Bathurst’s quickest team returns in 2024

Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing will tackle their fourth edition of Australia’s International Enduro with a Mercedes-AMG GT3 entry, in a bid to build on sustained prior success and target victory for the first time.

The team, which operates from Hong Kong and Germany, has become one of the most consistently successful international teams in Bathurst 12 Hour history.

In three visits the team has never qualified lower than third and has crossed the line in the top three each year.

GruppeM first entered the race in 2019, scoring the Allan Simonsen Pole Award with Raffaele Marciello before the fast Italian then paired with Maximilian Buhk and Maximilian Goetz to lead 34 laps and ultimately finish third.

The team returned the following year and for a time had looked to go one position better than their debut.

With Marciello and Buhk joined by Felipe Fraga, the team qualified third and crossed the line second behind the winning Bentley Continental GT3 – only to be penalised post-race for a pit lane infringement during their final pit stop, ultimately classified sixth.

A two-year Covid-forced break saw GruppeM return in style last year; Maro Engel scoring the team’s second Allan Simonsen pole award with a stunning 2m00.8819s lap at the end of the Pirelli Pole Shootout in qualifying.

Engel, Marciello and Mikael Grenier went on to lead 144 laps – the most ever by a car that did not win – before going on to finish third.