2ND ON PORSCHE DEBUT
The dust has finally settled on what has been an action packed weekend, with the BMW diff breaking 100m from the line and the safety cars in the Porsche playing into our favour.
Practice in the BMW had us chasing a lot of under steer in the first two sessions but the team had it perfect in the last session to give us some confidence heading into qualifying Saturday morning.
Practice in the Porsche went well improving every session going P6 in two sessions and P5 in another. Having never raced here we were thrilled with the pace of the 991.1.
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The race in the BMW went well with Brett putting in an awesome first stint. We had a safety car at 20 minutes so we pitted and I got in for a 40 minute stint to the end. Our main rival from the North Island was 30 seconds up the road and we had 38 minutes to catch him. Each lap we were taking good chunks out of the gap and with 10 minutes to go we finally got to the back bumper and I was able to make the pass. We made another couple of passes before the end but coming out of the final corner to the chequered flag the diff broke and we were left to coast to the line, we just finished ahead of our North Island rival Chris Wall who’d run the whole hour by himself and did a great job.
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Thanks again to Brett Sullivan for allowing me to share the BMW seat with him again!
As always great to have ‘Woody’ Mark Woods on my side and awesome to have Matt back on the tools for me and a great way to send him off for his R&R in the USA!
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Qualifying in the BMW didn’t go well. With 40 odd cars it was always going to be a struggle to find a gap. We never achieved a clean full lap and qualified P11.
Qualifying in the Porsche was the same story, catching cars every time we went for a flying lap. Definitely some lessons I have taken from that and mistakes I won’t make again. Qualified P8 which was still a great result given we are in a Gen1 car up against the latest vehicles available.
With the BMW stranded on the track I jogged back down pitlane as we only had 10 minutes to be on the grid for the 1 hour race in the Porsche.
I lost a spot off the initial start but gained it back within a couple of corners. We held position throughout the first stint but as people started to stop we started to creep up the scoring charts. Safety cars breed safety cars and it took some good cars out of contention. The net result though by just driving our race was that we were sitting in P2! Following the last restart we had a 14 minute sprint to the end, and with a fast Adam Julian behind in the Audi I knew it’d be a tough fight. We went side by side a lot in the closing stages but we hung on to P2. Jarrod Owens was quickly closing up behind our battle. Fortunately for us Jarrod was really hassling Adam and we managed to start creating a gap from them in the last 2 laps due to the intensity of their battle. We went as quick as we could and came home P2 by a mere 1.3 seconds! We never expected to be running an old car at that end of the field and I’m really pleased to have driven probably my best laps ever in the closing minutes of the race under huge pressure. At that pace on pretty used tyres after one 40 minute race and then another 1 hour race it would have been easy to step it off the black stuff, so I’m thrilled to have brought her home in P2. Really honoured to be sharing the podium with Matt Whittaker and Adam Julian.
Big thanks to Shaun and the team from Action Motorsport for the awesome car and pit stop to put us in the fight with some amazing cars!
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