2024 Repco Bathurst 1000 – Bendix Racing Round Wrap-Up

The tenth round of the 2024 Supercars Championship brought Bendix Racing to Bathurst for the second time this year for the 2024 Repco Bathurst 1000. Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit would host the 1000-kilometre test of endurance for the 64^th time with Dylan O’Keefe joining Nick Percat again to pilot the Bendix Racing Camaro for the 161-lap goliath.

Bendix Racing would first hit the track on Thursday with the weekend’s first practice session. Nick Percat would take the 20^th fastest lap of the session with a best time of 1m08.549s. Thursday’s next and final practice session would see Dylan O’Keefe take the wheel and drive the 13^th fastest lap amongst the pack with a best time of 2m08.753s.

Practice 3 would kick off Friday’s festivities with Bendix Racing finding themselves in the Top Ten with the 8^th fastest lap thanks to a 2m07.142 best time. However, the session would end in dramatic fashion after an incident with the wall at Griffins Bend would see the Bendix Racing Camaro sent back to the pits for major surgery.

With all hands on deck, the team would have the Bendix Racing Camaro back on track just in time for Nick Percat to enter Practice 4 halfway through the session. In the freshly repaired Camaro, Nick would claim the 23^rd fastest lap in the session with a 2m07.794s best time.

Friday would end with Qualifying for Race 20 and see Nick Percat earn Bendix Racing a P13 start on the grid for Sunday’s big race thanks to a 2m06.179s best lap.

Dylan O’Keefe would take the wheel to kick off Saturday’s Practice 5 and end the session with the 25^th fastest lap amongst the pack with a best time of 2m09.058s. Nick Percat would end Saturday’s on-track action with Practice 6, claiming the 16^th fastest lap of the session with a 2m07.888s best time.

Sunday’s festivities would commence with a quick warm-up session before the lights would go out on the big race later in the morning. Nick Percat would drive the first stint to kick off the 1000-kilometre giant before swapping with Dylan O’Keefe on Lap 29. The team would fight hard before returning to the pits at the halfway point of the race for a brake change and a driver change.

Nick Percat would remain in the Bendix Racing Camaro for a gruelling 73 laps. The team would enjoy a clean stint apart from the passenger door swinging open in the later stages of the race, sending the car back into the pits to quickly close it. Nick Percat would ultimately send the Bendix Racing Camaro home to a P17 finish. The team had the following to say to round out their enormous efforts.

Nick Percat: “Well that is Bathurst run and done. It hasn’t gone quite to plan on the Car #10 side, we had a little niggling issue during the race and the door wouldn’t close. Bathurst throws everything at you — we had to have an extra pit stop and close the door. Massive credit to the team getting the cars rebuilt, Car #4 in the top 10 and our car was fast but obviously the door issue didn’t help us.”

Dylan O’Keefe: “The day started well, Nick got a good start and the car seemed to look after its tyres really well. With no safety cars and incidents I smashed out a double stint, which was pretty good. Just had to bring it back in one piece for Nick and I was pretty excited to see what he could do behind the wheel. The door coming loose in the pit stop was pretty annoying and just something that shouldn’t happen — I don’t know if it stemmed on from the accident or just wasn’t shut hard enough but obviously we’ll analyse it.”

With this year’s Bathurst 1000 in the history books, we see Nick Percat remain at 7^th on the leaderboard with 1548 points. In the team standings, Matt Stone Racing moves up to 5^th place on the leaderboard with a total of 2926 points.

The 2024 Supercars Championship continues later this month when the series heads to Queensland for the 2024 Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500, running from October 25^th – 27^th.

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