a different challenge and I think that captures people's imagination.
In terms of where it stands, I hope it steers as a multi-class race.
There'll be people who disagree with me about that.
GT4 is beginning to grow down in this part of the world.
We've got a decent GT4 entry this year.
Is there a case at 12, 15 seconds off the pace that GT4 should be taken out?
For safety reasons, I can understand why people talk about that.
But there are other cars that could go in and you mentioned the Nürburgring.
The Nürburgring GT3 is one of those SP9s.
There's also something called an SPX class.
So the IRC cars, the old Glickenhaus, all of those went in there
and had GT3-ish kind of performance, adjacent performance.
Because I think we would do this place and this race at disservice
if this just became, quote unquote, another GT3 race.
Now, it would never just become another GT3 race
because it's Bathurst and because it's the mountain.
But I like the multi-class element of it.
I like the challenge of it and of those overtakes that sometimes aren't for position.
But I understand the safety.
I'm not a Luddite, I'm not a dinosaur.
I understand sometimes where as these GT3 cars are getting closer and closer
a sub-2-minute lapse that we have to think longer term.
But the current leadership here, and by the way,
we're sitting in a Bathurst Council run and financed facility here.
And Bathurst Council for the safety upgrades they've made on the track
and the infrastructure as well.
I think they've all done a cracking job to bring it to where it is.
It is one of the must-dos for the internationals.
It's the one that people want to do.
When I first came here, the first five years,
people would say to me, you wax and lyrical about that Bathurst 12 hours.
Is it really that good?
And I go, no, it's better.
Because it is.
It never ever disappoints this race.
Even if we get some safety car intervention,
even if we get some weather,
we might have weather this way again.
45mm of rain last way it ends here in Bathurst
and the weather forecast seems to change every time I look at it.
Throw a bit of weather in.
Look what happened at the back end of last year in the Great Race.
And I've got to sit next to...
I've been told I've got to call them Mr Six now.
Mr Half-dozen Garft-Hander.
But look what a little bit of changeable conditions can do.
And of course, we've also got that brilliant 45-minute hour on Sunday morning,
which Krilsie always describes,
and I'm right with him on this,
as the best hour of endurance racing,
probably anywhere in the world when we start in the dark
and then the sun comes up.
And by the way, if you didn't know this,
at this time of the year,
a change when we pushed it further back through the year
in what the responsible adult, my wife, Eve says,
she calls that the long yellow flag.
Two years of Covid, which I think is very good
because everything kind of went on neutralisation.
If you come here this year as a rookie
and your team say you're starting the race,
you'll start the race on Sunday in the dark,
having never driven a lap in the dark mountain panorama.
Only here could that happen.
And do you know what?
I celebrate that.
I don't denigrate it, I celebrate it.
It's one of the many great aspects of this event.
Will you stick around for a little bit longer if you've got time?
We're going to grab a quick break here on Rusty's Garage.
More with John in a moment as we preview the Maguire's Bath as 12 hour.
We're in the National Motor Racing Museum
for this edition of the Motorsport Brief,
joined by John Hindolph.
And the team that will be a part of the coverage this weekend,
he is front and centre of it.
You'll be basically locked in that booth for the whole 12 hours,
more or less, won't you?
Well, you know I don't move.
The first year that Garth Tander came and sat with Richard Krill himself,
he sits in the middle, Richard sits on the right-hand side,
I sit on the left-hand side, closest to the window.
I've got a little mixer where I'm submixing the sound for the audio feed
that goes back to London and then subsequently to the world.
And Garth would pop out and pop back and pop out and pop back
and get something to eat and use the facilities.
It's all I'm going to say.
And Krill's he would pop out.
Sometimes we'd roll a driver in, so they'd both pop out
and I'd be sitting there with Marowenga or whoever,
having a chat, watching the race.
And at the end of the race, as Garth's going out,
he went, you've never moved, have you?
No, why would I move? It's too exciting.
You don't want to miss aspects of the story, do you?
Correct. And in fairness, the 12-hour races,
I'm the same as Sebring for the Mobile One, 12 hours.
The 12-hour races, as I think is about as long as you really should do
in one go when we do the 24-hour races.
So we have an 8-hour race at Bahrain for WAC.
We have an 1,816-kilometre race at Cata.
Sorry, 8-hundred and twelve at Cata,
which takes about six or seven hours.
It can run to eight hours.
But when you go to the 24-hour races,
so we just did dear toner,
we'll do two, three, four-hour stints depending on where you are.
I took a six-hour stint in the middle of the night
when we took over mid-night at 6am,
when we took over NBC and Peacock.
I got a 45-minute race and then the fog dropped in
and the rest of the five hours and 15 minutes,
I couldn't see, we're up on a height.
I got my binoculars out, I could not see the pit lane.
That is when you earn your money.
That's when you earn your money.
You earn your keep because you're talking through stoppage, red flag,
whatever it might be when there's not a lot of action that you can cover.
Rusty had flew over and credit to our pit lane team.
So, Duncan Vincent and Arjuna Kanga Party
and all the guys down there in the pit lane.
To chase the stories.
All the drivers, of course, and you know this is a former driver,
all the drivers went, ah, great.
So you're going to leave him for two and a half, three hours.
That means I'm not back in for four hours.
I'm going for some kip.
So there was no drivers in the pit lane,
so we interviewed the tyre guys,
the strategists, the people cooking the food,
and we got some really good human interest stories.
And for me, before I handed over,
back to Lee Diffie at six o'clock in the morning on NBC Sport,
I enjoyed it because we were telling those human stories.
Those human stories.
Can we come to that?
If we're going to bounce through some aspects of this year's race here,
I'll make huge believer in not just the contest,
but also the human interest stories there.
There are two that kind of stick out for me here.
There'll be more because you'll know more.
Firstly, the Quinn entry.
Three generations.
Tony, his two sons, his grandson Ryder.
In world sport, in motor racing generally,
it is hard to think of anything like this.
What a cool personal moment for the family.
The only thing I've ever seen that comes near it,
and there was only the three of them,
was Han Stuck and his two sons at the Nürburgring in a Lamborghini.
Love it.
And that was only two generations.
So TQ, as ever, has gone one better
and got the three generations.
I think this is a great story, and I think also,
it underlines why sports car racing,
and particularly GT racing,
around the world, GT3 and GT4,
and by the way, credit to Steph and Retell,
who probably doesn't get enough credit for this,
for coming up with GT3 and GT4,
which have become the de facto global formulas.
Giving us something that when I was coming through
and when you were coming through,
there was no ladder in GT racing.
There was in Formula racing.
Now it's a proper option, a proper pathway.
And that simplification, in some respects,
even if it's only within the nomenclature of the classes.
I liken it to Mortal 3, Mortal 2, Mortal GP.
And you know if you're in a GT4 car,
your next step will be to a GT3,
from there potentially to a prototype.
Prototypes in itself is P3, P2, P1,
and you've got sort of sub-P3, like the radicals,
which I love.
I had a little skidding one at Highlands.
I raced one a few years ago at Dunnington Park,
and around Highlands it was a hoot.
I think that's really important,
but with Tourney and his family,
what you've got there is, let's be honest,
what we probably all would do
if we had the wear-with-all and the financial wear-with-all,
and the time to do it.
And the generational racing interest in driving.
But you know, you talk about Dad and Lad going karting,
or you might talk about Dad and Lad going fishing,
or some other sport, but for three generations.
I'm a big soccer fan.
My club is Sunderland DFC up in the Northeast,
doing lots of bad at the moment in the Premiership,
we're back in the EPL.
And what we think of in that area of the country
is you think of a generational support of a sport,
where your granddad might have taken you and with your dad
to go and see a football team, a rugby team, a cricket team.
You don't think about necessarily playing,
cricket possibly, village cricket, town cricket, maybe.
But then when you come to motor sport,
you just don't think of it.
And here is somebody like Tony Quinn,
who is competing in one of the biggest races in the world.
And you've got Kenny Abull as well, by the way,
a Bathurst resident doing exactly the same thing
as a non-pro driver.
He's particularly his grandson, Ryder.
He's got a future.
Totally.
He's a great little state.
Totally.
And you look at that, what are the sports,
even if you had all the money in the world?
Could you do that?
Could you do that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If I had all more money than God,
and I bought my football club,
we've got a very young owner, 28 years old,
Kira Louis Dreyfus.
He's from a billionaire French family.
They used to own Marseille.
And so he can buy the football team.
He doesn't pull on the number nine shirt
or the keeper's shirt on a Saturday and go out and play.
You can in this sport.
It's a great parallel that you've just drawn.
Right up to world championship level.
Yeah.
So in GT3, in the world endurance championship,
which includes Le Mans,
and I'm sorry to say this here,
the world's greatest motorist,
but you know, it is.
You can still do that.
So be part of a world championship where you're on the track
with the hypercars,
and in your team you'll have works drivers.
But you're there as what one of our good friends
at EMG, Stefan Vendel, who's head of customer racing
at EMG Mercedes.
He says, I don't call them gentlemen racers.
He says, I call them late starting professionals.
I like that.
But you think about it, they're just going about it the way
a lot of these professionals would tackle their other love,
their golf that we often draw the parallel with,
whatever it might be,
and they tackle it with that same level of commitment
that they would in business.
Rusty, you have to nowadays, even in GT3 and GT4,
the days of a non-pro driver turning up on the Thursday
of race week, doing a full practice session,
letting the pro qualify,
and then doing his minimum in the race,
that's not going to cut it anymore.
No, no.
And that's been the case for probably 15, 20 years now.
Let's go rapid fire as we've sort of worked
towards the finish here to a degree, right?
Morrow Engel, he was kind of an adopted Aussie there
for a period of time back about 10 years ago.
We love him.
Been a bit of a hoodoo race for him.
Can that change here this weekend?
If anybody, I know nobody should deserve,
he shouldn't say deserve because that's not what Morrow Engel is.
If anybody deserves it, it's him.
It's him.
He and I have been travel partners.
We keep seeing each other.
We're doing exactly the same trip.
He didn't come down to New Zealand,
which I'll give him a bit of stick for.
He is one of the best GT racers in the world right now.
And he will turn up at the Barcelona 24 hours.
He'll be at the Daytona 24.
He was at both the races in the Middle East.
He's here.
He is a works driver.
He's highly thought of.
I can guarantee it now on Tractor Town when I walk down there
to do our show from there on Thursday in Bathurst,
right in the centre of Bathurst.
He'll be one of the first people to come up and go,
how was your travel, John?
How are you doing?
Love it.
And for me, just a petrolhead from Sunderland,
that, to me, is incredible.
He's a genuinely lovely bloke.
I don't want to reassure you, so by sight.
But out of the car, can't find anybody nicer.
As I say, don't like to say deserve.
Is he due it?
Possibly.
He needs a bit of look.
Still need a bit of look.
Yeah, in this game, over 12 hours.
Valentino Rossi, huge draw card for the event.
I think it's fourth appearance for him or something along those lines.
He loves coming back, doesn't he?
WRT is one of the success stories with BMW,
longtime Audi team for Vonson Voss and the guys from Belgium,
relatively recently moved into their new premises,
right opposite Liège Airport,
which I call their global headquarters.
It's incredible, Rusty.
Get a chance to go there.
Goal.
They are on the top of the world at the minute.
They've had a really good start to 2026.
Valentino is here because he wants to be.
Not because he has to be.
He's going to do some GT racing again.
He's come out of WAC,
he's going to do the European Championship.
This year, one of the European Championships this year,
he wants to win this race.
I want to see him do some demo laps on a bike around there.
There's plenty of them that he could take.
It'll be very, very cool to see him do that.
The relative recent past of this event
has kind of been dominated by the internationals.
What chance of an Aussie this weekend standing atop?
Well, you've got Brock Feeney here.
Brock Feeney here.
I mean, he had a tough year from a supercar's perspective last year.
This could open the 2026 account perfectly.
You've got the reigning champion in Chas Mosterd here.
The lineup of supercars drivers is actually really cool.
You never rate Chasi off in a GD3.
Actually, in nothing.
Brock was one of probably three drivers
who lost out in touring cars,
stock cars in the playoff idea.
This is a one-off race.
Maybe he has a different view towards that.
He knows how to drive these cars.
I've seen him at other races around the world,
and he's been over to Imsa as well.
Not an Aussie, but Aladdin Earl Bamba as a New Zealander.
Hold on, hold on.
He's from the Ditch.
Antibodian.
Yes, from the region.
He'll be adopted as an Aussie if he wins, obviously.
He's one in class, but not overall.
He's got a presence here with the race team and things like that.
But he's risked against his own team
because, of course, the other big story,
Ford versus General Motors.
That is going to be huge.
Back.
Corvette versus...
Look.
Honestly.
Here's what his arm is standing up.
Honestly.
They're two global sports cars
that have forever been global sports cars.
The Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Mustang.
One each only, so only one bullet in the gun.
It could burn brightly and go out very quickly, that battle.
But amongst everything else,
I think that's something you've got to watch for as well.
Yep.
What about Matt Campbell?
We didn't mention him there before.
I mean, he's a great story from, you know, from Australia.
Matt Campbell is another one of the nicest people in the Paddock.
He always has a word for the fans.
Bit of an odd time for him.
He's in a bit of a transitional period.
We don't really know what his future holds.
Holds.
He's doing a...
We think a part season with Porsche Pinsky Motorsport.
He's not...
He's only doing, at the moment, the longer races in the 963.
Is he going off to one of the new manufacturers?
Is it going to be Genesis?
Is it going to be McLaren?
Is it going to be Ford?
We don't know kind of at the moment.
We're still trying to work that out.
What I do know is he loves this place
and he loves driving a Porsche around here.
He'll be in the conversation.
Cool.
Through to finish, if we can.
Firstly, the chance of an Aussie team.
Krause and I obviously commentate on the GD3 championship
in this country.
Rise racing.
They're a very good outfit.
Among others, what chance of an Aussie team
against the might of some of these international squads
that are here that are just, you know, world-class?
Honestly, they've all got...
It's like a roulette wheel, isn't it?
You look at it.
Every number has got the same odds
of the ball dropping into its little box on the roulette wheel.
At the start of the race, everybody has got the same chance for me.
We make a lot about qualifying rightly so
because that historically has made a difference
down through the years.
And the shootout, one of the great all-time
televisual sites of motor racing.
I love it.
I really love it.
Genuinely, I think there's more teams with a chance this year.
The field is so deep in GD3.
And you can get laps back here,
but you do not want to be on the back foot early.
I think you want the first half of the race,
you want to be pretty clean.
And then you'll set yourself up for what happens after that.
The race proper so much can happen over 12 hours.
Sitting here and you and I saying,
oh, you can roughly expect this, this and this.
So much goes out the window.
But toughest question in the game for you.
Who wins this thing on Sunday?
Can BMW go back to back?
What is the likelihood, the chance of doing that?
Well, the new BMW is very, very good.
It's already won a couple of races out in the Middle East
and not necessarily a canada,
but at one stage we had four BMWs in the top four positions
in the 24 hours at Dubai.
In fact, from most of the race,
and two of those were privately ended,
not the WRT cars, the Paladin Motorsport cars,
which was Dalil Young in that car.
They were robbed of a better position right at the end.
So yes, they can.
Don't count out optimum with the Mac, with McLaren.
They've been, again, they've had a very busy start to the year.
Something's getting moving.
And therefore their preparation's been excellent
and they are race ready.
For some teams, this will be their first big race of the year.
And I think sometimes that's a slight disadvantage
because you can't come here called
because if you do have a problem,
the other thing, how do you react?
How do you pivot?
How do you make the best of a bad job?
We've got a puncture.
Right, let's change the strategy.
Let's do something else.
Let's take that driver out.
Let's put the arm in.
All of that stuff is going on.
There's as much talent on the wall
and in the bunker as there is behind the wheel.
And there has to be here because there's so many variables.
So BMW, yes, what are the conditions going to be like?
Will it favor a mid-engine car?
Therefore, do you look at the market?
Do you look at the new Corvette?
Do you look at the new Mustang?
Again, those cars are unproven here.
If it's bad weather, then you look at Porsche, don't you?
It's really hot and it's slippery or it's really wet and slippery.
Rear engine, thanks very much.
We'll take that.
Honestly, it is wide open.
It is so deep.
And if I mention one person, one team, one car and I jinx them,
then I'll never get hospitality from them again.
Well played.
So don't do that.
Come on, seriously.
Am I wrong?
No, no, no.
It is genuinely, it's kind of a stupid question in some respects
because it's so hard to pick.
The quality, when you look at the entry list,
right the way through, there are great stories
and they're from the top teams locally and internationally
that are playing here.
There are some genuine chances
and so much unfolds over the tour.
And I did mention AMG.
Yeah, yeah.
And Kenny Abul.
You know, Kenny lives, has a house on Conrod Street.
He's got the dream team together again.
He is fit as a butcher's dog's personal trainer.
This year.
He is loving life.
Has shown great pity.
At the Roar, before Daytona, he was the fastest GT3 driver.
Not the fastest AMGT3 driver.
He was the fastest GT3 driver in the hall of the Roar testing
of any drivers.
He's got raw pace.
He'll more than pull his weight.
And there's somebody that you just say,
keep an eye open for that number 75
because towards the end, last three hours,
if they're there or thereabouts
and they can plug one of the fast guys in,
then happy days.
There is someone I need to get on for a feature episode of the podcast.
Kenny.
Great story that he's got from a business perspective as well.
This has been fabulous.
I've taken up way too much of your time.
Have a fantastic call this weekend.
I know the broadcast is going to be ace.
And it's so cool to have your voice as a part of the mix
covering this event that we're so proud of.
I've been catching up on Telly here
with some of the reruns of the old thousands.
Him in the pits with Barry Sheen.
And then, I think it was 2000, you were calling the race.
You were in the pits in 99.
Yeah, I did. I did 2000 and 2015.
And yeah, but Baz was very good to me.
I love, I was just watching that 2000 rest,
which was GT's first victory.
Of course.
Yes, correct.
In similar conditions.
With Jason Baguana.
Jason Baguana's only victory.
Similar conditions to the great rest last year.
I'd forgotten how good you were in the booth.
It was great.
Thank you.
I love the pits.
The pits is a bit of a fave for me as well.
Thank you, mate, for coming on.
That is it for this edition of the short cast.
There's lots of great reasons to check back in
through the Rusty's Garage Library.
Hope you find someone in there that you'll enjoy.
The listen been terrific to get this bloke on today.
Bye for now.
About this episode
The Bathurst 12 Hour marks the exciting start of the Australian motorsport season, and John Hindhaugh joins Rusty to preview this iconic race. They discuss Hindhaugh's recent experiences at various international events, including his adventures in New Zealand. The conversation touches on the evolution of Bathurst's coverage, the significance of supercars in the racing landscape, and the unique atmosphere surrounding the event. With insights into the history and future of the race, this episode captures the anticipation and passion that fuels Australian motorsport.
Original notes
We’ve got the voice of Radio Le Mans on the pod for the first time and they recorded the ep in the National Motor Racing Museum at Mount Panorama!
Let’s face it between Rusty and John it was always going to be a big ask to keep the chat to a shortcast duration so there’s over half an hour of convo for you to enjoy ahead of this weekend’s race.
From human interest stories like the Quinn entry where driving duties will be shared across three generations of the family to the headline grabbing return of MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi. He’s here because he wants to be!
Why this event has become so well regarded internationally not just because of the lure of this classic race track.
Can Maro Engel break a bit of a Bathurst hoodoo? And some of the standout Aussies in the field including Supercars champion Chaz Mostert and his rival who went so, so close to claiming that title last year - Broc Feeney.
Plus some of the other stories to follow like Kenny Habul, Matt Campbell, BMW’s hopes of going back-to-back and the highly anticipated grudge match between Chev and Ford as the Corvette and the Mustang GT3 machines line-up for this unforgiving 12 hour race.
Make sure you visit the National Motor Racing Museum the next time you get to Bathurst. Cars, bikes and all sorts of racing disciplines are celebrated with an incredible collection on display https://museumsbathurst.com.au/nmrm/
Our thanks to John for coming on too. For more on Radio Le Mans check out https://radiolemans.co/
Head to Rusty's Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and give us your feedback and let us know who you want to hear from on Rusty's Garage
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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