lan for the council to tender a long-term agreement for the fifth event.<\/a><\/p>\nThat would join the current line-up of events including the Bathurst 12 Hour, Bathurst 6 Hour, Bathurst 1000 and Challenge Bathurst.<\/p>\n
Speaking with Speedcafe, SRO Motorsports Australia boss Ben McMellan said his team would tender for the fifth event.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us as event promoters, anytime you\u2019ve got the opportunity to hold an event at Bathurst, it\u2019s a really big thing for our business so it\u2019s definitely not a stop-gap and a one-year plan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the council do have to go to tender, but for us we want to be front of mind and they\u2019ve made no secret that we want to hold events at Bathurst.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen that tender process does commence, we\u2019ll definitely be putting a proposal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Australian Racing Group were the previous custodians of the fifth event with the Bathurst International.<\/p>\n
That was initially planned to be a 500km race for TCR cars in 2020 until the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on international attendance.<\/p>\n
That morphed into a leg of the TCR World Tour but was ultimately axed after 2024.<\/p>\n
McMellan, who worked alongside his father John at the Australian Racing Group, reflected on the ill-fated Bathurst International.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concept of the event was great, and to be honest, it never got off the ground because COVID really hindered it,\u201d said McMellan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were meant to launch it when I was at ARG at the time when COVID started, so it really halted all that international travel and halted the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt never really got a chance to get off the ground and then when everybody\u2019s rebuilding the economy and travel commenced and everything, it really hindered the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the concept was ever flawed, it just never really got a fair shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
GT World Challenge Australia last raced at Mount Panorama in 2024 as part of the Bathurst International.<\/p>\n
Next year\u2019s SpeedSeries finale at Mount Panorama is slated for October 29-31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GT World Challenge Australia cars head up Mountain Straight in 2023. Image: Supplied Bathurst Regional Council has opened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,131633,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-846463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gt-world-challenge-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846463","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=846463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"GT](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2023-GTWCAus-R1-Sunday-011-copy.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGT World Challenge Australia cars head up Mountain Straight in 2023. Image: Supplied<\/p>\n