Auer leads Mercedes to Bathurst 12 Hour pole

Mercedes-Benz and Lucas Auer have taken pole position for Sunday’s Bathurst 12 Hour race after a short but frantic 15-minute qualifying session for the top 10 GT3 cars.

The Austrian driver managed to lap the 3.86-mile Mount Panorama circuit in a time of 2m01.2760s in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo that he will share with Craft-Bamboo teammate Maxy Gotz and Australian Supercars driver Jayden Ojeda

The Bathurst rookie took out the Pirelli Pole Battle, and the trophy named after former 12 Hour winner, the late Allan Simonsen, by a margin of 0.12s, which was greater than many expected after a very close qualifying session earlier in the day. After two 30-minute sessions, the top four cars were covered by 0.091s and the top 10 were covered by 0.381s.

The other spot on the front row was taken by another first-time Bathurst driver. Swiss driver Ricardo Feller was the best of the three Audis to make the top 10, in spite of the late nature of the Jamec Racing entry, which was only confirmed 10 days prior to the race. He will share his Audi R8 LMS Evo II with Supercars regular Broc Feeney and Australian GT driver Liam Talbot.

Third fastest was Maro Engel, who only put the Team GMR Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo on the track for the second half of the brief session, while the man who will start alongside him took the opposite view. Sheldon van der Linde set his time early in the BMW M4 GT3 and he will share with fellow BMW works drivers, his brother Kelvin van der Linde and Augusto Farfus.

Chaz Mostert was the first of the local drivers in the Arise racing Ferrari 296 GT3, ahead of the first of the Porsche drivers. But it was not local favorite Matt Campbell; Bathurst rookie Lauren Heinrich put the Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R he will share with Morris Schuring and Bronze drivers Sam and Yasser Shahin in sixth place and showed great speed throughout the day.

Seventh place went to Luca Stolz for 75 Express, ahead of Scott Andrews in the Geyer Valmont Racing Audi. The Australian, a regular for Lone Star Racing in the IMSA series, will be making his first start in the event.

Ninth fastest for the Scott Taylor Motorsport Mercedes-AMG of Cam Waters/Thomas Randle/Craig Lowndes, ahead of the Lee Holdsworth/Dean Fiore/Marci Cini Audi.

There were two cars that surprised by not making the top 10. Defending race winner Campbell missed out on making the top 10-only session by 0.088s after making a mistake late in his best qualifying lap at The Chase, will start the race from 11th on the grid. The other car that was expected to comfortably make the top 20 but didn’t was the No. R46 WRT BMW, in which Rafaele Marciello looked strong early in the first session, before he pitted early for his team to investigate an overheating issue.

The Italian and co-drivers, motorcycle racing legend Valentino Rossi and Charles Weertsn will start alongside from 12th on the grid.

The race is expected to be run in hot, late-summer conditions, with an expected top temperature of 86 degrees, and is due to start at 5:45am, Sydney time (1:45pm Saturday ET).