The Bathurst 12 Hours has firmly established itself as one of the world's great GT races. In some respects it has taken on a lot of the functions that the Bathurst 1000 in October used to play, in that that touring car race no longer invites overseas teams and has closed the shop to such an extent that privateer and teams wanting a one in a million shot, will never be allowed to play again.
Being a GT race, the Bathurst 12 Hours tuns according to GT3 rules, though to pad out the field, it has allowed Improved Production Cars and GT4 cars to play in the past. It has also allowed Invitational Teams to play as well and in this respect, I think that the race organisers openly show weaponised incompetence.
If you look through the list of competitors for the last decade, you will see the team MARC appear again and again in the Invitational Class. MARC Cars Australia Pty Ltd which is a race car manufacturing company, originally built a a prototype for South Africa's Global Touring Car Championship (GTC) and have supplied the tubular chassis ever since. The premise is simple, MARC provides a chassis, the teams are then free to source a bodyshell and panels to fit on the outside, then the engines are mandated at 2-Litre turbocharged and producing 325kW and 600nm of torque.
However, MARC still wants to be able to sell it chassis beyond merely South Africa and putting it on the world's stage at the Bathurst 12 Hours is a sensible idea. However, at the Bathurst 12 Hours, MARC cars are effectively not eligible for a race win because they are consistently kneecapped so as not to show up the GT3 cars.
In the past, MARC cars have included the Mazda 3, Ford Focus and Ford Mustang, and all run some version of Ford's Coyote V8. The MARC cars according to their own website are described as:
https://www.marccarsaustralia.com.au/marc-car-ii.html
MARC II V8, a second generation car featuring a more powerful 5.2L version of the Coyote V8. The Mustang inspired MARC II is a fully carbon body, paddle-shift operated Albins 6-speed transaxle gearbox with GT-style aerodynamics.
- MARC Cars Australia Pty Ltd.
Here's where I think that the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours demonstrate weaponised incompetence. They have chosen to allow a car into an Invitational Class but not allowed it to win outright or effectively compete against anything else. Is it truly a race when you are the only competitor?
The problem is that that the MARC cars from the outset do not properly fit into a GT3 class. FIA GT3 does allow for a very large variety of car types to be homologated; seemingly with no limits on engine sizes, drivetrain configuration, or even rollcage and chassis construction. FIA GT3 homologation though, must be endorsed or approved by the manufacturer; which means that an independent fabricator like MARC would never be allowed to submit their work for GT3 homologation.
The unbelievable truth is that there is a series which upon finding that they FIA homologation process was too hard, decided to allow "FIA GT3 like" cars in its series; then even went and provided a standardised chassis and a crate motor for the purposes of allowing independents to join in. The Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) in running Super GT in Japan, has two classes being GT500 which was their eventual successor to Group A, and GT300 which as the name might suggest, is not exactly a GT3 series but a GT3 plus series.
In addition to FIA GT3 cars, there are so called "Mother Chassis" cars which teams are then free to put whatever they like over the outside, and JAF regulations which allow teams to build a car as though it were a GT3 car but without the need for FIA homologation. This is why for instance, there has been Toyota GT-86 MC and a Subaru BRZ JAF car but not an actual FIA GT3 Toyota GT-86 or Subaru BRZ.
So what gives? The Subaru BRZ JAF car took the EJ20 four cylinder boxer engine from the World Rally Championship WRX. The Toyota GT-86 MC uses the standard GT300 crate motor which as a 4.5L V8, looks suspiciously similar to the Nissan VK45 which is also a 4.5L V8 engine. How do these things run together in the same series? How do they run in the same series with the existing GT3 cars like the Lamborghini Huracán, Porsche 911, Mercedes AMG-GT, Audi R8 LMS Evo II, Lexus LC500 and Nissan GT-R? A curious thing called "Balance of Performance".
The end point of imposing Balance of Performance is obvious. As GT3 is already a mix of cars and GT300 further mixes those things, with engines in the front, back and centre, driving the front or the back, then power and weight is played with, then fuel flow rates are played with; along with a standard set of front and rear aero; all in the name of balancing the performance of the cars to make sure that they perform roughly the same on track and produce similar lap times. As far I can tell from the JAF GT300 regulations, weights and power generally range from 1000kg and 267kW to about 1330kg and 350kW.
Now here's the thing, if the FIA can do this kind of thing for FIA GT3 cars, and JAF can do do this kind of thing for FIA GT3 cars and JAF cars and Mother Chassis cars, then why is it beyond the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours? Are they just incompetent at running the race? Do they think that this is too hard?
Since the JAF allows a team to put any engine ever made by a manufacturer into any car produced by that same manufacturer, then why aren't MARC allowed to out a Coyote into a Ford Focus and have it BoP'd against GT3 cars? It seems to me that Ford's 5.2L quad-cam Coyote V8 would already be a suitable candidate under JAF regulations. Since the JAF would have this car which produces "615 Bhp @ 7000 RPM" tariffed at 1725kg (since that's what the BoP works out to be), then what's wrong with that? I am sure that MARC could derate the amount of power coming out of the engine to be exactly equivalent with say the BMW M4 and the same weight by adding or removing ballast. If I can do these kinds of basic calculations, why is it beyond the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours?
From the outside, motorsport always looks like a plaything for the rich and by the rich that sometimes we are allowed to look on at. It also looks at though, given that Australia doesn't even have a motor industry any more, that the organisers of motorsport in Australia are perpetually too lazy to let people in Australia try to innovate and invent, because it is too much work for them to work out how to compare the new things to other things.
Quite frankly, I think that MARC should be allowed to play because they have invented a thing. If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I'd have contracted MARC to act as the standard for our own Mother Chassis type cars and then maybe we'd have seen a whole flood of fabulousness in the Bathurst 12 Hours, just like they have in Super GT in GT300. However, MARC is not allowed to play because the shop is closed... again.
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