| Event Information | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 11 of 15 in the2012 International V8 Supercars Championship | ||||||||||||||
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| Date | 4–7 October 2012 | |||||||||||||
| Location | Bathurst,New South Wales | |||||||||||||
| Venue | Mount Panorama Circuit | |||||||||||||
| Weather | Fine | |||||||||||||
| Results | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
The2012 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 was an Australiantouring car motor race forV8 Supercars, the twenty-first race of the2012 International V8 Supercars Championship.[1] It was held on Sunday, 7 October 2012[2] at theMount Panorama Circuit on the outskirts ofBathurst,New South Wales, inAustralia.
TheFord Performance Racing duo ofWill Davison andJohn McIntyre started the race from pole position.[3]Jamie Whincup andPaul Dumbrell won the race, ahead ofDavid Reynolds andDean Canto in second place, andCraig Lowndes andWarren Luff completing the podium.[4] Whincup and Dumbrell's race time of six hours, sixteen minutes and one-point-three seconds was the second-fastest race time in the history of the event.
The 2012 race was the sixteenth running of theAustralian 1000 race, which was first held after the organisational split between theAustralian Racing Drivers Club andV8 Supercars Australia that saw the Bathurst race run twice in 1997 and 1998, with one race open to V8 Supercar entries, and the other open toSuper Touring cars. The schism was repaired in time for the1999 race, with the race being open exclusively to V8 Supercars.
The 2012 race was also the 55th race for which the lineage can be traced back to the1960 Armstrong 500 – held atPhillip Island – and the 52nd to be held at Mount Panorama; the two separate races of 1997 and 1998 are recognised as four individual runnings of the event. Race organisers planned to use this race to celebrate the 50th year since the race first moved from Phillip Island to Mount Panorama in1963, though it was not until1973 that the race was run over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi); from 1963 to1972, the race was run over 500 miles (800 km).
TheHolden Racing Team driversGarth Tander andNick Percat were the defending race winners.[5]
All twenty-eight cars which contest the regular V8 Supercar season took part in the race,[6] plus one "wildcard" entry—a car that is only entered in the endurance races—prepared byMinda Motorsport and operated byKelly Racing.[7][8] Each car was driven by its regular driver, who contests the full International V8 Supercar Championship, and a guest driver, who only took part in the Bathurst race and its prologue, theSandown 500. These guest drivers were recruited from a variety of racing categories, including theDunlop Development Series (such asNick Percat, partneringGarth Tander), theV8 Ute Racing Series (such asChris Pither, partneringDavid Wall), and the New Zealand-basedV8 SuperTourer Series (such asJohn McIntyre, partneringWill Davison), among others. Each driver was required to complete at least 54 laps of the race, with the teams given the freedom to allocate those laps as they see fit.
The only exception to this applied specifically to the Kelly Racing—Minda Motorsport "wildcard" entry. This car was driven byCam Waters andJesse Dixon, both of whom won the opportunity to drive as part of theShannons Supercar Showdown, a reality television programme created by Kelly Racing.[9][10] Waters, who won the 2011 competition, was a late entry to the grid; the car was originally scheduled to be driven by Dixon, the 2012 winner, and Australian television personalityGrant Denyer. However, Denyer was forced to withdraw two weeks before the race due to injury,[9] and Waters was drafted in to replace him. Together, Waters (18) and Dixon (19) formed the youngest driver line-up to enter the race in its fifty-year history.[10]
The first free practice session took place on the Thursday morning before the race, taking the form of a fifty-minute timed session open to all drivers, though most teams elected to run only their primary drivers. The session passed without incident, andMichael Caruso – driving forGarry Rogers Motorsport – finished the session fastest, one-tenth of a second ahead of championship leaderJamie Whincup and the Ford Falcon ofShane van Gisbergen.[11]Cam Waters, driving theKelly Racing /Minda Motorsport wildcard entry, finished in twenty-ninth and last place, five and a half seconds behind Caruso, and two and a half seconds behind the sister Kelly Racing car ofKarl Reindler andDaniel Gaunt in twenty-eighth place.
The second forty-five-minute free practice session early on Thursday afternoon was limited to co-drivers.Britek Motorsport'sChris Pither became the first driver to crash when he locked up one of his front wheels at the end of Mountain Straight, understeering into the tyre wall on the outside of Griffins' Bend.[12] Although the damage was minor, the session was suspended for thirteen minutes to allow the circuit to be cleared, and the car was retired to the garage for the remainder of the session.Warren Luff – partner toCraig Lowndes in the #888Triple Eight Race EngineeringCommodore – finished fastest, ahead ofAndrew Jones andSteven Richards.[13] In his first appearance in a V8 Supercar,Jesse Dixon finished twenty-ninth, the Kelly Racing / Minda Motorsport setting a fastest lap that was five seconds slower than Luff's time.Stone Brothers Racing driverLee Holdsworth also took part in the session, despite being a primary driver rather than a co-driver, testing Ford's"Car of the Future" prototype to gather data on tyre performance for tyre supplier Dunlop.[14] Holdsworth also drove the car in two of theDunlop V8 Supercar Series support race practice sessions.
The first day of running ended with a fifty-minute session late on Thursday afternoon. Like the first session, it ran without incident, though drivers were cautioned when kangaroos were spotted on Conrod Straight. Jamie Whincup ended the session on top, half a second faster thanWill Davison.[15] Whincup's final flying lap was nearly a second faster than Davison, who subsequently narrowed the margin with his own final lap. After Pither's accident sidelined the Britek Motorsports car for most of the second session, the car was repaired and its regular driver,David Wall was able to complete the session, finishing twenty-third overall.
Practice resumed on Friday morning, with a second session open only to co-drivers. The session was incident-free, and at the end of fifty minutes,Scott McLaughlin – partneringTekno Autosports'Jonathon Webb – was fastest, a tenth of a second quicker than Jamie Whincup's partner,Paul Dumbrell. Once again, Jesse Dixon finished the session last in the Kelly Racing / Minda Motorsport wildcard entry, but improved his best time from the second practice session by two seconds, but was shown the bad sportsmanship flag for abusing the limits of the circuit while going through The Esses.[16]
The Triple Eight Race Engineering pair of Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes topped the final free practice session before qualifying, with Whincup half a second faster than his teammate.[17] The session was suspended twice due to incidents; the first came whenTony D'Alberto made contact with the wall at McPhillamy Park, damaging his front tyre and elected to stop on the circuit rather than risk further damage to the car ahead of qualifying. The second interruption came shortly after D'Alberto's car was cleared from the circuit whenTim Slade got caught in the gravel trap on the outside of Murray's Corner.
Mark Winterbottom set the fastest time in the final practice session, held on Saturday morning.[18]Garth Tander was second-fastest, three tenths of a second behind Winterbottom, while Winterbottom's teammate, Will Davison was third-fastest.Dick Johnson Racing'sJames Moffat finished the session in twenty-ninth, some thirty-six seconds off Winterbottom's time after his car broke a tailshaft that ripped an oil line free from underneath the car, causing enough damage to sideline the #17 entry for the remainder of the session.
| Session | Time | No. | Driver | Team | Car | Fastest lap | Weather | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday | ||||||||
| Practice 1 | 10:40 | 34 |  Michael Caruso | Garry Rogers Motorsport | Holden VE Commodore | 2:08.4081 | Dry, sunny | |
| Practice 2 | 12:25 | 888 | Warren Luff | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Holden VE Commodore | 2:09.1794 | Dry, sunny | |
| Practice 3 | 15:05 | 1 | Jamie Whincup | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Holden VE Commodore | 2:07.3565 | Dry, sunny | |
| Friday | ||||||||
| Practice 4 | 09:25 | 19 |  Scott McLaughlin | Tekno Autosports | Holden VE Commodore | 2:08.9697 | Dry, sunny | |
| Practice 5 | 11:00 | 1 | Jamie Whincup | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Holden VE Commodore | 2:07.5000 | Dry, sunny | |
| Saturday | ||||||||
| Practice 6 | 10:25 | 5 | Mark Winterbottom | Ford Performance Racing | Ford FG Falcon | 2:07.7370 | Dry, overcast | |
The forty-minute qualifying session was held on Friday afternoon. It decided positions eleven through to twenty-nine on the grid, with the top ten drivers advancing to the Top 10 Shootout, to be held on the Saturday afternoon. During the Friday session, drivers were free to complete as much running as necessary to set a competitive lap time, but with the knowledge that their tyre allocation for the weekend was limited and that they would have to qualify on tyres that they would later use the race, the drivers had to balance their desire to set a fast time against the need to preserve as many tyres as possible for Sunday's race.
The session was red-flagged and suspended almost as soon as the circuit was open, whenHolden Racing Team driverGarth Tander locked one of his tyres up at the end of Mountain Straight and understeered into the barrier on the outside of Griffins' Bend, in an incident similar to the oneChris Pither experienced in free practice. Tander was able to extricate himself from wall with largely cosmetic damage, and he limped back around the circuit to the pits while safety crews cleared away the fluids spilled by hisCommodore in the accident. Tander's team were able to patch up the damage with sheets of tape, and while he was later heard on the radio complaining of his inability to stop the car and seen spinning at Hell Corner, he would ultimately set a lap time that would prove fast enough for a place in the Top 10 Shootout.
Michael Caruso set the early pace in the session, but he was unable to maintain it for long and was soon supplanted by theFord Performance Racing cars driven byMark Winterbottom andWill Davison. The lead would change several times throughout the session, but it was not untilJamie Whincup set his first competitive lap time that the leader board began to stabilise, and from that point on, it became a fight between Whincup and the Fords thatCraig Lowndes briefly entered into, but soon turned his attention to securing a place in the Top 10 Shootout.
Elsewhere, several other drivers encountered troubles;James Moffat very nearly spun coming out of the Skyline, and was forced to apply opposite lock to his steering wheel to avoid the walls. He was later seen spearing off the road at the Chase, having misjudged his braking point and running through the grass on the outside of the left-hander.Jason Bright had a similar off-track excursion, but like Moffat, he was able to avoid the walls.
As the session began to wind down to a close, drivers started producing lap times that were increasingly competitive.Jonathon Webb, Bright,Rick Kelly andJames Courtney had all looked to secure places in the Top 10 Shootout, but were all pushed out in the dying minutes. After forty minutes, Whincup had set the fastest time, ahead ofFabian Coulthard, who had produced a late flying lap to secure second.[19] Mark Winterbottom edged out teammate Davison for third place, ahead of Craig Lowndes,Shane van Gisbergen, andTim Slade. Despite his early accident, Tander recovered to eighth, having run as high as third before the final push for lap times.Steve Owen andDavid Reynolds both qualified in the top ten, though Reynolds was forced to wait anxiously as several other drivers – includingLee Holdsworth and Webb – still had enough time to record one final flying lap, though neither were able to surpass his time.
Webb ultimately missed the cut-off by seven hundredths of a second, leaving him eleventh alongside Bright, with Kelly and Courtney filling out the seventh row of the grid behind them. Holdsworth's final lap left him fifteenth, alongside early pace-setter Caruso. Teammates Moffat andSteven Johnson took sixteenth and seventeenth, alongsideTodd Kelly in the second Jack Daniels' Racing car, in what would be his final appearance in a Holden, having injured his shoulder in a training accident that would force him to miss the final four races of the2012 season,[20] while his team would switch to fielding Nissan Altimas in2013.[21]
Michael Patrizi qualified twentieth alongside Kelly, whileDean Fiore andDavid Wall out-qualified2011 pole-sitterGreg Murphy in his second race back from a recurring back injury.[22]Tony D'Alberto qualified twenty-fourth in the slowest of the Ford Falcons, ahead ofRussell Ingall in twenty-fifth andJack Perkins in twenty-sixth, Perkins having qualified theGarry Rogers-prepared Fujitsu Commodore in the place of regular driverAlexandre Prémat.Taz Douglas andKarl Reindler completed the last full row of the grid, leavingCam Waters andJesse Dixon in twenty-ninth and last place, two-point-seven seconds adrift of Whincup's time.
The Top 10 Shootout took place at 16:30local time on Saturday afternoon. Each of the ten fastest drivers in Friday qualifying were given one lap to set record a final qualifying time running in reverse order – so that the tenth-placed driver from Friday would go first, followed by the ninth-placed driver, all the way down to the fastest driver on Friday, who would be the last driver out – which would then decide the starting order to the top ten places on the grid.
David Reynolds was the first driver to take to the circuit. Conditions were considerably cooler and visibility lower than during the previous day's qualifying session, and Reynolds' lap time was half a second slower than his previous qualifying time.Steve Owen was the next driver out, setting a time that was over a second slower than Reynolds' and confirming that the conditions meant that lap times during the Shootout would not be as fast as the previous day's qualifying times had suggested. Several mistakes around the lap, particularly coming out of the Cutting, would also cost Owen dearly, and he would finish tenth overall.
Garth Tander was the first driver to better Reynolds' time, improving upon his time by four-tenths of a second. He was followed byTim Slade, making his first appearance in the Bathurst Shootout. Slade, too, was fastest than Reynolds, but was unable to surpass Tander's time. Tander's place on provisional pole did not last long, asShane van Gisbergen took to the circuit fifth and established a new benchmark of 2:08.1791, which would prove difficult to beat. A poor first sector fromCraig Lowndes left the three-time Bathurst winner struggling to record a competitive time, and with Van Gisbergen having been the fastest through the final sector, Lowndes ultimately had to settle for ninth.
Will Davison was the next to record a lap time, and while he had the advantage over Van Gisbergen in the first sector, he lost time in the second across the top of the mountain. Davison made a mistake whilst exiting the Chase, but held on by a tenth of a second to take provisional pole away from Van Gisbergen. By his own admission, small errors throughout the lap meant that Davison's hold on provisional pole was tenuous with three more drivers to come. His teammate,Mark Winterbottom was next, and while they were evenly-matched through the first sector, Winterbottom lost time whilst traversing The Esses and was slower than Van Gisbergen.
Reports of rain on the initial climb up the mountain began to come in asFabian Coulthard took to the circuit, and in-car shots clearly showed drizzle as he climbed Mountain Straight. Coulthard's lap was cautious, and while there was not enough water on the circuit to greatly affect his time, he would finish even further adrift of Davison in fifth place. The rain continued as the final runner,Jamie Whincup, started his flying lap, and the reigning champion was unfazed by the worsening weather as he passed through the first sector nine hundredths of a second faster than Will Davison. The second sector split, coming out of Forrest's Elbow, was even closer with Whincup in front by just two ten-thousandths of a second. But despite Davison's messy exit coming out of the Chase, Whincup lost time in the final sector, missing out on pole position by half a second. Thus, Davison claimed his first pole position at theMount Panorama Circuit, with Whincup second. Van Gisbergen and Winterbottom filled out the second row of the grid, ahead of Coulthard and Tander, Slade and Reynolds, and the struggling Lowndes in ninth place alongside Owen.[3]
Race stewards handedTekno Autosports'Michael Patrizi andJonny Reid a five-place grid penalty for blockingJason Bright during the Friday qualifying session, which Bright claimed prevented him from securing a place in the Top 10 Shootout.[23] Patrizi, who had qualified in twentieth place on merit, would start the race from twenty-fifth place instead.
The following table represents the final starting grid for the race on Sunday:
Paul Dumbrell, starting from second on the grid, made the best start, but pole-sitterWill Davison was able to stay with him through Hell Corner and up Mountain Straight, seizing the lead by driving around the outside of Dumbrell through Griffins' Bend. Dumbrell was soon passed byShane van Gisbergen, who immediately started applying pressure to Davison. Meanwhile,Mark Winterbottom made a poor start and slipped down the order, fighting withTim Slade andDavid Reynolds over seventh place.Steve Owen also went backwards at the start, having overshot his grid position when the grid was formed, and being overwhelmed by the fast-starting cars around him as the field headed up Mountain Straight.[25]
Tyre management quickly became a big issue, whenCraig Lowndes was forced to pit after just eleven laps with a tyre failure. Winterbottom was also forced to make an early stop with a similar problem, and both plummeted back down the order. The effect was somewhat negated by the first safety car intervention whenJonny Reid, driving the #91Tekno Autosports entry, ground to a halt on the narrow climb out of the Cutting. Davison, Dumbrell andGarth Tander all elected to pit immediately, while Van Gisbergen stayed out on the circuit to take the lead of the race. Davison changed places with co-driverJohn McIntyre and quickly rejoined, but Dumbrell's stop was compromised when his team was forced to change the driver's-side window, and by the timeJamie Whincup pulled out of the pits, he had lost a place toNick Percat, theHolden Racing Team having capitalised on the slow stop to get the Tander—Percat Commodore out ahead of Whincup. Most of the field would pit under the safety car, and once racing resumed, McIntyre led from Lowndes andLuke Youlden andDean Canto in Van Gisbergen's and Reynolds' cars respectively; Canto quickly reeled Youlden in and passed him as they emerged from Forrest's Elbow and the circuit opened up onto Conrod Srraight.[25]
Whincup's lead did not last long, as he returned to the pits with a delaminated tyre and fell to twenty-first; McIntyre reported a similar problem and pitted, but theFord Performance Racing pit crew could find nothing wrong with the tyre and he rejoined in twenty-second as Lowndes inherited the lead. Percat triggered a second safety car when he crashed coming down through The Esses on the approach to Forrest's Elbow, and although he was able to return to the pits under his own power, he had left a trail of debris on the racing line, necessitating the safety car. His Holden Racing Team crew would ultimately be able to repair the car and send it back out, but twenty laps off the lead. Meanwhile, the field pitted again, but Whincup and McIntyre remained out and resumed the race in first and second. By this point, only Whincup, Lowndes andLucas Dumbrell Motorsport driverTaz Douglas were the only regular drivers out on the circuit, and Whincup took full advantage of a field of co-drivers to build up a thirteen-second lead.[25]
Whincup's strategy began to work against him when the race saw the third safety car in the space of fifty laps. Having just stopped for a brake pad change, Steve Owen found himself at the end of Mountain Straight with no brake pressure and spun at speed into the barriers on the outside of Griffins' Bend. Owen was uninjured, but the car was critically damaged, and would not return to the race. The field bunched up again, and Whincup handed control of his car back to Dumbrell as the rest of the field swapped for their regular drivers. Craig Lowndes was held up in the pit lane waiting for Whincup to complete his stop and fell from fourth to twelfth as a result, while John McIntyre spun at Hell Corner and was forced to perform a three-point turn to escape the run-off, dropping from second to twentieth. More problems ensued when he made his scheduled stop and left the car in gear once it was raised onto its jacks; as the spinning wheels were dangerous for the pit crew, the team was handed a penalty by race stewards. Back on the circuit, Dumbrell took advantage of the slower, non-pitting cars ofCraig Baird – driving forLee Holdsworth – andAndrew Thompson, sharing with Slade, to hold off Reynolds,Jason Bright,Michael Caruso,James Courtney and Van Gisbergen.[25]
The race began to settle down, with drivers aiming for targeted lap times and attempting to avoid kerbs as much as possible to preserve the life of their tyres; the kerb on the outside of Griffins' Bend and on the inside of the left-hander at the Chase were earmarked as the ones to avoid where and when possible. Dumbrell maintained a steady lead over Reynolds, while Caruso, Courtney and Mark Winterbottom rounded up and passed Bright.Greg Murphy andTony D'Alberto had also fought their way up into the top ten, having started twentieth and twenty-third respectively, while Van Gisbergen was shuffled back down the order when one of his tyres failed after just eight laps.[25]
A further safety car was needed on lap 91, whenDavid Besnard spun the #14Brad Jones Racing Commodore at Skyline. He narrowly avoided hitting the wall, but beached himself in the gravel trap and needed assistance to be extracted, triggering the safety car. This brought about another wave of pit stops, and with it, the first major strategy deviations. Triple Eight had been running their cars in twenty-three lap windows, the maximum they felt was viable on the tyres; by comparison,Rod Nash Racing was running longer stints, so that when the race resumed, Whincup and Dumbrell only had enough fuel to reach lap 108, whereas Reynolds and Canto could make it to lap 119 before needing another stop. The advantage of this came into effect with the fifth deployment of the safety car whenAndrew Jones burst a tyre on the second Brad Jones Racing Commodore and went off at Murray's Corner. Needing less fuel than those around him, Reynolds was able to make a shorter stop and leapfrog from sixth to second place. Lowndes, on the other hand, suffered when he tried to perform the same feat, as he was once again forced to wait for his team to finish servicing Whincup before he could make his stop. Upon exiting his pit bay, Lowndes nearly made contact withDavid Wall andAlexandre Prémat, though he escaped without penalty for an unsafe release.[25]
Brad Jones Racing's difficult day continued after the restart. Besnard had returned the #14 car to the pit, where the team changed the steering rack and manage to get the car back out onto the circuit, but Besnard went off again several laps later at the same place as where Jones had spun, calling for the sixth safety car of the race. When racing resumed, the order settled down into a rhythm once more, with Whincup leading Reynolds, Courtney, Caruso and Winterbottom. Davison, in the second factory-supported Ford, was constantly in trouble, pitting with tyres problems one lap and then being forced to make an unscheduled stop on the next. Van Gisbergen also found more trouble whenStone Brothers Racing miscalculated his teammate's lap count by one lap, leaving them with no option but to bring Van Gisbergen in and put Luke Youlden back in the car so that Youlden could complete the minimum fifty-four laps. D'Alberto's charge through the field from twenty-third ended abruptly when he encountered mechanical trouble and was recalled to the pits where he spent a lap sitting in his pit bay while the team tried to diagnose his problem; he was later retired.[25]
Davison's day went from bad to worse; contact with teammate Youlden in the middle of the race had damaged his car, and the watts' linkage finally gave way forty laps later. Davison reported a roll bar snapping at the top of Conrod Straight, severing a brake line so that he found he had no brakes as he entered the Chase. He spun across the infield of the circuit, narrowly missingFabian Coulthard – the #14 Commodore having been removed from the gravel trap again – and hitting the wall on the outside of the Chase. Davison was able to limp back to the pits and have the damage repaired, but he was taken completely out of contention by the incident. At the front of the pack, Whincup, Reynolds and Caruso pitted on lap 134, while Courtney tried to undercut them by pitting on lap 135, but lost third place to Caruso. Lowndes also pitting on lap 135 so as to avoid being double-stacked in the pit bay again. This marked the final pit stop of the race, thus allowing the front runners to make it to the finish without stopping again, but several pit crews warned their drivers that they would need to conserve fuel. Courtney, however, had an extra lap worth of fuel on-board compared to the other three drivers, which meant he had no such need to economise and took full advantage of it, passing Reynolds with twenty laps to go. Courtney's resurgence was short-lived; no sooner had he passed Reynolds than he was reporting problems with his tyres, and while he defended as best he could, Reynolds took the position back and set his sights on Whincup. Courtney was also rounded up by Michael Caruso and Lowndes, who had followed the same strategy as Courtney, but had managed his tyres properly. Lowndes was also able to pass Caruso for third, but Whincup and Reynolds were too far ahead for him to catch them, and Lowndes had to settle for third.[25]
Meanwhile, Reynolds and Whincup were matching each other blow-for-blow. Where Whincup was becoming increasingly lean on fuel, Reynolds had the luxury of running his Falcon on the highest fuel setting, forcing Whincup to drive defensively. It soon became obvious that Reynolds was strongest down Conrod Straight, but was lacking traction at Hell Corner and The Dipper, and Whincup drove accordingly; aggressively through The Dipper to build up a lead down Conrod Straight, and then as defensively as he could through Murray's Corner and Hell Corner to build up a lead onto Mountain Straight. With each passing lap, Whincup was instructed by his pit wall to be increasingly conservative, while Reynolds was encouraged by his engineers to attack at every opportunity. In the end, Whincup picked his battles through The Dipper and Hell Corner to hold on for victory by just three tenths of a second, with Reynolds second and Lowndes third. James Courtney recovered late in the race to catch Caruso again, whileJonathon Webb andScott McLaughlin were sixth ahead of Slade, Holdsworth,Russell Ingall andJames Moffat completing the top ten. After struggling with tyre problems throughout the race, Mark Winterbottom was eleventh, while Will Davison's race ended in disaster, finishing twenty-fourth, eighteen laps down. The lone wildcard entry driven byCam Waters andJesse Dixon was classified twentieth of twenty-five finishers, three laps behind the leaders.[4]
Notes:
| Position | No. | Driver | Entry | Running order | Qualifying time | Qualifying position | Shootout time | Final grid position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | Will Davison | Ford Performance Racing | 7th | 2:07.9296 | 4th | 2:08.0693 | 1st |
| 2 | 1 | Jamie Whincup | Triple Eight Race Engineering | 10th | 2:07.7145 | 1st | 2:08.1008 | 2nd |
| 3 | 9 | Shane van Gisbergen | Stone Brothers Racing | 5th | 2:08.0799 | 6th | 2:08.1791 | 3rd |
| 4 | 5 | Mark Winterbottom | Ford Performance Racing | 8th | 2:07.9231 | 3rd | 2:08.1963 | 4th |
| 5 | 14 | Fabian Coulthard | Brad Jones Racing | 9th | 2:07.7931 | 2nd | 2:08.3385 | 5th |
| 6 | 2 | Garth Tander | Holden Racing Team | 3rd | 2:08.1045 | 8th | 2:08.4755 | 6th |
| 7 | 47 | Tim Slade | James Rosenberg Racing | 4th | 2:08.0912 | 7th | 2:08.5995 | 7th |
| 8 | 52 | David Reynolds | Rod Nash Racing | 1st | 2:08.2312 | 10th | 2:08.8866 | 8th |
| 9 | 888 | Craig Lowndes | Triple Eight Race Engineering | 6th | 2:07.9663 | 5th | 2:09.0997 | 9th |
| 10 | 49 | Steve Owen | Paul Morris Motorsport | 2nd | 2:08.1386 | 9th | 2:10.0723 | 10th |
| Source:[24] | ||||||||
Teams competing in the race chose to commemorate the fiftieth year of the event, with several commissioning special liveries inspired by historic race-winning cars:
Several other teams also raced with special liveries, but these were not inspired by historic designs.[30] These entries included:
| Pos | No | Name | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Jamie Whincup | Triple Eight Race Engineering | 2772 |
| 2 | 888 | Craig Lowndes | Triple Eight Race Engineering | 2611 |
| 3 | 5 | Mark Winterbottom | Ford Performance Racing | 2584 |
| 4 | 6 | Will Davison | Ford Performance Racing | 2302 |
| 5 | 9 | Shane van Gisbergen | Stone Brothers Racing | 2020 |
The race was covered by theSeven Network for the sixth consecutive season. Having commentated on sprint rounds since 2009,Mark Skaife featured in the Bathurst 1000 commentary line-up for the first time. Seven's horse racing commentator Neil Kearney made select appearances as a roving reporter at the top of the mountain during the race.
| Seven Network |
|---|
| Booth:Neil Crompton,Mark Skaife,Matthew White Pit-lane:Mark Beretta,Mark Larkham Roving: Neil Kearney |
| Supercars Championship | ||
|---|---|---|
| Previous race: 2012 Dick Smith Sandown 500 | 2012 Supercars Championship | Next race: 2012 Armor All Gold Coast 600 |
| Previous year: 2011 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 | Bathurst 1000 | Next year: 2013 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 |
