On track, there was plenty of action with the Saturday win going the way of Arise Racing’s Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte, which was followed by Broc Feeney and Brad Schumacher bouncing back from tyre troubles to win Sunday’s race for Melbourne Performance Centre.
Off the track, there were a few scratching their heads and some keen eyes keeping their rivals honest. Here’s what we learned at the Phillip Island GT Festival.
Cheeky tyre tactics not kosher
Arise Racing went unpunished despite concerns being raised that the Ferrari team had breached tyre warming rules.
GT World Challenge Australia teams often keep their tyres in tents or laid out on the ground behind the pit garages. Laying tyres on warm concrete is widely considered standard practice, but artificially warming tyres is banned.
Per article 29.4 of the GT World Challenge Australia regulations: “All tyre-heating devices are forbidden.”
Photos sent to Speedcafe showed the Ferrari team had huddled its tyres for the #26 and #77 entries together, allegedly next to a generator.
Whether by design or otherwise, one team expressed its displeasure with officials over what it thought was a cheeky tactic to warm up the tyres and gain an advantage.
Speedcafe understands GT World Challenge Australia officials investigated the matter and no further action was taken.
Jaxon Evans won Saturday’s race with Elliott Schutte ahead of a hard-charging Jayden Ojeda paired with Tigani Motorsport’s Paul Lucchitti.
BOP blues
Wall Racing may have won their class at the Bathurst 12 Hour, but the feeling afterwards was that they’d been dealt a bad Balance of Performance (BOP).
The whole point of the system is to act as a parity tool, but the Lamborghini Huracan barely featured at Phillip Island.
D’Alberto’s best lap on Saturday was a 1:27.7s, which put them 1.4s away from the chart-topping Dorian Boccolacci/Shane Smollen Porsche 911 GT3 R by EMA Motorsport. The Porsche was the quickest car on Sunday as well, with D’Alberto a sluggish 1.5s off the best lap.
D’Alberto is no slouch, and certainly not a driver that’s one-and-a-half seconds off the pace.
For Wall Racing, it was something of a hangover from the Bathurst 12 Hour. The team lacked “straight-line handling” at Mount Panorama and never really featured there either, despite winning their class.
“Glad to see the back of this weekend,” D’Alberto wrote on social media.
“Never stood a chance with the BOP we were given.
“Considering how much we struggled for straight-line speed at the Bathurst 12 Hour, to be given a much smaller restrictor for this weekend makes no sense.
“It pays to stay out of trouble.”
Fraser and Talbot are a real title threat
It turns out you don’t need the latest and greatest widget to be competitive. Declan Fraser and Liam Talbot walked away from Phillip Island second in the standings. That’s despite starting both races from last.
The Voltante Rosso Motorsport team was stung for a technical infringement after they provided only 1.7kg of fuel, not the 2kg required from their car and they were disqualified from qualifying as a result.
The pair rose to fifth in Saturday’s race before backing that up with a storming second place finish on Sunday.
Talbot threatened to win Sunday’s wet, windy, and wild affair but came up just short behind the Melbourne Performance Centre Audi of Brad Schumacher and Broc Feeney.
The team is still running the version one Aston Martin Vantage GT3. It’s understood the team is looking to upgrade to the EVO model in the future.
Phillip Island still a tyre killer
A recent resurface to Phillip Island wreaked havoc last year when GT3 and GT4 cars took to the track.
Either the sting has gone out of the circuit or teams have figured out how to avoid blowing the tyres off their cars.
But not everyone escaped unscathed. Broc Feeney suffered a puncture in the closing minute of Saturday’s race and his Melbourne Performance Centre teammate Brendon Leitch came close to suffering the same fate.
When is the next SpeedSeries round?
GT World Challenge Australia returns at Sydney Motorsport Park for the GT Festival Sydney on May 2-4, which will also feature Monochrome GT4 Australia, Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge, Ferrari Challenge Australasia, and First Focus Radical Cup Australia.
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