Gray and Hughes jockeyed for the lead in the closing minutes of the race after a late Safety Car set up a showdown for the win.

Nash Morris finished third in the TekWorkX Motorsport Porsche 718 Cayman he shared with Zoey Woods.

“I felt like we had a reasonable car,” said Gray’s co-driver George Miedecke.

“I got a great start but obviously there is a bit of a difference in speed between some of the cars at the moment, but where it mattered, Rylan did a really good job.

“We had a quick pit stop from yesterday. He earned his money holding off those cars on the last lap, I’ll tell you what.”

Gray added: “I got in, the car felt good, I tried to get off to a good lead with a few Safety Cars and then was hard defensive on the last lap.

“I played all the games I had in my book and beat Triple Eight at their home track so that’s always good as well.”

There was drama just seconds into the contest when Loclan Hennock in the #24 McLaren Artura got into the right rear of the #71 Jason Gomersall Ford Mustang and spun. Hennock looped around in sympathy to the inside of the circuit and toured the grass.

At the end of Lap 1, it was the #35 Miedecke Mustang at the head of the field with a one-second lead. Shane Smollen in the #1 Porsche Cayman lost second place to Max Geoghegan in the #25 McLaren Artura after the Toyota GR Cup champion made a lunge into the last turn.

Thirteen minutes into the race, Geoghegan tried to go around the outside of Miedecke at the final turn and ran side-by-side up to the first corner. Then, at Turn 3, Geoghegan dived to Miedecke’s inside and made contact with the Mustang.

Miedecke was cast wide and Geoghegan took the lead. There were bizarre scenes moments later as Geoghegan frantically waved his hands out the window to seemingly signal Miedecke to go by while still putting up some stiff defence. In the end, Geoghegan maintained the lead and Miedecke settled into second.

“I left him room,” said Miedecke.

“He chose not to use it and blew through me and definitely that was a big bump and something I don’t think is racing, but we’ll let the stewards decide that one.

“The car feels okay after that. I just put my head down and we were getting back towards the pace.”

On the stroke of the 20-minute mark, Hennock found himself buried in the gravel at Turn 1 to bring out the Safety Car.

The pit lane came alive as teams completed their compulsory pit stops under the yellow. Surprisingly, Geoghegan stayed out one lap later before handing the car over to Tom Hayman. That ultimately cost them a ton of track position and in the end plummeted to 18th.

The Safety Car was extended when Zac Soutar stopped his McLaren Artura in the short chute between Turn 3 and Turn 6. He got going briefly before stopping at pit entry with an overheating issue.

At the same time, Paul Morris stopped his McLaren 570S that he shared with Chris Pappas out of Turn 3 with transmission dramas.

After the Geoghegan/Hayman McLaren plummeted down the pylon, the Miedecke/Gray Mustang led the way outright. Gray was trailed by the Am class leading #32 Jacob Lawrence/Peter Lawrence BMW M4 and the #777 Nathan Callaghan/Chris Lillis Porsche.

The big benefactor of the Safety Car period was Cameron Crick who surged to sixth in the #118 Mustang with Dean Campbell.

Gray stretched his legs at the head of the field when the race resumed with 15 minutes to go, leaving the rest of the field to fight over second. Callaghan shot to second while Lawrence hemorrhaged time hand over fist and fell back.

Soon enough, Morris shot to third. Behind him came 11th place starters Jarrod Hughes and Summer Rintoule in their Triple Eight Race Engineering-run Mercedes-AMG.

The Safety Car was drawn again when Toyota Supra driver Daniel Frougas made contact with the Lachlan Mineeff Ginetta G56 out of Turn 2. That tipped Mineef into a spin, leaving the Adam Wallis/Jack Wallis Mustang with nowhere to go.

The Mustang collided with the Ginetta, causing race-ending damage to both cars. At the same time, the Geoghegan/Hayman McLaren took evasive action and ended up in the grass.

After the clean-up, the race restarted with three-and-a-half minutes left on the clock. Morris and Hughes wasted no time getting by Callaghan at Turn 3 before Hughes put a pass on Morris at Turn 4.

Hughes hounded Gray and got alongside him on several occasions but couldn’t complete a pass. Comprising his line out of Turn 3, attack turned to defence as he held off Morris.

All told, Gray took the chequered flag ahead of Hughes and Morris.

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