John Bowe has taken a commanding victory in Race 1 of the Shannons Touring Car Masters at Sydney Motorsport Park today.
Starting from pole position on the long circuit, Bowe streaked away from the field to take the victory by 11 seconds from Andrew Miedecke.
A slow starting Jim Richards dropped through the field on the opening lap and was forced to battle his way back through the field from 9th to eventually finish 3rd.
Making his first start in TCM, former V8 ute pilot Adam Bressington made an impressive debut, finishing in fourth place behind the wheel of his Chevrolet Camaro.
Bressington held third position for most of the race until being passed by Richards in the dying stages.
“It was interesting to see how the other guys in the category drive … I learnt that they don’t necessarily stay on the black stuff to overtake!” he said.
“I was happy with my race until the second last lap where I made a mistake and Richards got past me, but apart from that it was good fun.”
Further down the order others didn’t fare do well. Tony Karanfilovski’s hopes of a good weekend went up in smoke literally, when his Ford Falcon GTHO suffered engine failure on pit straight.
“I’m not sure if we can get the car fixed for tomorrow. The team will try and get it fixed but at the moment it’s about a 50-50 chance. They worked all night last night so I don’t know if they have the energy to be honest,” said a dejected Karanfilovski.
The Touring Car Masters action is just the tip of the iceberg at the annual Muscle Car Masters event at SMP this weekend.
New Zealand’s Central Muscle Cars series, Formula 5000 and Group Nb, A and C also featured in today’s racing.
Paul Stubber showed some impressive car control to win Race 1 and place sixth in the Race 2 match race.
In Formula 5000 it was Bryan Sala who won Race 1 with motorsport journalist Chris Lambden placing fifth in his McRae GM1.
While in the opening races for Group C, A, Nb and Nc were won by Adam Workman, Bill Pye, Bill Trengrove and Jason Humble respectively.
Off track the meeting features a who’s who of Australian motorsport, with names including Moffat, Grice, Jane, Gibson, Matich, Bond and Harvey jall trackside.
