MOUNT Panorama is coming to life once again as teams and drivers settle in ahead of the Bathurst 12 Hour race meeting.
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Australian and international teams started arriving in Bathurst from Monday and will continue to flow in over the coming days ahead of the official start on Thursday.
The garage was coming together quickly for HubAuto Corsa on Tuesday, with the crew of about 20 starting set-up that morning.
While some teams have entered multiple cars, HubAuto has just one Ferrari 488 GT3 to manage.
The Taiwan-based team has chosen an all-Australian line-up of drivers for the event.
Current Supercars Championship drivers and teammates Nick Percat and Tim Slade will join with sports car racer Nick Foster.
Between them the drivers have quite a good understanding of the tricky Mount Panorama circuit, something the team’s operations manager, Phillip Di Fazio, said played into the decision to bring them on board.
“We decided to go with an all-Australian line-up because, one, the local track knowledge, and so that we would get the local fans in Australia behind the team,” he said.
“Our goal is to obviously come here and win.”
Mr Di Fazio couldn’t give too much away about the team’s strategy, but said there would likely be between eight and 10 stints for the drivers on Sunday.
He expected the most challenging part would be in the morning, saying that it’s very easy to make mistakes then or get caught up in other people’s errors, but he expected the team would shine in the afternoon.
Team manger Jerry Lin said the the drivers were familiar with the car already, something that would help their 12 Hour campaign.
Another recent arrival to the mountain was Earl Bamber Motorsport (EBM), with the team starting to set up their operation on Monday.
They will field two Porsche GT3 Rs, each to be piloted by three drivers, who will represent four nations.
EBM team manager Greg Wooster said the team had started its Bathurst campaign late, with the decision to race not made until December.
They sent people to Germany to prepare the cars ahead of the 12 Hour, with the vehicles leaving the country for Australia on January 18.
The cars have arrived and the drivers and crew members, including team owner Earl Bamber, are slowly starting to appear at the Mount.
“Earl and most of the drivers are coming over from Daytona,” Mr Wooster said.
The Daytona 24-hour race was held in Florida and wrapped up in the early hours of Monday morning, Australian EDST.
The Bathurst 12 Hour will commence at 5.45am on Sunday, February 3. Tickets can be purchased from the event’s official website, or people can watch live coverage from start to finish on 7Mate.
