A Saturday morning lap from Oliver Gavin gave the Oakley Motorsports sponsored Rotek Racing team class pole position for the Liqui–Moly Bathurst 12 Hours.
The Corvette Racing works driver, joining the German-American team for the Mount Panorama weekend despite having fewer than a dozen laps around the famous New South Wales track, was the first man of the team to take on qualifying duties on Saturday. Though the 60 minute morning session was halted twice for substantial crashes Gavin was still able to take the team’s Audi R8 LMS around the track in 2:07.999.
In the team, the driver line-up completed by Richard Meins and 25 Hours of Thunderhil victors Kevin Gleason and Rob Huff, it was planned for 2012 World Touring Car champion Huff to take the car on for the afternoon session. The intention was for the Briton to build on the foundation laid by Gavin in the earlier session.
However, a gearbox issue in the car limited Huff to just two laps in the 65-minute session leaving Gavin’s lap to represent the team in qualifying.
Fortunately, their closest rivals in Class B for the race (scheduled to start at 6:15am Sunday morning local time (7:15pm Saturday evening UK time) also failed to improve upon their morning time in the second session, leaving the Rotek squad to claim pole by a little over four tenths of a second in 14th overall.
One of the team’s initial rivals in Class B, the JBS Swift sponsored Lamborghini Gallardo that led Friday’s opening session had been moved to Class A for qualifying and the race, boosting Rotek Racing’s chances of leaving Australia with a class win.
