‘How fast will it go….?’

GOOD NEWS from Ford this week as they announced that, in conjunction with their official return to supporting motorsport in Australia next year, they will demonstrate one of their iconic Ford GT racing cars at Mount Panorama next week.

With Ryan Briscoe behind the wheel, the Le Mans class winning Ford GT will be demonstrated throughout the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 weekend.

It will be the first time since that serious, Le Mans-specification machinery will have tackled the Mountain.

Of course, as soon as the news broke, conversation quickly turned to ‘how fast will it go?’.

Thanks to its challenge, global renown and remarkable history Mount Panorama is unique as one of only two or three circuits around the world where the term ‘lap record’ is used with reference to any lap that is a new benchmark, be it set in race, qualifying or practice situations.

Of course, official lap records can only be set during a race however the long history of Bathurst’s famous top-10 shootout means that qualifying numbers often are the ones talked about most in reference to Bathurst and lap time.

It’s the same at the Nurburgring, where few have any qualms about the fact Porsche’s new record lap with the 919 Evo was set in a private session, rather than in competition.

And if they do have issues with it, it’s howled down by the people who just want to appreciate the technical achievement and the people making racing cars go faster than they probably should.

Bathurst is little different.

George Fury’s Hardies Heroes lap in 1984 in the turbocharged Bluebird took half a decade for Group A Machinery to topple.

Greg Murphy’s ‘lap of the gods’ is still hailed as one of the all-time Bathurst performances, moving the goal posts for what a Supercar could do so far beyond what people thought possible. Scott McLaughlin’s lap almost twelve months ago was in a similar league, moving Supercars into the 2m 03s for the first time.

In 2016, Shane van Gisbergen’s staggering 2m01.216 effort, driving a McLaren, to secure pole for the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour remains the fastest lap ever officially recorded there.

Of course, people have gone quicker: In 2011 Jenson Button lapped his McLaren Formula 1 car in 1m 48 seconds (and Craig Lowndes not much slower) as part of a Vodafone PR stunt. It was and remains remarkable vision (and it was a remarkable day), however there was no official timing that day so it doesn’t count.

So let’s believe for a minute that next week they will a) let the Ford GT go as hard as possible and b) that they will actually put a transponder on it and time it officially. Neither of which will happen but hey, a man can dream.

How quick will it go?

To find out, we’ve crunched the numbers based on two circuits where both GT3 and GTE machinery compete: Road America, a staple of IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car series and Pirelli World Challenge’s GT3 competition, and Spa Francorchamps where the World Endurance Championship is a staple and the Spa 24 Hours is a GT3 calendar highlight.

Both circuits are similar in length to Bathurst and have a similar mixture of high speed corners, long straights and technical bits that make them so challenging.

At Road America this year, the Ford GT (2m 01.422s) qualified 3.5 seconds faster than the fastest GT3 car competing at the Pirelli World Challenge round held at the same venue earlier in the year.

At Spa Francorchamps, the LMGTE Pole time – set by the Ford – this year was 2m12.947s, 5.6 seconds faster than the pole time for the Spa 24 Hours set by an Audi R8 GT3 a few months later.

To be fair to the differences in the circuits and noting that Bathurst is it’s own challenge, we averaged the difference to come up with the following:

That at Bathurst, an LMGTE car would be on average 3.5 – 4.0 seconds per lap quicker than a GT3 machine. There is every chance they would be quicker still, but we’ll work on the conservative number for now.

So, you take 4 seconds from Shane van Gisbergen’s GT3 benchmark the number you’re left with would absolutely be a new Bathurst benchmark.

A 1m 57 at Bathurst? That’s a lap record I’d love to see.