Bathurst 12 Hour: Habul dominates Practice 3

Reigning race winner Habul wasted little time getting down to the business in the second 40-minute session dedicated to Bronze-ranked drivers.

He effectively led the way from the word go in the #75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes, a series of improvements yielding a 2m05.309s in the early part of the session.

At the time that left Habul more than three seconds clear of the field, with Liam Talbot (#65 Melbourne Performance Centre Audi) and Brad Schumacher (#55 Schumacher Audi) only closing the gap to around 1.5 seconds in the second half of the session.

They didn't get much closer, either, Talbot still more than nine-tenths adrift as he finished the session second fastest.

Schumacher was third, just over a second off Habul, after improving right at the flag.

There was another one second gap between Schumacher and fourth-placed Prince Jefri Ibrahim in the #99 Triple Eight Mercedes.

The two Volante Rosso Mercedes were fifth and sixth, Ross Poulakis leading Tony Bates, followed by reigning GT World Challenge Australia champ Yasser Shahin in the #777 MPC Audi.

The #4 Grove Racing Porsche made its first appearance in the top 10 for the day with the eighth fastest time ahead of Andrew Fawcett (#10 International Motorsports Audi) and Marcelo Zalloua (#44 Valmont Mercedes).

WRT BMW driver Valentino Rossi, who topped today's earlier Bronze-only session, wasn't given a dispensation to run as an 'invited Silver' this time around.

Friday practice concludes with a fourth 40-minute session, open to all drivers, at 4:10pm local time.

Live coverage of the 2023 Bathurst 12 Hour will start on Motorsport.tv from Saturday onwards (not available to viewers in Australia and New Zealand).