The Scott Taylor Motorsport Mercedes-AMG of Cam Waters has led the way in the final practice session at the Repco Bathurst 12 Hour, which also decided the qualifying split for this afternoon.
Waters set a last gasp time of 2m 02.919s to take the bragging rights into qualifying as a late red flag caused by an incident involving the Invitational Class KTM X-Bow GT2 at Forrest’s Elbow led to a red flag with mere seconds remaining.
In a close session, the first 14 teams were covered by exactly one second as the top 15 progressed to the battle for a spot in the Top 10 Shootout starting at 12:40pm AEDT.
Fellow Repco Supercars Championship full-time driver Broc Feeney set the benchmark for Waters to beat at a 2m 02.944s, which in turn lowered the mark Australian factory Mercedes-AMG driver Jordan Love set at a 2m 03.096s.
Heart of Racing SPS driver Ross Gunn made it a Mercedes-AMG lockout of the top four places as Wash It/Jamec Racing’s Kelvin van der Linde broke the run in fifth setting a time 0.527s off the benchmark in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo 2.
Belgian ace Alessio Picariello led the Manthey EMA charge in sixth driving the Pro-Am entry to be co-driven by Harry King and dual Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS series winner Yasser Shahin.
Hallmarc Racing’s Lee Holdsworth was the surprise packet of the session to sit seventh on a 2m 03.524 ahead of Valentino Rossi in the Team WRT BMW M4 GT3.
Rounding out the top 10 was Jules Gounon for SunEnergy1 and Sheldon van der Linde in the second Team WRT BMW.
Those to make the cut off were the Pro Class Manthey EMA Porsche Type-992 GT3R, last year’s polesitters Mercedes-AMG GruppeM Racing, Craft Bamboo Racing, the Tigani Motorsport Mercedes-AMG and KFC/Jamec Racing’s Audi.
Phantom Group Racing’s Porsche, the Audi of Valmont Racing, M Motorsport in its Mercedes-AMG and the Wall Racing Lamborghini failed to make the top 15.
Qualifying for the 2024 Repco Bathurst 12 Hour will commence at 12:40pm AEDT before the Top 10 Shootout at 4:05pm AEDT.