One week after his sensational class win at the Daytona 24 Hours, Augusto Farfus took the wheel of the BMW M6 GT3 to kick off the Intercontinental GT Challenge season with the legendary Bathurst 12 Hour race in Australia. He shared duties with fellow drivers Nick Catsburg and Chaz Mostert. Unfortunately luck wasn’t on their side this time.
An unfortunate collision with a kangaroo initially required a long stop for repairs and forced the team to retire from the race later.
The accident occurred roughly three hours into the race, shortly after Catsburg had replaced start driver Mostert behind the wheel. The animal jumped on the track right in front of the car. It was impossible to avoid a collision. This forced the #34 BMW M6 GT3 into the pits for lengthy repairs. By this point in the race, Mostert and Catsburg had already fought their way into seventh place after starting 15th.
Farfus climbed into the driver’s seat in 24th place after the unscheduled stop, after which the team initially set about trying to make up ground again and score valuable championship points. Ultimately, however, they were forced to retire from the race with temperature issues resulting from the incident.
“On the whole, that was a difficult weekend for us,” said Farfus. “We were not quite able to match the pace of the front-runners. Despite that, we gave it our all until the very unfortunate incident with the kangaroo cost us the race. I’d like to say a big thank you to BMW Motorsport and the Walkenhorst team for the great job they have done. The BMW M6 GT3 had no technical issues. There are more big races to come for us.”
