On the Mobile Boost Gold Coast 500 program in Surfers Paradise, the first Toyota GAZOO Racing Australia GR Cup race was a clean one after accidents marred the earlier qualifying session.
The race was won by James Lodge who has led every session up to the seven-lap safety car-free event and led from start to finish.
Third in the title hunt, Lodge won from Geoghegan who was second throughout and had to hold off Toyota guest driver Declan Fraser while Clay Richards was close behind in fourth place.
Next was Ryan Tomsett in front of Lachlan Gibbons, Ben Gomersall and Will Seal. Owen started out of 12th and was able to improve three places to finish in front of Brock Stinson, Jack Westbury, Hugo Simpson and Warren Luff in the second guest entry.
Only two entries were retirees. Zoe Woods stopped on the last lap with what appeared to be an engine failure while Charlie Nash pitted early, battle scarred down the left hand side.
The clean race followed a dramatic qualifying session that saw the red flag out twice due to crashes. The first was moments into the session when Jett Murray crashed at Turn 10. Only Lodge, Geoghegan and Owen had posted lap times.
The second ended the session when former Aussie Racing Cars champion Josh Anderson had a heavy crash out of Turn 3. That shunt required repairs to part of the track concrete wall.
Lodge finished the session’s quickest ahead of Geoghegan, Fraser, Richards, Tomsett, Gibbons, Luff, Gomersall, Seal, Simpson, Cooper Barnes and Owen.
There are two races on Sunday to finish the fifth round and the season, at 8:05am and 12:25pm AEST respectively.
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