Despite the small 12-car field of GT3 machines at Eastern Creek, there was enough on-track action to spice up strategies.
Fundamentally, there were two rules teams needed to factor in if they wanted to win. The first was completing a minimum of three compulsory pit stops. The second was a maximum drive time of 100 minutes.
A strategy that was theorised in the paddock to all but remove the impact of the CPS was executed to perfection by Tigani Motorsport.
The idea posed was that in the eventuality of an early Safety Car, teams would pit and swap their Am drivers out and put their Pro drivers in before completing another pit stop the following lap to put the Am back in the car.
Paul Lucchitti began the three-hour race in the #66 Mercedes-AMG GT3 and pitted on Lap 12 when the first Safety Car intervention was drawn as the Mark Rosser/Alex Peroni Audi R8 LMS GT3 speared off at Turn 1.
Jayden Ojeda jumped aboard the car before returning to the pit lane a lap later to put Lucchitti back in. Lucchitti returned to the race about half a lap behind the leaders but was given a free kick when the Safety Car was brought out with two hours and 13 minutes remaining.
What followed was a bizarre sequence of events that ultimately caused consternation and confusion among teams and commentators.
When the race-leading Melbourne Performance Centre-run Audi R8 LMS GT3 of Brendon Leitch pitted with Chaz Mostert in tow, Lucchitti remained on track.
Declan Fraser in the Triple Eight Race Engineering Mercedes-AMG should have been picked up by the Safety Car as the race leader but was waved by. The same was true for Luchitti, who was second.
What that meant was that the Leitch Audi, now with Tim Miles on board, was picked up as the leader despite showing “3” in its window to signal its position.
Meanwhile, Fraser and Lucchitti drove around to the back of the pack, effectively a lap ahead of the field in first and second respectively.
The Safety Car intervention was dragged out, not because of the clean-up but because officials had to figure out what went wrong. In the end, the #888 and #66 cars had a lap deleted.
The #888 and #66 should have been first and second on the road but were relegated to fifth and ninth respectively. After 20 minutes behind the Safety car, the race eventually resumed.
While TVs focused on the fight at the front, there was little attention given to the Tigani Motorsport strategy quietly playing out.
On the stroke of halfway, the Safety Car was deployed again for the stranded Pires/Zalloua Audi at Turn 1.
With one hour and 25 minutes remaining, Lucchitti pitted while the rest of the field stayed out.
Commentators were left wondering why the front-runners didn’t pit. After Ojeda’s one-lap dash at the beginning of the race, he was right on the cusp of the 100-minute maximum drive time.
The Am drivers, however, couldn’t pit as their Pro partners would have exceeded their maximum drive time of 100 minutes after their slightly longer dash at the beginning of the race.
From there, Ojeda went into conservation mode. At one point, he led by more than a lap as his rivals pitted for the final time while continued on.
That caused just as much confusion as those unaware of the strategy unfolding in front of them questioned how Ojeda could be so far in front.
Fresh off finishing the Bathurst 1000, Ojeda conserved fuel for one hour and 25 minutes – a total of 57 laps – to take the chequered flag first and just seven seconds clear of the Chaz Mostert/Liam Talbot-driven Ferrari 296 of Arise Racing GT. Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles finished third.
“It was tough going,” said Ojeda.
“Obviously we just drove it, saved some fuel at the end. We knew the gap to Chaz and we were just trying to manage it out.”
Despite winning, Ojeda said officials made the wrong move. Rather than deleting the laps of the #888 and #66, it has been theorised that the cars effectively a lap behind could have been let by the Safety Car and allowed to catch up to the actual race leaders.
“It was tough,” said Ojeda. “I’ve got a lot of respect for the guys at Motorsport Australia, they make some hard decisions, but I feel like in the middle of the race they really got that wrong with us and #888.
“Awesome credit to our team at Tigani Motorsport and especially Matt Harvey, he smashed it today. The strategy was awesome. All I had to do was slow down and save fuel. He did all the hard work.”
From sunset to darkness, Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia wraps up a three hour enduro at ColorSpec Race Sydney 🌇🌃#SpeedSeriesAU #RaceSydney pic.twitter.com/Bl3NHOt4sI
— Shannons SpeedSeries (@SpeedSeriesAU) October 19, 2024
The little-know Enduro Cup is a two-part calendar featuring the Bathurst 12 Hour and the three-hour at Race Sydney, which Mostert and Talbot won.
GT World Challenge Australia concludes at Mount Panorama for the Supercheap Auto Bathurst International on November 8-10.
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