Following an entertaining opening day of LIQUI MOLY GT Festival The Bend, get the quick update on the day’s happenings.
Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia
Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia was the first category to complete a practice today as Malaysian junior Hayden Haikal created Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia history with The Bend pole.
The 21-year-old Malaysian driver became the first driver from outside of Australia or New Zealand to score a pole position in the one-make Porsche series, setting a 1m50.1479s flyer to edge out teammate Xavier Avramides to pole position by 0.07 seconds ahead of Round 2 this weekend at The Bend’s Shannons SpeedSeries event in South Australia.
Anthony Gilbertson continued his strong form in the Pro-Am ranks, banking his second straight pole position and qualifying 13th outright in his McElrea Racing entry.
Read the full report via the Porsche Motorsport Australia website.
GT World Challenge Australia powerd by AWS
The popular GT category had three sessions on Friday, with Castrol Team BRM claiming top spot on the time sheets in two of the three practice sessions.
Tigani Motorsport dominated the opening session of the weekend, with all three Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVOs in the top three of the session.
Read the race reports via the GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS website.
Monochrome GT4 Australia
Purdie Racing’s Blake Purdie and Jobe Stewart laid down an early marker in the opening session of the season, steering their Audi R8 LMS EVO to a session-leading time before doing it again in the second session of the day.
It was a similar story in the Am Cup as class honours again went to Method Motorsport’s Chris Lillis and Nathan Callaghan in both Practice 1 and Practice 2, while there were two different pace setters in the Silver-Am Cup.
In Practice 1, reigning champions Aaron Seton and Jason Gomersall were quickest in class aboard the Gomersall Motorsport Ford Mustang GT4 with a 1:56.913, before Norganic Proteins’ Caleb Patterson and Kent Quinn set the benchmark in their Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS CS in the following session.