The #87 Shaw and Partners/Kelso Electrical Audi of Brad Schumacher and Will Brown has become the first repeat-race winner of the 2024 GTWC Australia Championship, after taking victory in Race 2 at Queensland Raceway today.
Brad Schumacher was given the #87 Audi in the lead of the race after a strong stint from Will Brown, and was untroubled on his way to the flag, taking victory over the #7 Dayle ITM Audi of Tim Miles and Brendon Leitch by almost 10 seconds.
Third was the #888 Triple Eight Race Engineering Mercedes of Declan Fraser and Peter Hackett, who fought their way onto the podium in the final stint.
It was the #66 Realta/Tigani Motorsport Mercedes that lead the field through Turn 1, with Jayden Ojeda stretching out a comfortable lead in the early stages while the battles went on behind. Will Brown in the #87 struggled in the opening laps, losing out to the #7 Dayle ITM Audi of Brendon Leitch, who jumped up four places from his gridslot, from sixth to second, in the opening lap.
With the #66, #7 and #81 Team BRM/ACM Finance Audi all picking up success adjustments to their pit stop times after podiums in Race 1, Brown was comfortable sitting in behind the Realta/Tigani Motorsport and Dayle ITM cars in the first stint. When the pit stops came around, the Shaw and Partners/Kelso Electrical Audi was able to jump into the lead of the race with a much shorter pit stop, and from there, Schumacher was never headed.
Leitch and Miles came home in second in the #7 Dayle ITM Audi, picking up a double podium for their weekend, while the battle for third place was hotly contested until late in the race. The #888 of Peter Hackett managed to pass Paul Lucchitti in the #66 Audi with the assistance of traffic, and then Hackett was able to skip away from the four-car battle pack that had began to form, with both Arise Racing Ferrari’s tacking on to the back of the group.
Winning the Am class was the RAM Motorsport/GWR Racing Australia pair of Garth Walden and Mike Sheargold in the #45 Mercedes. Walden was able to pass Ash Samadi’s #22 Team MPC Audi in the final 5 minutes of the race to take the class win on his way to 8th overall.
Yesterday’s race winner, the #81 of Team BRM/ACM Finance driven by Mark Rosser and Alex Peroni was spun at turn 3 by the #181 OnlyFans Audi, with Paul Stokell at the wheel. The stewards adjudged Stokell to be at fault for the incident, handing down a 15 second time penalty to the #181, while Rosser limped back to the pits, and eventually finished 3 laps down.
There were two cars missing from Race 2 today; The #4 Grove Racing Mercedes AMG was unable to be repaired at the track after yesterday’s crash at turn 1 which also damaged the #181 OnlyFans Audi and the #87 Shaw and Partners/Kelso Electrical Audi, while the new #14 Volante Rosso Aston Martin Vantage suffered a crash on Friday with a wheel separating from the car, and with the lack of spares available for the weekend, was also unable to be repaired.
It was a disappointing weekend for Arise Racing, with neither car ending up on the podium for the weekend. Talbot managed salvage a fourth place in Race 2 with the #1 Ferrari 296, but a poor weekend of results has seen Liam Talbot and Chaz Mostert’s championship lead cut to only one point ahead of the #87 Shaw and Partners/Kelso Electrical pair of Brad Schumacher and Will Brown.
GTWC Australia returns in three weeks’ time, with the SRO GT Festival at Phillip Island on 23-25 of August.
Image courtesy of SRO
