Bentley is going back to Bathurst, just not to the race it won in 2020
This is a heritage story with an asterisk, and the asterisk is half the appeal.
Bentley is returning to the Bathurst 12 Hour weekend in 2027, six years after it won the great Australian enduro outright. The catch, and it is worth stating plainly, is that this is not a works return to the main race. A privately entered, first-generation Continental GT3 will line up in a support category, and the charm of that is precisely the point.
What is actually happening
The Bentley will race in the Enthusiast Motor Insurance Bathurst Sportscars and Sedans, a combined support grid that runs alongside the main event over the 12 Hour weekend on 11 to 14 February 2027. It is a wonderfully mixed field of up to 55 cars, throwing together spaceframe sports sedans, tin-tops, improved production machinery, former Supercars and out-of-homologation GT cars, all managed by Ripplestrip Motorsport. It is grassroots, it is eclectic, and a big GT3 dropped into the middle of it is exactly the kind of oddity these grids exist for.
The car and the crew
The car itself carries some history. It is a Generation 1 Continental GT3, the 2015 version of Bentley's racer, and it is owned by the Miedecke family, with George Miedecke the likely driver. This is not a fresh, factory-fresh GT3 but a proven older car finding a second life, which suits a support category built around exactly that sort of machinery. It is a privateer effort in the best sense.
Why it still matters
Bentley on the Mountain means something regardless of which race it is in. The marque won the Bathurst 12 Hour outright in 2020, and the earlier Gen 1 car scored podiums of its own, so this is a genuine returning name rather than a novelty, from a brand whose Crewe factory has been building cars for 80 years. Event director Shane Rudzis put it well, noting Bentley's special place in the event's history and how having the brand back gives fans another iconic car to get excited about. A Continental GT3 climbing over the top of the Mountain is a proper sight and sound whatever it is racing for.
Keep it in proportion
It is worth being honest about the scale of this, though. This is one privately run, older GT3 entering a support category, not Bentley mounting a factory campaign to reclaim outright victory. Anyone reading “Bentley returns to Bathurst” and picturing a works assault on the 12 Hour itself should recalibrate. The reality is smaller and, frankly, more charming than that.
AutoNext Take
There is a particular kind of joy in this that a big factory announcement could not deliver. A privateer family running an old Bentley GT3 up the Mountain, in a grid alongside sports sedans and ex-Supercars, is motorsport at its most human and most fun. It trades on real heritage, the 2020 win is not nothing, but it does so without the pressure or the polish of a works programme, and that makes it more likeable, not less.
So enjoy it for what it is. The Continental GT3 is one of the great-looking, great-sounding GT cars of its era, and Bentley's road cars still carry that same appetite for going hard, as its Supersports antics in Japan showed. Bathurst is the best circuit in the world to see a car like this worked hard, and a support race is often where the most characterful machinery and the most committed drivers actually live. We would rather watch this than another sanitised factory entry. Bring on February.
