Jackson Culver was a class act at the opening round of the Australian AU4 championship, winning both wet races at Winton to lead his category.
Culver, 14, made his Formula 4 racing debut with AGI Sport in the five-round AU4 series at the Victorian circuit, and after a challenging first race, bounced back to dominate the final day of racing in the Gen1 class. He quickly gapped his opposition and was hustling to get on the back of the newer, faster Gen2 cars.
The North Canterbury teenager ended his weekends racing with two front-row starts, one pole position, two race wins, two fastest race laps and two top-ten finishes, eighth and ninth, among the Gen2 cars.
The Winton field boosted to 17 cars, with six of those being early-model Gen 1 versions.
Brake failure in the opening race of the championship robbed Culver of a potential clean sweep. He was making a move for the class lead after a safety car restart when the brakes failed going into turn one.
“The pedal just kept hitting the floor. I had to use the gears to slow me down to get through the corners, but to be honest, I was just happy to finish the race in one piece and bring home some points.”
Those points for fourth place and the maximum haul for two race wins put Culver into the championship lead by two points over his closest rival all weekend, Koby Wilson, who returned to the series for a second year in Gen1. What was clear from the outset was the pace Culver had over his AGI Sport teammates.
“I thought maybe we’d be pulling a gap of 2-3 seconds over the race, not in a couple of laps. That was pretty crazy. We looked over the data, and it showed our race pace was really, really fast, so that was really good heading into Sunday after what happened in the Saturday race.”
And in the two wet races on Sunday, Culver not only cleared away from his classmates, but he also hung onto the back of the Gen1 field.
“We knew we were going to be there or thereabouts at the start because the Gen1’s are a little bit faster at the start, and thought maybe we could hold onto them for one or two laps before the gap opened up, but I was surprised to hold onto them for that long; it surprised me too.
“It’s a shorter track, and the straights are mainly where the Gen2 cars pull away. The corner speeds are about the same for both cars.”
Unlike his opposition, Culver only did the team’s pre-test at Winton Raceway the day before the meeting, when he swapped simulator racing at home for the real track.
“I thought we were going to click on it a bit faster. I took three or four sessions, but by the end of the day, we were smashing out some pretty good times. It was only Thursday, but I was really happy with the times heading into the weekend,” he said, his lap times consistently over a second faster than the rest.
“The lines are so important, and if you have a bad line, it’s really, really slow because of the infield piece where you have to have the perfect line so you can get on the gas and then brake at the exact spot.
“And going through turn five, the long sweeper, it’s quite bumpy there, and if you don’t get the right line, you’ll hit a bump, and especially in the wet, it’ll send you off.”
The AU4 championship resumes at Sydney Motorsport Park at the end of May.
Header Image: Supplied
