12-Hour to open Australian Endurance Championship

THE opening round of the 2020 CAMS Australian Endurance Championship will take place alongside the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour. 

Australian GT series organisers announced a three-round calendar for the long-distance component of the 2020 season that includes running alongside Australia's International Endurance race on January 30-February 2.

Secure your Tickets and Camping for the 2020 Bathurst 12 Hour here.

Events at similarly iconic circuits Phillip Island and Sandown will conclude the long-distance calendar.

It's not the first time that a domestic championship has run alongside Australia's International Enduro; in 2013 the first hour of the race formed a round of the Australian GT Championship.

In 2020 the full race, rather than one hour, will count towards AEC points.

The Championship has a long history within Australian Motorsport and is one of only a few awarded 'championship' status by CAMS, the governing body of the sport. In the last four seasons it has been contested as part of the broader Australian GT Championship for GT3 vehicles; many of the same cars contesting the Bathurst 12 Hour.

It was won by a McLaren 650S GT3 driven by Grant Denyer and Nathan Morcom in 2016, before Mercedes-AMG swept the title two years in a row with Peter Hackett / Dominic Storey in 2017 and Max Twigg / Tony D'Alberto in 2018.

Audi Sport Customer Racing finally claimed their first crown this year thanks to the efforts of Geoff Emery and Garth Tander in an Audi R8 LMS.

The AEC will be contested over several classes, including the outright GT3 and the growing GT4 classes that make up a core component of the Bathurst 12 Hour field.