Daniel Ricciardo could make his first official outing as the Red Bull Racing third driver with a demonstration run around Mount Panorama at the Bathurst 12 Hour.
The endurance race announced today that Red Bull Racing will send its RB7 show car to the mountain for the 3–5 February event to “attack” the iconic circuit in a series of exhibition runs.
No driver has been named for the program, but Daniel Ricciardo would be an obvious choice.
Ricciardo has returned to the Red Bull fold as the team’s third driver specifically to give its exhibition program a higher profile, and his appeal to the local audience is obvious.
Ricciardo has never lapped the Mount Panorama circuit, having spent almost all of his car racing career outside Australia.
Bathurst organisers said Red Bull Racing would confirm a driver in the new year, with the full demonstration program to be announced in early 2023.
Whoever pilots the car, the appearance of the title-winning F1 team is a boon for the event, which is already buzzing from confirmation that previous race winner Team WRT will field seven-time MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi in a BMW M4 GT3.
“Just to have them at the event is a privilege, but to know that the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 car will be lapping Mount Panorama will be something else,” said Bathurst 12 Hour even director Shane Rudzis.
“This will be a spectacle like nothing we’ve seen at the 12 Hour before and takes the event to an entirely new level.
“This will be the best opportunity in 2023 for Australian F1 fans to get up close and personal with F1 machinery and an even rarer opportunity to see a Formula 1 car lap Mount Panorama.”
The Renault V8-powered RB7 is one of the team’s most successful cars, powering Sebastian Vettel to his second championship with a dominant 122-point margin and beating McLaren to the constructors crown by 153 points.
The 11-year-old car has developed a prolific reputation as a demonstration workhorse and was most recently seen doing burnouts in Milton Keynes to celebrate the team’s driver-constructor title double.
It’s visited Australia at least twice already in its lifetime — with Mark Webber in a 2013 Top Gear event at Sydney Motorsport Park and with Ricciardo in 2015 at the Perth Festival of Speed.
Only one modern F1 car has ever driven around Mount Panorama: the 2008 drivers championship-winning McLaren MP4-23, which 2009 F1 champion Jenson Button and three-time Supercars champion Craig Lowndes took around the track in an ambitious promotional run in 2011.
No official times were recorded, but the onboard video suggests Button’s fastest lap came in at around 1 minute 48.8 seconds.
The fastest time set by a Supercars machine belongs to Chaz Mostert, whose 2021 pole time was 2 minutes 3.373 seconds.
The fastest official lap time of Mount Panorama belongs to Chris Mies, who lapped the track in 1 minute 59.291 seconds in an unrestricted GT3-spec Audi R8 LMS.
