Alex Fontana on the mental challenge of Bathurst: “Twelve hours without a moment to relax”

The Bathurst 12 Hour has a way of exposing even the most experienced drivers. Mount Panorama is narrow, fast, and relentlessly unforgiving – a public road for most of the year that transforms into one of endurance racing’s most demanding stages. For Alex Fontana, this weekend’s return to the Mountain with the #79 Tsunami RT Porsche 911 GT3 R in the Bronze Cup is less about conquering the circuit and more about respecting it.

Faster than expected, tighter than imagined

When Alex Fontana returns to Mount Panorama for this weekend’s Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour, he does so with experience in hand, but without any sense that the Mountain has become familiar. His first race at Bathurst came in 2024, when he competed in the GT World Challenge Australia in a Porsche 911 GT3 R. That debut, however, mainly served to underline just how unique the circuit really is.

“You go there thinking it’s a city track,” Fontana explains in an exclusive interview with GT REPORT, “but when I drove it for the first time, it felt much closer to the Nordschleife.”

Alex Fontana (R) with co-drivers Fabio Babini (L) and Johannes Zelger (M) at the 2026 Bathurst 12 Hour Track to Town

What surprised Fontana most was not only how narrow Mount Panorama feels, but how quickly the circuit flows through the mountain section.

“From the outside, you think the difficult part is that the walls are close. In reality, yes, the walls are close – but the corners are also very fast. They are high-speed corners, almost like Silverstone, just between concrete walls. That combination is what makes it so strange.”

The nature of Bathurst as a public road compounds the challenge.

“It’s not a track you can drive often. Even the local drivers don’t drive it all the time, because it’s literally a road people use during the year. You rely a lot on the simulator, and when you add that to how unique the layout is, it makes it double hard.”

Bathurst never becomes comfortable

Returning for a second race at Mount Panorama does bring clarity, but not comfort. The Swiss driver is clear that Mount Panorama never allows drivers to fully settle.

“At normal tracks, you have those first five laps where you’re tense and pushing over the limit. After a few runs, you relax into the pace and you can drive very fast, but in a controlled way. At Bathurst, that never really happens. It always feels like those first five laps – the entire weekend.

“You’re always pushing yourself out of the comfort zone. You never reach that phase where you feel relaxed but still very fast. Unless maybe you’re a V8 Supercar driver with years of experience there, for most of us it stays like that the whole time.”

Despite that strain, Fontana stresses that the difficulty is part of the appeal.

“It’s tricky to keep the concentration and the speed for a long time, but that’s also something every driver enjoys. You’re doing something you love, but in hard mode. It’s demanding, but it’s rewarding.”

The challenge becomes more complex once traffic is added to the equation.

“At many tracks, if you catch a slower car, you just go for it. Here, there is often simply no space. You might be much quicker, but in the second sector [on the mountain] you have to wait and accept that you lose some seconds.”

Trying to force the issue rarely ends well.

“It’s better to lose a bit of time than risk the car. Somebody else will lose time later as well.”

The risks you cannot control

More worrying are the moments that lie entirely outside a driver’s control.

“The biggest fear at Bathurst is coming around a corner and finding a car stopped in the middle of the road, before the yellow flag is out. Everything happens so quickly here. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, there is sometimes nothing you can do.”

The danger increases when cars run close together through the mountain.

“You often end up in a long snake of cars, all at a similar pace. You only see the car directly in front of you. You know there are four or five cars ahead, but you can’t really tell where they are.

“If something happens at the front of that train, it’s really bad. You need to drive without thinking about it too much, but at the same time always be ready to react.”

Conditions change but the driving remains the same

Bathurst’s long race naturally brings changing light conditions, but Fontana does not believe that should alter a professional driver’s approach.

“For me, the driving style should not change. Sun in your face, night, sunrise – it should not affect your pace. The job is always to try and get faster every lap.”

What does change, however, is the car.

“The car in the morning is never the car you have at the end of the race when temperatures are higher. That happens everywhere. You think you know what you’ll have, and then you go out and it’s completely different.

“After qualifying, you go to the race, you think you’re going to have something, and it’s almost never what you think. You maybe expect that, sure, it’s a bit cooler than yesterday so we’ll have understeer, and then in the race the car snaps all the time.

“I learned that it’s better not to expect anything and just drive as fast as possible with what you have in that moment.”

A night start without adaptation time

While night racing itself is not unusual, the Bathurst 12 Hour presents a specific challenge by starting in darkness.

“In a 24-hour race, you usually have time to get used to the night. Here, you just start in it, in the middle of the pack.

“The headlights behind you are blinding. You don’t always know if a car is side by side or ten metres back. So when you close the door on someone, you have to be a bit more cautious.”

That night start also complicates traditional endurance strategy.

“Normally, you would try to start with the amateur driver, because the start is normally a slower stint, there is traffic, and as a pro you might just be stuck behind cars anyway.”

At Bathurst, however, Fontana is less convinced that logic always applies.

“So, you might as well maybe enjoy some safety car periods with the amateur driver in, but because it’s night, I don’t think it’s a very good idea. You need to see what the best option is. We’ll decide closer to the race who does the start.”

Shared preparation of a Bronze Cup line-up matters

Fontana lines up in the #79 Tsunami RT Porsche 911 GT3 R in the Bronze Cup alongside Johannes Zelger and Fabio Babini. The trio continues on from a fourth place in Pro-Am in the 24H Dubai.

“That’s very important at a place like Bathurst. Sharing references, setups, and understanding how each other drives saves a lot of time.”

Fontana’s 2024 GT World Challenge Australia experience – gained alongside Daniel Gaunt, who was originally set to complete the line-up this weekend – feeds directly into that preparation.

“I shared a map where I put down all my notes about the track – braking points, rotation points, gears, everything I think can be useful. They looked at it and then worked on the simulator themselves. We already have a base set-up that I suggested, all based on the experience I had last year. It’s not huge experience, but it’s still more than someone who has never been here, so now we just need to work on it.

“I think Johannes and Fabio will have to do most of the laps. Even if Daniel had come, he and I could have driven a bit less. The main focus is not me finding two tenths – it’s Johannes and Fabio finding half a second. Every extra lap they do here counts, especially because it’s their first time at Bathurst.”

Looking ahead to the 12 hours

As the Bathurst 12 Hour approaches, Fontana is realistic about what can – and cannot – be predicted.

“These are always tricky questions,” he says when asked about his expectations and goals for the weekend. “We try to keep a very positive mindset. Nobody joins a race to be last or just to participate – although sometimes that can already be an achievement. Of course we aim to do the best possible job. But what is realistically possible? I don’t know.”

For Fontana, the priority is execution rather than expectation.

“We need to focus on ourselves – do our pit stop practice properly, set up the car the best we can, learn the track as well as possible, be as fast as we can and stay out of trouble. If we do all these things, at the end we will have a good result. How good it is, that’s difficult to say at the moment.”

Beyond the result sheet, however, Bathurst now represents something different in Fontana’s career.

“In the past, I looked at every new race as something that could launch me to a higher level. If I do well here, maybe I get another seat, maybe a factory contract, maybe something else. Now I just try to enjoy every weekend that I’m able to do.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I do five races or twenty-five. If you always focus only on the result, you don’t really enjoy the journey anymore. I’m 33 now, and I think it’s better to enjoy that you are here – rather than always thinking about what could come next.”

For Fontana and Tsunami RT, that mindset may prove just as valuable as experience itself: respect the Mountain, execute the fundamentals, and embrace twelve hours at a circuit that never truly lets you relax.

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