Hawkes Bay teenager Tom Bewley aims to regain lost ground when the Australian Porsche Sprint Challenge championship heads to the Adelaide-based circuit, The Bend, this weekend for a condensed two days of competition.
Bewley held down second place in the series all season up until the last round at Townsville, when he was shunted out of the lead into the barriers and retired in the final race. That tumbled him down to fourth in the standings.
With 400 championship points and a mathematical chance of still winning the title, Bewley knows what he needs to do to get back in the hunt.
“I’d like to get through this round and close the gap [to the leader] to give myself a good chance going into the final round and have a good crack at it, although I’ll always give it a good shot.”
The 17-year-old impressive rookie driver believes better tyre preparation for the races will help deliver him more top results.
“I feel I’ve got a good handle on the car, there’s definitely more in the warm-up procedure of the tyre before a race and maybe a bit for qualifying as well. That was worked on at the last test at The Bend, more of a qualifying phase-in of the ‘green’ tyre,” he said.
“Definitely before a race, I feel I need to do a better job of getting the tyre heated up properly since I think it’s been hurting me in the first couple of laps.”
Bewley has only had one test day at each of the new circuits he’s faced in Australia this year and is looking forward to the track action when it starts at The Bend tomorrow, with the single practice session, qualifying, and the first race all on the opening day of the GT Festival weekend.
“The track is very different to what we have in New Zealand and what we’ve been to so far this season. The closest would be Sydney, quite fast and flowing through the back section. It’s a very smooth track as well, and nice to drive on.
“I’m looking forward to getting some consistency for the last two rounds, and trying to get some luck that we haven’t had since the start of the season.”
Bewley’s #4 Porsche suffered a lot of damage from the Townsville crash, which happened just after he had taken the race lead and then got shunted from behind when a following driver failed to slow down and hit a rear corner of his car.
But good luck, bad luck aside, Bewley has been impressive in his debut season of GT3 racing with a win, five podiums and two track records to his credit.
“I feel the results haven’t been what we wanted, but the pace has been very good, qualifying in the top three at all but the last round. Heaps of pace but just haven’t had the results to show it.
“The test day went well a couple of weeks ago, and the car ran well, so I’m feeling confident for this weekend.”
Qualifying is at 2.20pm NZ time Friday with the first of two 30-minute races at 6.10pm. Saturday’s first race is at 10.50am with the longer 45-minute finale starting at 2.50pm.
Heading into The Bend with 431 championship points, Bewley is 33 off second place and 50 off the leader.
Header Image: Edge Photographics
