Crashes take place as cars roar for Practice at Mount Panorama
- Shahmir Khan
- Feb 1, 2019
- 2 min read
A trio of incidents kicked off the opening 2 practice sessions of Bathurst 12 Hours.
The first practice session, timed 30 minutes was reserved for Silver and Bronze rated drivers only before 60 minutes of all-field practice.
3 incidents took place during the afternoon, including that of Triple-Eight.
The first incident was that of Pete Story, who crashed into the barriers at The Chase in Practice 1, before Tim Pappas crashed at the same section in FP2.
Pappas had luck as his car lost control, hitting the barriers at full speed and the car catching fire. He was immediately carried to hospital.
Last of the series was that of #51 Ferrari and the #888 Vodafone Mercedes, as Paul Dalla Lana braked heavily, causing the Mercedes to stay in pits with front damage.
"I caught him, knew it was an Am guy learning the circuit, so tried to give him space," Shane van Gisbergen said. "He obviously hadn’t see me, which was fine, he was doing his best to hang on and learn the track I guess.
"Then out of the Chase, I went to the inside on the exit, and he came across to the race line on the last corner.
"I thought ‘OK, he hasn’t seen me’, so I crossed to the inside and he’s seen me and just braked at completely the wrong time and I couldn’t avoid him.
"I was trying to give space, be patient and unfortunately damaged two cars."
Ferrari tops FP1
Meanwhile, the first session was topped by Mathias Lauda in #51 Spirit of Race before the car's crash. He put a 2:06.86 to pull the Ferrari to top.
The first session excluded all Gold and Platinum rated drivers.
2nd quickest in the session was Josh Burdon, just 0.07s off the pace ahead of #35 Nissan Nismo GT-R GT3.
#75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes was third driven by Kenny Bull.
Mercedes tops FP2 amid horrible crash
Mercedes GruppeM set quickest laptimes in 2nd practice session for Bathurst 12 Hours.
The session was red-flagged soon afterwards, as #540 Black Swan crashed heavily at Chase section.
As the session was resumed, the controversial collision between #51 Ferrari and #888 Mercedes brought out another red-flag.
With limited time in 2nd practice session, Raffaele Marciello was quickest in #999 GruppeM Mercedes.
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