The pair of Erebus Motorsport Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 ended the opening day of running at the Liqui–Moly Bathurst 12 Hour first and second fastest in the day’s final practice running at record pace.
Both Maro Engel and Will Davison were under the only hours old practice lap record set by David Russell in the opening practice session for the GT3 cars in the race. Engel, sharing the #1 machine with Bernd Schneider and Nico Bastian smashed Russell’s newly minted record by a full 1.5 seconds to lap the 3.86 Mount Panarama circuit in 2:04.453. Davison, sharing the #63 entry with Jack LeBrocq and Greg Crick was 0.880 seconds slower than Engel in the sister car, but was over a second faster than Mika Salo in the Maranello Motorsport Ferrari that will also be driven by Peter Edwards and Australian touring car legends Craig Lowndes and John Bowe.
The teams that had been fastest in the two earlier sessions completed the top five overall the JBS Swift Lamborghini squad fourth fastest to lead Class B with the NISMO Athlete Global Team fifth.
While the pair of Erebus run cars dominated the session the HTP Motorsport entered SLS caused the most serious of three red flags in the session when Harold Primat crashed at the top of the mountain.
The Griffith Corporation completed a clean sweep of topping sessions in Class C, their Ginetta G50 just two tenths faster than the Motionsport Lotus Exige.
The Motorline BMW team were fastest in Class D.
The Bathurst 12 Hour program continues on Saturday with three separate qualifying sessions to set the grid for the race, scheduled to start at 6:15am local time on Sunday morning.
