LAST year when the V8 Supercars announced that they had scheduled a test day which clashed with the Bathurst 12 Hour, Nissan Australia chief executive Richard Emery went in to fight for a resolution to the conflict.
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While he lost that battle and Nissan star Rick Kelly was unable to compete in the Bathurst 12 Hour as he attended the compulsory V8 Supercars test day instead, Emery is more than willing to fight again if needed.
This time it will not be about any scheduling conflicts given V8 Supercars will take over running and promoting the Mount Panorama endurance event in 2016 – his message is not to tinker too much with an already successful formula.
He recently met with V8 Supercars executives at Queensland Raceway and Emery was keen to discuss the Bathurst 12 Hour.
“I just told them not to f... it up. That was exactly my opening words,” Emery told Speedcafe.com.
“I would have to say that they are acutely aware that they are going to be watched at every step they take.
“They don’t want to start messing with something that’s organically starting to grow.
“As we all know, the 12 Hour has got some momentum now. It was probably already going to roll along and didn’t necessarily need to be ramped up.”
While Nissan currently runs four cars in the V8 series, they are keen to explore more GT racing in Australia.
Two of the cars they run in the V8 Supercars Championship – that of Michael Caruso and James Moffat – carry Nismo livery which mirrors that of the Nissan GT-R entry which has contested the last two editions of the Bathurst 12 Hour.
Nissan are also the defending Bathurst 12 Hour champions with the team of Katsumasa Chiyo, Wolfgang Reip and Florian Strauss winning a thrilling two-lap final sprint over the Phoenix Racing Audi R8 back in February.
Both Reip and Strauss are graduates of Nissan’s global GT Academy.
Since confirming their purchase, V8 Supercars have reportedly made plans to increase the current three-day Bathurst 12 Hour event into a five-day affair.
It would feature two days of motor sport festival-type activities before racing gets underway on the Friday.
V8 Supercars chief executive James Warburton said he is committed to making the Bathurst 12 Hour a strong a stand alone GT event.
“We are looking at this event purely as an international GT event and running it in the same configuration as before,” he said.
“I don’t think you want it to become a V8 Supercars-dominated event.
“From an international GT point of view, it needs to attract the best entries and, sure, if the V8 guys want to drive, that’s great.
“But we won’t be actively encouraging [V8] people to do it, just as we certainly won’t be stopping them from doing it. We’re also very conscious of the GT community. The last thing we want to do is impair the event’s growing appeal as one of the world’s great GT endurance races.”
Whatever format the new owners take, Emery wants the 12 Hour to be treated as an entirely different entity to the V8 Supercar rounds.
“That’s how it should be,” he said.
“They’ve bought the 12 Hour in isolation and I think it should have its own life. As a stand alone event, I think it needs to be separated.”
The 2016 Bathurst 12 Hour will run from February 5-7.
