Starting third, finishing third, zero incidents across 13 laps of Mount Panorama — sometimes the cleanest race is the best race you can run.
The Race
Bathurst is one of those tracks that will happily eat your lap times, your car, and your race weekend in that order if you give it the slightest opportunity. Thirteen laps, 23 starters, a 1751 SoF — not the sharpest field on paper, but Mount Panorama has a way of making incident counts balloon regardless of rating. Five disconnects and five DNFs from the field by the end tells you everything about how unforgiving this place is even when there are zero cautions and zero lead changes at the front.
I started from P3 and, frankly, that is also where I ended up. Bastian Brunner led from the front throughout and backed it up with the fastest lap of the race — a 2:03.362 to my 2:03.584, so roughly two tenths per lap quicker overall. Emily Iselin held P2 comfortably. The top three was set early and stayed that way. No lead changes, no cautions — this was a track position race and the guy who got to the front first won it cleanly.
My job, then, was not to throw it away. Zero incidents across all 13 laps on a circuit with Skyline, The Dipper, and Forrest’s Elbow waiting to punish any moment of over-ambition. I will take that. William Watts finished fourth with two incidents, so fourth was there for the taking had I made mistakes — but equally, finishing third with a clean sheet is a better outcome than gambling for second and collecting the wall at Griffins Bend for my trouble.
What the Numbers Say
The iRating gain of +69 points up to 2051 reflects a P3 finish from P3 grid — no overperformance, no underperformance, just executing the starting position. Safety Rating moved from 2.49 to 2.83, a delta of +0.34, which is the direct reward for keeping the nose clean. Ninety-nine championship points on the board as well.
The gap to fastest lap is worth noting honestly: Brunner’s 2:03.362 versus my 2:03.584 is 0.222 seconds. Over 13 laps that compounds into real time — roughly 2.9 seconds of pure pace deficit to the race winner. That is not a setup story or a strategy story, that is just a pace story, and it is the thing to work on before the next visit to a circuit like this.
Takeaway
Podium at Bathurst, clean sheet, iRating north of 2050 for the first time. The pace to challenge Brunner was not there today, but the discipline to protect the result absolutely was. On a circuit that punished nearly half the field with disconnects or DNFs, finishing all 13 laps without a single incident is not nothing. On to the next one.
| Series | iRacing Porsche Cup by CONSPIT – 2026 Season 3 |
| Track | Mount Panorama Circuit |
| Car | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) |
| Start / Finish | P3 → P3 (23 cars) |
| Incidents | 0x |
| Out | Running (lap 13 of 13) |
| iRating | 1982 → 2051 (+69) |
| Safety Rating | +0.34 |
| Strength of Field | 1751 |
| Championship points | 99 |
| My best lap | 2:03.584 |
| Fastest lap | 2:03.362 (Bastian Brunner) |
Full Result
The complete classification (my row in bold):
| Pos | Driver | Car | Inc | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bastian Brunner | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 2 | Emily Iselin | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 0x | Finished |
| 3 | Philipp Geppl | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 0x | Finished |
| 4 | William Watts6 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 5 | Kevin Perez Piedra | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 6 | Matthew Zelazko | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 7 | Tao Yang5 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 6x | Finished |
| 8 | Toby Nicholson | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 5x | Finished |
| 9 | Duo Zheng2 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 5x | Finished |
| 10 | Andrey Zharov | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 8x | Finished |
| 11 | Christopher Pemberton | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 5x | Finished |
| 12 | Felix Rehm | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 9x | Finished |
| 13 | Takuya Oku | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 14 | Mike Howerton | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 14x | Finished |
| 15 | Nadir Bagirov | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 19x | Finished |
| 16 | Roman Zhdanov | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 17 | Ma Ge | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 10x | Finished |
| 18 | Shaun Memmler | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 6x | Disconnected |
| 19 | Ally Chalmers | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 20 | Darren Cornelius | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 4x | Disconnected |
| 21 | Phillip Wisniewski2 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 4x | Disconnected |
| 22 | David Harland | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 7x | Disconnected |
| 23 | Leo Xiong2 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 0x | Disconnected |
Livery by Jeremy Kerr (Trading Paints).