Will Bamber and Darius Trinka have finished Race 1 victorious after a phenomenal drive from the duo who started from pole.
Bamber was the elected driver to start the race, and managed to get away well to stretch a lead of over a second in five minutes. An incident occured behind which threatened to bring out a full course yellow, but the race remained green.
As the race went on, Bamber’s lead over second place Eriksson started to decrease. After ten minutes, the gap had been reduced to half a second, with second place looking fast behind.
Troy Petersen in the #72 soon hit the wall on the inside at Turn 5, and was lucky to keep it going. Out front, Bamber still led over Eriksson, but that soon came to an end as Eriksson got past the Kiwi as Bamber went wide, with the Kiwi now in second with thirty-seven minutes remaining.
The lead car started to pull away as Bamber fell to over a second behind, and soon had the Pro-Am car of Daniel Formal behind. Bamber was able to put breathing room between him and the car behind, but Eriksson was able to move to over two seconds ahead.
The pit window opened with half an hour remaining, and Bamber initially stayed out as drivers around him headed into the lane. The Kiwi headed in with twenty-five minutes to go for a driver swap with teammate Trinka and managed to remain in the lead.
With fifteen minutes remaining, Trinka remained in the lead by half a second. The gap between first and second then floated for the remaining laps until the end, where rain started to fall.
As drivers had to encounter spit in the last five minutes, Trinka was able to keep it on the track to come home first by just under a second over Persing and Erikkson.
Race 2 will take place at 10am NZST on Sunday.
