MIEDECKE AND AMBROSE WITHDRAW FROM 6 HOUR
George Miedecke and Marcos Ambrose have been forced to pull out of the Bathurst 6 Hour just two days out from the commencement of the event.
It has been a strong build-up for the pairing with Ambrose telling AUTO ACTION he felt the Ford Mustang was capable of taking the fight to the all-conquering BMWs.
However he did say that reliability was a major concern and so has been the case, an electronic issue that would continually cause the car to shut down at high speed was discovered at the team’s final test earlier this week.
The crew were unable to solve the issue, and are not willing to test it at the notorious Mount Panorama Circuit at Bathurst, not knowing if the issue would present itself again.
“We’re a bit shattered. The car would ‘chuck a code’ into the system every now and then which would put the car in limp mode,” Miedecke explained.
“It wasn’t an issue that you could just fix by stopping the car on track and re-starting things, it needed to be brought back to base.
“It’s a safety issue. It’s fine testing at Winton but if it happened coming out of McPhillamy Park, for example, at 200km/hr then there’s a good chance we get drilled by another car which is not safe for us and for other competitors around us.
“To have something like this throw itself at us so close to the event is frustrating because everything else had been sorted.”
Miedecke and Ambrose were felt the car was a ‘significant step forward’ from the previous machine that Miedecke raced last year to a class A1 win.
Initial bugs with the new car including with the gearbox 10-Speed 10R80 automatic gearbox were all fixed, but in a short time this was too much to overcome.
“The gearbox was a big tick, the engine? tick. The safety? Tick. Handling? Tick. Everything was looking really good and it was definitely a step forward on the old car,” Miedecke continued.
“It was going to be competitive and will be in the future.
“This is just one of those strange, unforeseen issues that crop up when you turn a road car into a race car, with all their modern technology. It’s a ghost in the system that we’ve not been able to find.
“The Ford Mustang was otherwise good to go, and this is an issue we’ll rectify and fix and get it back on track to go again.
“We’ll all be watching closely on Stan Sports to see how the race plays out. It’s going to be a fantastic battle with lots of good cars, and we wish we could’ve been safely part of it.”
Watch the event live and exclusive on Stan Sport this Saturday and Sunday with live, ad-break free and on-demand throughout the weekend.
