It started out as a joke, but Mark Webber’s plans to contest the Bathurst 12-hour endurance race with Hollywood movie star Eric Bana are starting to get serious.

Webber sparked plenty of interest on Wednesday when he responded to a fan’s tweet, asking whether he was going to drive for Porsche with Bana at next year’s event at Mount Panaroma.

The newly-retired Formula One driver replied: “No 2015”.

Bana, in Sydney to promote his new film Closed Circuit, said nothing was set in stone but was hopeful of making it a reality.

“It started out as a bit of a joke and then it’s kind of taken off, so obviously I’d be thrilled to,” Bana told AAP on Thursday.

“I was testing a car for this year’s 12-hour – which is coming up in February – and tweeted a photo of the car that we might be driving. Mark follows me on Twitter and immediately tweets something like ‘we’ll have to get you out of that car and into a different car and we’ll do the 12-hour together’.

“If he wanted to do it in 2015 and we could put it together, yeah it’d be amazing.

“I’m a huge Webber fan and that event is structured so that you can’t have three professional drivers on a team. It actually has to be a mix of professional, non-professional, serious amateurs and stuff like that so it’d be amazing. It’d be a lot of fun.”

Bana, an avid car enthusiast, has competed in the Bathurst 12-hour twice before – in 2009 and 2010 – and hopes to return to Mount Panaroma again for next year’s race in February.

He has also previously raced the Targa Tasmania rallies and the Porsche GT3 challenge.

Webber has had little experience at Bathurst, having only raced a single-seat Formula Ford around the Mountain in 1995.

Olympic medallist and former member of the Oarsome Foursome James Tomkins has been flagged by Webber as a potential third partner in the team.