Belt failure ends Dean Campbell's maiden Bathurst 6 Hour tilt

Prior to the weekend Campbell had never raced at Mount Panorama, but the Bathurst driver saw the 6 Hour as the perfect event in which to make his home track debut.

He and co-driver Cameron Crick overcame a nervous moment in practice when their Mitsubishi Lancer caught on fire due to an overflow tank issue and had enjoyed a good opening hour in Sunday's race.

At one stage Crick was sitting in second outright and after Campbell's first stint behind the wheel, they were running in eighth.

But on lap 52 their good run ended.

"It was a bit of an unusual problem the main belt came off and took out the radiator hose and it over-heated and that was the end of that," Campbell explained.

"The temperature rises pretty quick and that sort of race scenario, you can over-heat even in a normal scenario, and in this case the temperature was through the roof in seconds."

Crick was behind the wheel when the belt failed and managed to get the car back to the pits. After 10 minutes the team thought they'd fixed the issue and were ready to resume racing, but they then discovered the engine had been damaged.

"We did fix it and as soon as we started it up it had a pressure rise in the radiator which means you've got a damaged head gasket or a cracked head something like that. Like the engine was still running, but it had overheated something and damaged it, so you couldn't run it that way," Campbell said.

"We thought we'd get it out there again, but once we started it up we realised it was no good.

"It was a shame because we were running third in our class, we were going pretty good actually, and to be honest I wouldn't have been surprised if we ended up in the top five by the end of the day.

"We were second outright at one point, we were up there for awhile, but it all went south in the end."

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While Campbell was naturally disappointed he and his team did not get the chance to push on from their solid start, the experience of his first race event at Mount Panorama was one he most certainly enjoyed.

"It was my first time up there, so it wasn't a bad start to the racing scene up there for me. The atmosphere was awesome, I thought it was great," he said.

"It's good racing, it's not very often you get an opportunity to go and race there and the times, even though you look at Supercars and they're doing 2:05 around there and we are going around at 2:30 odd, the thrill is very similar."

A new engine will be put into the car so it is ready for its next assignment - the opening round of the Australian Production Cars Series - at Sydney Motorsport Park on May 27-29.

Campbell will also get another chance to tackle Mount Panorama.

"I'll be back there in November actually for four 30-minute sprint races for the Australian Production Car Series. Then we'll be back again next Easter obviously," he said.

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