Three generations of the Quinn family will unite to take on Mount Panorama together at the 2026 Bathurst 12 Hour next February.

Tony Quinn, sons Kent and Klark, and grandson Ryder will team up in a Melbourne Performance Centre-prepared Audi R8 LMS GT3.

It is the first time that four relatives, representing three generations, will share a car at the famous Australian venue.

Melbourne Performance Centre has emerged as Audi’s leading team in Australia during the past few seasons, finishing third in the 12 Hour in 2024 and winning the Pro-Am class the year prior. The team enters this weekend’s GT World Challenge Australia season finale in contention for both the drivers’ and teams’ titles.

The Bathurst 12 Hour has a strong history of family efforts, with this year’s edition featuring no fewer than four crews containing relatives.

Sam and Yasser Shahin shared a Manthey-run Porsche 911 GT3 R (992), James and Theo Koundouris raced a Tigani Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, Brenton and Stephen Grove piloted a Grove Racing AMG and Sheldon and Kelvin van der Linde teamed up in a WRT BMW.

The Quinn family brings various levels of experience to its assault on the mountain. Tony and Klark have made eight starts in the 12 Hour, all together, with the most recent coming in 2017. This has included three overall podiums, headlined by finishing runner-up alongside Grant Denyer in 2008.

Kent and Ryder, on the other hand, will be 12 Hour debutants, although both have previously raced on ‘The Mountain’ in various machinery.

“I always had this vision or this dream that one day it would be great to drive at an endurance event with my son, Klark, and grandson, Ryder,” Tony Quinn (pictured below with Ryder) told Greg Rust, host of the Rusty’s Garage podcast.

“But obviously, I had many years to wait until Ryder was old enough.

People say to me, what do you have on your bucket list? I really don’t have anything because I’ve kind of done all the things that I wanted to do, except for this endurance thing.

“Doing an endurance race is probably the most enjoyable thing if things go reasonably well.

“But then, through a series of life things, we all went off and did our different things. Klark’s kind of retired from racing. Ryder grew up and started racing. Kent has been racing a lot recently as well. And I just carried on bumbling around the tracks and doing my thing.

“And it’s only recently that we’ve managed to decide maybe it’s something that Popeye – they call me Popeye – that Popeye would love to do, it means a lot to him so we should all make a little bit of a special effort and make it happen.”

Nine years on from his last start, and with the level of the race having evolved significantly from when he fought for overall honours, Quinn is under no illusion that challenging for a top result is most likely out of the question. Instead, the focus is simply on enjoying the experience.

“The plan is to go there as the Quinn boys and have a crack, but there is no interest in competing competitively,” he said.

“We basically just want to go there, and we want to start. I’ve promised that Ryder can qualify and do the first two stints or five stints, I don’t care. And then we just need to stay, we need to survive, and we need to finish. So that’s the plan.

“I’m going to deliberately go up and down Pit Lane and explain to all these teams and drivers that, look, we’re not racing with you. We’re not racing against you. We’re not going to take your prize or whatever. So don’t take us out, don’t hit us, we’ll get out of the way for sure.
“I can’t speak on Ryder’s behalf, but you know, for the rest of us it’s not a career move for us.”

Quinn was also able to offer some insight into the livery fans can expect to see come February:

“It’s going to have no branding on it. It’s going to be a purple car – because purple is Popeye’s favourite colour – and it’s just going to have a big white Q on it. You know, the Quinn boys, that’s what we’re doing. No Game Over, none of that stuff. Just really simple so that it’ll stand out in the crowd for these European drivers. Don’t touch the purple car!”

“I get… I get a wee bit emotional about the whole thing. It’s strange. I’ve hired and fired thousands of people and confronted unions and confronted all sorts of dramas in my life, but this, this gets me.

“I’m hoping it’s going to be bloody raining so that people won’t see my tears of joy!”

The 2026 Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour will be held on the weekend of 13th to 15th February next year.

Images courtesy of The Race Torque