Dylan O'Keeffe In Carrera Cup Top Five After Consistent Darwin Weekend

RAM Motorsport/GWR Australia driver Dylan O’Keeffe has moved into the top five in the Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia standings after banking some more consistent results in Round 3 at Darwin’s Hidden Valley circuit.

The weekend started positively, with O’Keeffe topping the timesheets in Friday practice. However, a technical glitch in Saturday morning’s qualifying session disrupted the team’s program, leaving O’Keeffe fifth and fourth on the grid for the first two races.

“We were a bit distracted by a technical issue in qualifying, which meant we didn’t quite have the one-lap pace we would have liked,” O’Keeffe said.

In the opening race, O’Keeffe slipped back to eighth after his Dexion Porsche GT3 Cup car punished its tyres on the hot Darwin circuit.

The GWR Australia team made some significant setup changes overnight, and they paid dividends in Race 2, O’Keeffe making a rapid launch to move up into third position by Turn 1, a position he held through to the end of the race.

“The car was much, much better in Race 2 and I was able to attack in the opening laps, while still maintaining decent performance through to the end,” he said.

With limited tyres available for the weekend, O’Keeffe and the team elected to re-use the Race 1 tyres for the third race, with him consolidating the weekend with a fifth-place finish.

“The final race was okay without being spectacular – I got shuffled back a position in the first corner, and from there I just focused on maintaining my position and banking some solid points. Because we were re-using our Race 1 tyres, they had already been cooked and had lost some of their performance.

“Overall, it wasn’t a bad round and once again, I moved up a spot in the championship; I feel like we’ve shown glimpses of our potential at every round so far, now we just have to put an entire weekend together.”

The next round of Carrera Cup is under lights at Sydney Motorsport Park, 19-21 July.