{"id":938064,"date":"2026-10-23T11:40:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T11:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/938064\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T11:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T11:40:16","slug":"bathurst-group-a-commodore-wins-imola-heritage-touring-cup-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/938064\/","title":{"rendered":"Bathurst Group A Commodore wins Imola Heritage Touring Cup race"},"content":{"rendered":"

A GROUP A Commodore built and raced in Australia during the period has taken a race win overseas \u2013 in Italy of all places!<\/p>\n

Last weekend\u2019s round of the Le Mans Classic Series at Imola resulted in a win for Phil Keen in the Heritage Touring Cup category at the helm of the ex-ENZED Commodore VL Group A SV owned by James Thorpe.<\/p>\n

The car, driven at Bathurst in 1994 by Peter McLeod, son Ryan and Kevin Burton, snatched victory late in the one-hour timed race that covered 29 laps.<\/p>\n

Keen powered by the leading BMW M3 of Francisco Freitas and Luis Liberal on the last lap, skipping away to win after the M3 ran low on fuel half a lap from home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked\u2026 crossed the line in P2 and then they waved me into P1!\u201d said Keen post-race.<\/p>\n

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

The category ran as part of the 2026 Le Mans Classic Series of historic and heritage racing.<\/p>\n

Originally built and raced by Bob Forbes\u2019 GIO team in Sydney, the winning Group A Commodore has been overseas now for quite some years but isn\u2019t the first Holden to win in Italy.<\/p>\n

Allan Moffat<\/a> and John Harvey famously won the opening round of the 1987 World Touring Car Championship at Monza.<\/p>\n

Another former Bathurst 1000 car was part of the field at Imola on the weekend too in the form of a TWR Jaguar XJ-S that ran at Bathurst in 1985.<\/p>\n

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

Driven by owner Richard Meins and Nicky Pastorelli, the V12 Group A racer won the A1 class.<\/p>\n

Chassis 005 won the Macau Ghia race in JPS livery in 1984 with Tom Walkinshaw<\/a> at the wheel, though is better known to Aussie fans as running as car 9 at Mount Panorama a year later.<\/p>\n

Driven by Jeff Allam and Ron Dickson, the car started on the front row of the grid but retired with engine issues within a mere matter of laps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A GROUP A Commodore built and raced in Australia during the period has taken a race win overseas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-938064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-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\/938064","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=938064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}