Rivalry put aside for Ingall/Skaife Bathurst effort

It was announced today that the two Supercars veterans, now part of the Fox Sports’s TV team, will make team up with Tony Longhurst for a ‘Bathurst Legends’ entry at next year’s 12 Hour. The famous trio, with 10 Bathurst 1000 wins between them, will race a factory-supported BMW M6 GT3.

Having Ingall and Skaife sharing a car is something that was once unthinkable, the pair spending years locked in a bitter feud after their famous on-track clash at Eastern Creek back in 2003. The fiery incident led to Skaife standing trackside shouting at Ingall as he approached on the next lap, to which Ingall responded by swerving towards the Holden Racing Team driver.

Thirteen years later they are teammates and co-drivers – something Ingall admits made him laugh when it first put to him.

“Tony approached me about [the 12 Hour]. It’s something that’s been on my bucket list, and I was disappointed not to drive the previous year,” said Ingall. “But all the stars aligned, and said to Tony ‘yeah it would be great’.

“We got talking about it over the next couple of weeks, and then Tony said ‘do you think Skaifey would be interested’. After I picked myself up off the floor in a fit of laughter I said ‘are you serious?’. When I thought about it, I thought ‘how cool would it be?’ – in every respect, not only because of the history, but because it’s a good fit.

“We know how competitive Mark is, and you don’t forget how to go fast. Mark was the same, he thought about it and thought ‘this is actually a really good idea’. Not only for the publicity side of it, we’re serious about this. Make no mistake, we are serious. We are going to have a big swing at this.”

Skaife added that he never thought that the he would share a car with Ingall, given their tumultuous past.

“No way. Absolutely no way,” he said. “When the whole Fox Sports thing came up, I was told quite late that he was going to be my teammate [on the coverage], and I thought ‘oh god, this is going to be a nightmare’. But we’ve got along unbelievably well.”

The Bathurst Legends entry will be run by Steve Richards’s BMW Team SRM squad, with a brand new M6 GT3 having recently landed from Munich.