Marciello didn’t hold back in his assessment of the decisions – one for weaving under safety car and the other for passing under yellow – and felt his pole-sitting Mercedes-Benz would have been in a winning position during the final session if not for those calls.

“Today we got stolen from victory because we had two drive throughs that were not drive throughs,” he said.

“Maybe the rules are different here compared to Europe or it’s racing in a different way. They said I passed under yellow but the yellow came behind me.”

Marciello was behind the wheel during the final stint of the day where he was hounded by a charging Shane van Gisbergen in a Merc-on-Merc battle around the Mount.

The GrueppeM driver fought hard on older tyres to keep the #888 driver van Gisbergen behind him by just 0.2 seconds at the finish line.

The Vodafone Mercedes team had successfully had a pit lane penalty overturned during the race, which was another point of contention for Marciello.

“They [#888] had a drive through and they removed it. We were not able to speak with the stewards like they did,” he said.

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“We came here for the win and we finished third so we cannot be happy with where we finished today.”

Marciello’s teammate and former 12 Hour podium finisher, Maximilian Buhk, was also disappointed to see the team penalised twice.

“The were a lot of ups and downs and setbacks in the race. We don’t know why we got the penalties but we showed that we had the pace to fight for the victory,” he said.

“It was fun to be back in Bathurst. I really enjoy driving here and this is a really good start to the season.”

The other Maximillian of the team, Goetz, said it great to work with two familiar faces through the weekend.

“We performed well together. As the others said, we were a bit unlucky and we could be happier with how we went,” he said.

“We had an engineer behind us today who made the right decision to extend our stints.”