Marco Giltrap secured two top-ten results on his Porsche Carrera Cup debut at the Australian Grand Prix before running into trouble and finishing 17th in the finale.
The 2023 Porsche Sprint Challenge champion, driving the #84 Team Porsche New Zealand/EBM entry, was 14th in Thursday’s sole practice session before improving to qualify ninth for that evening’s opener.
Harri Jones, the 2022 champion, claimed the pole, his 1:48.0678 flyer more than half a second faster than Marcos Flack. Ryder Quinn impressed to round out the top three, while Kiwi Fabian Coulthard was 13th.
A pit lane speeding infringement for Flack elevated Quinn to the front row for the race.
Jones got the better of the launches and pulled clear off the start, building a 2.5-second Lap 1 advantage as Quinn worked to keep Bayley Hall and Nick McBride behind.
McBride’s race ended on Lap 3 with mechanical issues, and he stopped at Turn 9, which triggered a Safety Car.
A second caution was required mid-race when Pro-Am entry Daniel Stutterd spun and stranded at Turn 1, with Jones still in the lead from Quinn.
The race went green with four laps to go, and Jones put the hammer down for a convincing seven-second victory. Hall and Dale Wood finally undid Quinn’s impressive defensive effort over the final laps to complete the podium.
Giltrap finished sixth, and Coulthard was eleventh.
Jones was again at his best in Race 2, taking the chequered flag in a shortened race because the earlier F2 session ran long.
Wood got the better start off the front row to lead into Turn 1, but Jones fought back and was at the front by Turn 9. Quinn also got away well and moved into third over Scott Pye off the line.
Once at the front, Jones continued to build on his advantage, taking the win by over five and a half seconds over Wood, who had Quinn on his tail at the line.
Giltrap came home in tenth, one place ahead of Coulthard.
A multi-car collision at Turn 1 in Race 3 brought an early Safety Car, with Wood at the front ahead of Jones, having again got the better of him off the start.
Coulthard locked up entering the corner and made contact with Glen Wood, sending both cars into a spin in front of the trailing field.
Most of the 27-car field was forced into action, with ten drivers heading down the Turn 1 runoff and several Pro-Am competitors incurring race-ending damage.
Coulthard copped hits from several competitors as he sat stationary on the track, and he was slapped with a 30-point penalty in the championship for his role in the accident.
Giltrap sat sixth at the intervention but ran off at Turn 1 off the restart, dropping down the order, as did Hall, who had been running third.
Flack found himself in the podium places as Dale Wood and Jones battled at the front, and the two made contact on Lap 9 that ran the latter wide, allowing Flack through to second.
Jackson Walls, who had stormed forward from 12th on the grid, followed through and into the podium places, also making light contact with Jones on the way through.
Wood held on to take a two-second victory, but a five-second post-race penalty for his contact with Jones dropped him to sixth behind Quinn.
As a result, Flack became the second youngest winner of a Carrera Cup Australia race in the series’ history, at 18 years and 15 days of age.
Walls was elevated to second, while Jones’s third saw him claim round honours.
Giltrap recovered from his off-track venture to finish 17th.
The Porsche Carrera Cup Australia contingent now heads across the Tasman for Round 2 at the ITM Taupo Super400 next month.
