Kiwi drivers Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles (Dayle ITM Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo 2) have collected more points after the second round of the GT World Challenge Australia held at the Shell V-Power Motorsport Park in South Australia.
Fifth and fourth placings in the two 60-minute races over the weekend have them sitting third on the Pro-Am points table, 16 points behind leaders Chaz Mostert and Liam Talbot (Arise Racing).
“It was one of those weekends,” commented Leitch. “What could have and should have, but in the end, we finished both races and bagged some points on the board.”
Saturday morning’s two qualifying sessions proved difficult for all drivers with changing weather and track conditions.
“My quali was a bit compromised because we had a drying circuit,” commented Tim Miles. “I was one of the first cars to cross the line, setting the second fastest time, then as other drivers crossed after me, the times came down, and we ended up seventh on the grid.”
“We had good speed going into the weekend,” said Leitch. “It was ridiculously cold and hard to build up any temperatures. The tyres took too long to come up to temperature. Then there was too much traffic, so we were in damage limitation. I qualified fourth, the highest Audi, but not able to challenge the Ferrari and Mercs.”
In the opening race on Saturday afternoon, it was Miles who started from grid 7 with one compulsory pit stop (driver change) to take place.
“Race one was a bit difficult as the pace of the top 10 was very similar,” said Miles. “It was hard for me to make a lot of progress. We pitted from sixth, which included a 15-second success penalty (from winning the previous race in Round 1), which meant Brendon came out in eighth. He then stormed up to fifth which was a great effort, setting fastest lap in process.”
Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Peter Hackett and Declan Fraser took the race win from the Arise Racing GT Ferraris of Mostert/Talbot and Jaxon Evans/Elliott Schutte.
“I had a really good start in the second race,” said Leitch. “We went from fourth to second and followed Chaz (Mostert). Will (Brown) got passed me in traffic just before I pitted. Tim did a great job defending like a lion, but in the end, the Ferraris were just too quick, so we had to settle for fourth.
It was an Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Will Brown/ Brad Schumacher that took the win ahead of the two Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 GT3s of Talbot/Mostert and Schutte/ Evans.
The next round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS will be held at Queensland Raceway as part of the Shannons SpeedSeries on August 2-4.
