Globetrotting Bamber looking beyond Supercars
Earl Bamber doesn’t intend to follow Richie Stanaway in searching for a fulltime seat in Supercars.
It was announced last week that Bamber will be Shane van Gisbergen’s co-driver for the three Supercars endurance rounds next year, at Sandown, Bathurst and Gold Coast.
It’s something the Europeanbased Stanaway did a couple of years ago, before deciding he wanted to move back down under permanently and seek out a main game drive for the whole year, which he’ll do in 2018 for Prodrive Racing Australia.
But Bamber doesn’t look set to repeat Stanaway’s move and says he plans to stay with Porsche and race in the American SportsCar Championship, as well as compete in Le Mans and other races in Europe in the Porsche GT factory team.
‘‘For sure, a goal of mine is to win the Bathurst 1000, but at the moment I’ve got a lot of exciting things going on at Porsche and there’s a big effort with the factory GT,’’ Bamber said.
‘‘Then we’ve got Formula coming, so I’ve still got a lot goals I want to achieve.
‘‘I still want to win Daytona 24 Hours and 24 Hours Nurburgring, but at the same time, you can never rule anything out.’’ E of
Next year will be full on for Bamber with 23 races scheduled. However, just because he’s busy doesn’t mean he isn’t hungry to do well at the Supercars endurance rounds, particularly at Bathurst.
‘‘At the moment the goal is to go down there and support Shane, because by then he’ll be fighting for the championship and looking to wrap it up,’’ Bamber said.
‘‘It’s a good position for me to be in, because a lot of the time the codriver is fighting for a seat and it might be the only time they do that sort of stuff all year. But my interest is just to get the best result possible with the car. I don’t need to fall back on co-driver stuff.’’
The 27-year-old Bamber has already achieved plenty over his career, most notably twice winning Le Mans 24 Hours and this year taking the World Endurance Championship for Porsche with compatriot Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard from Germany.
Despite that success, he winning the Bathurst 1000 is on his priority list.
‘‘To race in the Bathurst 1000 has says high been on my radar for a while because I see it as the next biggest race after Le Mans,’’ he said.
‘‘As a Kiwi kid you grow up watching the race one Sunday afternoon in October.
‘‘For the last couple years the dates didn’t work, because it clashed with the something else, but next year it doesn’t. On the day I found that out, I sent Shane a text message and said to him if he was looking for someone to do the enduros with I’d be keen.
‘‘He said he was keen too and from there Roland [Dane, Triple Eight Engineering boss] went to Fuji.
‘‘We met up and had a discussion about it and then I went to the Gold Coast to see the environment.
‘‘It all came together from there and I was quite lucky that Porsche released me to do the events and to go to the top team, the Holden factory team, is something special.’’
While it will be first time Bamber has raced at the Bathurst 1000, he is a two-time winner of the Bathurst 12 Hour race and that success helped him land the deal with Triple Eight to partner van Gisbergen.
‘‘I don’t think you could go there for the first time in a Supercar and be competitive, without knowing the track,’’ Bamber said.
‘‘It’s such a hard place to drive around and you’ve got to have a lot of respect for it.’’
For sure, a goal of mine is to win the Bathurst 1000. Earl Bamber