{"id":248096,"date":"2025-10-29T06:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T06:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/248096\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T06:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T06:49:10","slug":"bathurst-12h-quinns-set-for-family-outing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/248096\/","title":{"rendered":"Bathurst 12H, Quinns Set For Family Outing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three generations of the Quinn family will unite to take on Mount Panorama together at the 2026 Bathurst 12 Hour next February.<\/p>\n

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

It is the first time that four relatives, representing three generations, will share a car at the famous Australian venue.<\/p>\n

Melbourne Performance Centre has emerged as Audi\u2019s 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\u2019s GT World Challenge Australia season finale in contention for both the drivers\u2019 and teams\u2019 titles.<\/p>\n

The Bathurst 12 Hour has a strong history of family efforts, with this year\u2019s edition featuring no fewer than four crews containing relatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Kent and Ryder, on the other hand, will be 12 Hour debutants, although both have previously raced on \u2018The Mountain\u2019 in various machinery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Tony Quinn (pictured below with Ryder) told Greg Rust, host of the Rusty\u2019s Garage podcast.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBut obviously, I had many years to wait until Ryder was old enough.<\/p>\n

People say to me, what do you have on your bucket list? I really don\u2019t have anything because I\u2019ve kind of done all the things that I wanted to do, except for this endurance thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing an endurance race is probably the most enjoyable thing if things go reasonably well.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then, through a series of life things, we all went off and did our different things. Klark\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s only recently that we\u2019ve managed to decide maybe it\u2019s something that Popeye \u2013 they call me Popeye \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan is to go there as the Quinn boys and have a crack, but there is no interest in competing competitively,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically just want to go there, and we want to start. I\u2019ve promised that Ryder can qualify and do the first two stints or five stints, I don\u2019t care. And then we just need to stay, we need to survive, and we need to finish. So that\u2019s the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to deliberately go up and down Pit Lane and explain to all these teams and drivers that, look, we\u2019re not racing with you. We\u2019re not racing against you. We\u2019re not going to take your prize or whatever. So don\u2019t take us out, don\u2019t hit us, we\u2019ll get out of the way for sure.
\u201cI can\u2019t speak on Ryder\u2019s behalf, but you know, for the rest of us it\u2019s not a career move for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quinn was also able to offer some insight into the livery fans can expect to see come February:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to have no branding on it. It\u2019s going to be a purple car \u2013 because purple is Popeye\u2019s favourite colour \u2013 and it\u2019s just going to have a big white Q on it. You know, the Quinn boys, that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing. No Game Over, none of that stuff. Just really simple so that it\u2019ll stand out in the crowd for these European drivers. Don\u2019t touch the purple car!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI get\u2026 I get a wee bit emotional about the whole thing. It\u2019s strange. I\u2019ve hired and fired thousands of people and confronted unions and confronted all sorts of dramas in my life, but this, this gets me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping it\u2019s going to be bloody raining so that people won\u2019t see my tears of joy!\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2026 Meguiar\u2019s Bathurst 12 Hour will be held on the weekend of 13th to 15th February next year.<\/p>\n

Images courtesy of The Race Torque<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three generations of the Quinn family will unite to take on Mount Panorama together at the 2026 Bathurst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,147316,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-248096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ewan-wane","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}