In the Tigani Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3, they finished 7.8s ahead of the Arise Racing GT pair of Chaz Mostert and Liam Talbot in their Ferrari 296. The New Zealand pair of Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles charged home to third place aboard the Team MPC Audi R8 LMS Evo II.
“I didn’t have the pace, but the team came together with a strategy that worked,” admitted Lucchitti.
Held under lights at Sydney Motorsport Park as part of the sixth round of the Shannons SpeedSeries, the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS race ran 107 laps, had three safety cars and a timing outage that caused confusion for a period.
Just 12 cars faced the start after the fancied Will Brown and Brad Schumacher Audi was crashed by the latter in the Superpole. Garth Walden and Michael Sheargold topped that grid decider session, but it was Paul Stokel in the Audi he share with Renee Gracie, that was the early race leader.
In trouble early was the Triple 8 Mercedes-AMG with Peter Hackett in the pits early with damage and down a lap when he returned to the race.
The first safety car came at Lap 11 when Mark Rosser spun the Audi, he shared with Alex Peroni off at Turn 1 and nudged the tyre wall. It triggered the first round of driver changes with the leads going in.
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This is where Ojeda came around and did his second stop, one lap later and effectively put them one-up on completing their compulsory stops.
The second safety car occurred 11 laps later with the James and Theo Koundouris Mercedes-AMG spun off at Turn 11 and not able to restart. It coincided with the timing fault, data loss and confusion as to who was leading the race.
The Triple 8 car was deemed the leader but after an adjustment that took around 10 laps to sort, was pushed back to fourth. While fast, it was out of sync on stops and a lap down.
The third safety car came on Lap 47 with the Sergio Pires/Marcel Zalloua Audi spun at Turn 1, on the inside of the corner and unable to regain the circuit.
There were green race conditions for the rest of the race, and when the last pitstop were over, Ojeda had over 1min on Mostert with Jaxon Evans (with Elliot Schutte) third in the second Ferrari. Leitch was fourth and setting near record pace, as too Declan Fraser in the Triple 8 Mercedes.
However the latter had a handling issue, due to bent camber pins and possible hit from a hit earlier. It was a similar drama that affected the Brenton and Stephen Grove Mercedes-AMG with just over 30mins to go. But unlike the Grove Racing machine, which was retired, Triple 8 were able to continue.
The gap between Ojeda and Mostert continually diminished but Ojeda had the race covered. Behind them Leitch was hauling in Evans. With just 2:30 to go, the Leitch out-braked Evans at Turn 2 to snatch third place.
Fifth place went to Stokell/Gracie one lap down and one ahead of the Am winners Walden and Sheargold. They took the class off Ben Schoots and Shane Woodman (Mercedes-AMG) 17 laps from the end. Then came Pires/Rosser, Peroni/Rosser, Fraser/Hackett and the Koundouris brothers.
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