Weekend Wrap – Sydney 300
After a somewhat last minute decision to run in the Sydney 300 enduro we were keen to get out for practice to get a feel for the new Yokohama tyre we planned to run, which we had never run on the car before. Right from the start the car felt good and we were P12 and P11 in 1st and 2nd practice respectively.
As we continued to tune up the car (a little) and the drivers (a lot) Mike was given the nod for Quali. A PB for the day and for Mike in the A45 was only good enough for P13 as many of our competitors where also finding time.
Ryan jumped in for the 10 lap sprint race preceding the main event and put in a solid effort gaining 3 spots throughout the race to finish in P10. As the sprint race didn't set the grid for the feature race it was back to P13 for the start.
For the main race Mike was in the car for the opening stint and got a solid jump in his first rolling start to gain 2 spots. An early safety car before the CPS window opened did little to help strategy but another a few laps later saw us pit from 12th for our 1st CPS. We opted to only take fuel leaving Mike in for a longer stint.
Emerging from the stop in 26th Mike set about climbing back up the order. We climbed up to 8th and were holding out for another safety car to minimise the impact of our longest CPS however vibrations started to emerge. We held out as long as we could but eventually 2 delaminated front tyres meant Mike couldn't keep the car on the track and we were forced to pit under green flag conditions.
Our second stop saw a driver change with Ryan in the car and 4 new tyres after which we came out in P20. In clean air Ryan set about his business and showed good pace passing a car or two for position on track leaving us in 9th outright once all the pit stops had played out.
A top 10 finish and 6th in a very competitive Division B was a great effort helped along by faultless work by the GWR Australia crew in the pits.