2026 Bathurst 12 Hour was amazing but rough

After an unforgettable wet/dry Bathurst 1000 last year, the 12 Hour seems to have achieved new heights of importance, with a strong grid boasting multiple new manufacturers and packed with top-tier drivers. Attendance was reportedly record-breaking, business was booming in town, and the weather was amazing. Australia’s international endurance race is entering a well-deserved heyday.

Mount Panorama is one of those tracks that is said to supernaturally choose its champion, and in this year’s 12 Hour, the Mountain was intensely discerning, eliminating one contender after another until one of the most diamond-hard, razor-sharp entries — Mercedes-AMG Team GMR’s #888, driven by Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, and Mikaël Grenier — was permitted to win, smashing a record for how far back a 12 Hour winner had started, having come from 29th on the grid.

The Mountain is a formidable place. This is known and expected and part of racing there. It is central to the circuit’s allure. But despite having delivered the kind of brutal challenge its audience and competitors expect, the 2026 race was marred by some incidents that were — fortunately — merely horrible and not tragic.

This race is beloved for its pre-dawn start, with GT cars hauling the mail up Mountain Straight three-wide, only their headlights visible. The first hour is crowned by sunrise atop the mountain, heralding a glorious beginning to the race, unlike other day-long endurance races where sunrise provides relief from a long, dark night.

Unfortunately, at the 12 Hour this year, sunrise was more of a relief than usual. The dark beginning had been shattered by multiple wildlife strikes, most notably a collision with a massive kangaroo by the factory Mustang GT3 driven by Christopher Mies, ending the car’s debut at Bathurst after not even half an hour. The Mustang was obliterated, and the driver was traumatized and lucky to be alive, to say nothing of what happened to the tough, graceful animal.

This was an ominous beginning, and it was echoed by a later collision that could have been even more catastrophic in terms of human life.

In the ninth hour, at the end of a safety car period, the lapped cars were given a wave-around. Following this race’s procedures, that small group of back-markers dropped the hammer. They are not permitted to change position, but nor is the field held until the wave-bys reach the back of the pack; they are given the green flag when they reach the line. The wave-by cars are only given the chance to recover a lap, and in order to do that, they have to stay ahead of the leaders under full-blast racing conditions.

So the cars at the back of the field — some driven by inexperienced drivers, some slowed by damage or other issues, some as fast as the cars at the front — hurtled up the mountain as fast as they could while still driving hesitantly enough to avoid passing one another and incurring penalties. Entering the narrow and blind sections for which Mount Panorama is renowned, cars made contact, spun, slowed, and stopped.

The Tsunami RT Porsche 911, driven by Bathurst 12 Hour debutant Johannes Zelger, was turned around and stopped in a blind corner as the leaders raced towards him. It was obvious what was going to happen. Yellow flags were shown in the area, but it isn’t clear if the flag stand best positioned to warn drivers in time was doing its job. Hopefully, an investigation will clear that up. The race leader was Ralf Aron in the Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG, which was having intermittent radio issues, which could happen to anyone on the brutal and wild circuit. He had no idea what was around the corner.

The Mercedes and the Porsche became twisted, smoking sculptures of destruction. Both drivers crawled out of the wreckage, but Aron only made it just clear of the track before lying on his back in agony. He was taken to the hospital, and he turns out to have broken his back. Thank God, he retains full sensation and mobility, and he even wants to come back to the Mountain. The motor racing world is lucky he could have the chance.

Every racing series is an experiment with the balance between what you might call the “American style” of keeping lapped cars in the race with wave-bys and the “European style” of preserving the sanctity of race positions through incidents and restarts. The former is more spectacular. The latter is safer. Australian racing — with Bathurst as its epitome — tends toward the former. Its drivers and fans want to see a cracking motor race. International GT drivers may have American-style racing experience from IMSA, but generally they are used to the latter. This is a recipe for confusion.

At a long and treacherous track like Mount Panorama, field spread is guaranteed. It makes sense to give lapped cars a chance. But I cannot understand a rule that releases the fastest cars behind the slowest cars — who are going as fast as they can while still having to worry about staying in position — on a track with massive elevation changes, close walls, and blind curves. We may find that there were other procedural failures that contributed to this incident, but surely it would have been avoided if the wave-bys were simply allowed to catch the field before it went green. It’s a long race. There’s time.

These dangerous incidents contributed to the tension in a race that is always tense. There were many more racing incidents, questionable blocks, race-ending mistakes, and other heartbreaks. Those things are always part of racing on the Mountain. Last year, over the top at Skyline, Kenny Habul and Stephen Grove got into each other so hard that Grove’s AMG went airborne and looked for one chilling instant like it might go right over the side. Terror is a familiar companion racing at Bathurst. But both of this year’s serious incidents had an absurdity about them that suggests there should have been ways to mitigate them. I hope to see some proactive efforts to prevent the next one.

Don’t let this take away from the greatness of this race, though. The Bathurst 12 Hour still welcomes independent challengers, and they rise to the occasion and go toe to toe with the hardened pros. Such a car — the High Class Racing #86 Porsche of Kerong Li, Anders Fjordbach, and Dorian Boccolacci — started 30th, right behind the eventual winners, and finished second to them overall by merely a second. This is a glorious result. As the Bathurst 12 Hour grows into its status as a global crown jewel of endurance sports car racing, we can hope for the 2026 podium to go down as an aspirational example, even as the race’s most brutal incidents should go down as a warning.