CAMS Australian Endurance Championship returned to action at Sydney Motorsports Park over the weekend for the second round of the Championship, which saw the Andrew and George Miedecke Aston Martin take the win in dramatic fashion.
The two day event saw practice and qualifying take place on Friday with a the race getting underway in dry but cool conditions early on Saturday morning.
Qualifying saw John Martin take pole with a stunning 1:27.0, some 1.3 seconds faster than the Audi of Theo Koundouris/Marcus Marshall.
Martin, who shared the car with Duvashen Padayachee, was driving a Walkinshaw Porsche 911 GT3-R was even baulked on his best lap so, theoretically a 1:26 was possible.
Come the start of the race, the Porsche would take the green flag with no front row partner after the Koundouris/Marshall Audi was sidelined with a driveshaft failure in warmup.
The pole sitting Porsche led from the start until they made their first stop on lap 21 allowing the McLaren of Klark Quinn and Daniel Gaunt into the lead.
Quinn had pace but their race soon unravelled with fuel issues. Teammate Tony Quinn’s Aston Martin had pitted for fuel and while the team prepared for Klark’s pitstop, the fuel rig overflowed, spilling fuel into the garage and pitlane.
While the team cleaned up, Klark had to continue to circulate albeit at some two seconds off the pace while they tried to conserve fuel. He would run out but was able to make his way to the pitlane.
The troubles were not over for the McLaren with a small fire occurring during the pitstop. It was quickly extinguished and the car returned to the track with Gaunt now on board.
This ordeal dropped them to 13th but they would recover to finish 5th.
Meanwhile, the father-son duo of Andrew and George Miedecke assumed an unlikely lead in their Aston Martin Vantage.
The duo have the name in Australian motorsport with father, Andrew having raced successfully for many years, even partnering the legendary Peter Brock in the famed Bathurst 1000.
The duo did not have a long history in Australian GT and largely flew under the radar. The duo put in continuous laps under the 1:30 mark and were able to build a lead over Martin/Padaychee in the Porsche.
The 101 lap race went without a safety car with the drivers being well behaved for the entire race and only on the final lap was there tyre drama with Jake Fouracre/Liam Talbot’s Skwirk Online Education Audi R8 Ultra being the unlucky victim. The experience dropped them down to 10th.
In the end the Miedecke’s took the top prize with pole sitters of Martin/Padayachee taking second and the Audi of Greg Taylor/Nathan Antunes taking third.
George Miedecke was almost lost for words after the race saying “That tops it. We’re a family team and we just love it. We only got the team together six months ago and this is just good!”
Meanwhile, father Andrew was full of praise for his son’s performance.
“He absolutely killed it. I made a change to the car overnight and we went the wrong way. George could hang on but I couldn’t. We made a change at the last stop and George went out and claimed the lap record; on full tanks!”
Meanwhile it was a bad day for Lamborghini with the latest iteration Huracan model making its debut. It qualified off the pace, found pace through the race but took 20th – the leading Lamborghini with the R-EX and Gallardo models not faring better.
There is an exciting future for the marque in Australia with Trofeo Motorsport taking on the import duties for this new car.
The series now travels to New Zealand and the redesigned Hampton Park Circuit with another 101 lap race due to take place at the end of October.
