North Canterbury teenager Jackson Culver continued his run of podiums in the Australian AU4 championship at the latest round at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Culver struggled with car setup and wasn’t able to step onto the top of the podium this round, but still maintains second place in the series after two rounds.
The AU4 championship is split into two car categories, with Culver in the older Gen1 cars due to the minimum age limit of 15 for the newer Gen2 cars.
Unable to replicate his pace-setting speed from testing at the same venue a month prior, missing an extra test day this time put the 14-year-old on the back foot.
“The biggest time loss was definitely track and weather conditions compared to the previous nighttime test. We struggled a bit with the rear of the car, and there were a few things I had to work on as well from the data, like throttle trace,” said Culver.
Despite his struggles, Culver’s constant battles with Lewis Gotch for second place in all races were a highlight of the AU4 meeting, as they constantly swapped places throughout with great displays of racecraft.
“A bit disappointed not being able to keep up with Koby [Wilson] and try to go for the win. We got close at the end, but I had great racing with Lewis, super fair as well, which is always good to be able to race with clean, fair drivers. It was still a fun and enjoyable weekend being able to do that,” he said.
“It was a super weekend for me, improving as a driver, especially racecraft with all the battling.”
In the second race, Culver was setting up to attack race leader Wilson before a safety car period neutralised the race and literally took the heat out of Culver’s tyres and any chance of an attack.
The fastest Gen1 drivers sometimes got mixed up with the slower and recovering Gen2 drivers, which split the Gen1s and took away the chance of them all racing close together.
New AU4 Gen1 championship leader Wilson has leapt ahead of Culver in the standings with a clean sweep of all three SMP races and heads into a double-header at Adelaide’s The Bend circuit in July and August with a 32-point advantage over Culver.
“A shame to drop from the lead in our championship, but Marco [Manson] did a great job for a Kiwi win in Gen2 to take the overall series lead. Hopefully we can do the same next time out!”
Manson, along with Culver and William Beck, makes up a three-strong Kiwi driver presence in the Australian championship.
Header Image: Supplied
