Software glitch costs Kiwi Earl Bamber Bathurst podium

Kiwi Earl Bamber saw a podium finish at the Bathurst 12 Hour race slip away due to a software error.

The World Endurance champion was third in the race with a handful of minutes remaining and a car that was fueled to the finish when a bad crash saw the race called. The cars ahead would likely had to have stopped to refuel but instead of getting third or better, Bamber’s Bamboo Racing team was hit with a 30 second time penalty that dropped them to fifth.

The Porsche team was penalized because Bamber’s co-driver Laurens Vanthoor spent a couple of minutes beyond the maximum at the wheel of the car.

The team blamed a software glitch for the error.

“We would have lost the win anyway way because we had a software issue,” team manager Darryl O’Young told Speedcafe.

“Our strategy software ended up calculating two minutes over Laurens’ driving time.

“Really at the end we had a shot for the win because we had a fuel save stint for Earl and he just did an amazing job keeping the feel numbers down while maintaining a pace.

“We would have made it to the finish and we were quite confident our competitors would have to stop fuel.

“Obviously we are disappointed as a team and we put up a great fight and had a great car.
“We chose to go fuel save and that would have been the difference.

“It is hard to do that because you want to race and fight, but we knew we could do the numbers.”

The Audi Sport Team WRT car of Robin Frijns, Stuart Leonard and Dries Vanthoor took the overall victory despite not having enough fuel to finish the race had it remained green.