A Highlands double has steered Richard Muscat to victory in the Australian GT Championship at Cromwell today.
Muscat, a young newcomer to the championship that is stacked with exotic supercars and driving an AMG Mercedes-Benz SLS GT3, was the series leader heading into today’s final two races of the series and emphasised his dominance with back-to-back victories.
In the first race, Muscat won by near four seconds from John Bowe in a Ferrari 458 with the only driver realistically capable of snatching the title from his grasp, Tony Quinn, back in third in an Aston Martin Vantage GT3.
Watch the video highlights below.
Muscat therefore went into the series finale with a 45 point lead and only a DNF was going to robbed him of the title.
He was forced to fend off a determined challenge from the Quinn/Garth Tander combination but he eventually won by 2.6 seconds who set a new race lap record of 1min 32.357secs to go with a lap record set in qualifying yesterday. Bowe was third with the McLaren MP4-12C GT3 of Klark Quinn and Shane Van Gisbergen fourth. There was only one second separating second, third and fourth.
Other interesting race two placings were the Bentley Continental GT3 – the first of its kind to race in the Southern Hemisphere – driven by Peter Edwards improving from a first race eighth to fifth, 12.9 seconds behind Muscat while the Inky Tulloch/Craig Lowndes 7.9-litre Camaro was eighth after a 19th in the first race.
Before today’s race Edwards revealed the Bentley was “certainly a different car to drive” from his previous Ferrari drive.
“…we’re struggling a little with brake shudder and a fuel map that suits the fuel here, but we’ll get on top of it,” the reigning Bathurst 12-Hour champion explained.
Meanwhile Lowndes had been beaming with excitement after his first qualifying drive in the Camaro.
“It’s awesome. It’s like a V8 Supercar but with all the nice driver aids, so a lot more fun to drive.”
Fun was an understatement, with somewhere just shy of 700bhp, the Camaro was the only car to leave it’s mark on the circuit coming out of the turn nine hairpin with tell-tale rubber marks highlighting where it had been..
“With 800Nm of torque, you really don’t need first gear, just point and shoot,’ he laughed.
A big crowd of spectators – estimated to be more than last year’s record Saturday crowd – made the most of a stunning Central Otago day.
In addition to the AGT finale, people enjoyed on-track action from competitors preparing for tomorrow’s Highlands 101 feature race, the 1+01 endurance race and a field of German marques contesting the 10+1 Euromarque 11-lap sprint races.
Christchurch’s Danny Whiting won the first 10+1 Euromarque race from Auckland’s Sam Fillmore and Queenstown’s Grant Aitken, all three driving Porsches. The second 10+1 Euromarque race win went to Fillmore, with Christchurch’s Paul Kelly taking second place and Whiting completing the podium.
Qualifying for the 1+01 enduro, where drivers can elect to have a co-driver or race solo, sees Whiting on pole with Paul Kelly and Guy Stewart beside them on the front row, and Paul Kelly and Daniel Gaunt will start third on the grid.
Sunday’s schedule includes the weekend’s feature race, the Highlands 101, a 101-lap endurance race contested by around 35 Australian GT Championship and eligible Kiwi teams who must tackle a Le Mans-style running start before racing for three-and-a-bit gruelling hours.
The 1+01 one-hour-plus-one lap endurance race will be contested by around 28 racers from across the South Island and as far afield as Auckland, and the final of the 11-lap 10+1 sprint races.
