12h Bathurst | Chaos, fear and crashes. Rossi and Marciello on the podium

Mercedes wins, Rossi on the podium

The 2026 edition of the Bathurst 12 Hour promises to be remembered for a long time, a historic endurance race that takes place on the legendary Australian circuit of Mount Panorama. What risks staying in the memory of fans, more than the sporting result of the race, are the many and dramatic accidents that conditioned it. Final success smiled upon Mercedes, which prevailed with the trio Engel-Grenier-Martin at the wheel of the GT3 EVO. Second position for the Porsche 911 GT3R of the High Class Racing team, driven by Boccolacci-Fjordbach-Li, while on the lowest step of the podium the Italian tricolor also flies: Valentino Rossi, Raffaele Marciello and Augusto Farfus have in fact brought the Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO to third place.

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A kangaroo in the night

But we were mentioning the accidents: two were the most impressive, from a visual point of view and also in terms of danger. The first took place within the first 20 minutes of the race and involved the Ford Mustang GT3 driven in that first stint by a very unlucky Christopher Mies. The 36-year-old German driver, a two-time winner at Bathurst in his career, in fact hit a kangaroo head-on – at night and with poor visibility – on the Conrod Straight.

The crash occurred at about 230 km/h. The #6 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO of Jayden Ojeda’s Team Tigani Motorsport was also partially involved in the accident, although it was then able to continue the race. For Mies, the race obviously ended there, but at least the driver is fine. “I am happy to be here now talking to you, it was obviously a very strong impact, at very high speed – said Mies – the moment I saw the kangaroo was the moment I hit it. There was no warning.“

Aron-Zelger, what a scare

Even more frightening was a second accident, this time occurring about 3 hours and 40 minutes from the checkered flag, which was also weighed down by decidedly irresponsible behavior by the track marshals: the #79 Porsche driven by Johannes Zelger spun out on the corner before Forrest’s Elbow, with Damien Hamilton’s #14 Aston Martin stuck behind. The marshals, however, incredibly, did not wave the yellow flags.

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This collision occurred during the restart phase after another previous very dangerous accident involving the ‘solo’ #268 Audi of James Golding.

Ralf Aron, at the wheel of the #77 Mercedes – which had mistakenly entered the pit lane during the previous Safety Car due to communication problems with the pits – was the first car to arrive on the scene and had no warning of what had happened, finding himself in a blind corner and – precisely – without danger signals from the marshals.

The impact with Zelger’s #79 car thus occurred at full speed, also causing a small fire on the Mercedes. After this crash, the race was stopped with a red flag. Fortunately (and incredibly, one might add), the drivers, although very shaken and disoriented, managed to get out of their respective cars on their own. This is, for everyone, the true victory of this weekend.

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