Porsche Carrera Cup young gun Dylan O’Keeffe impressed Erebus Motorsport following his maiden run in a Supercar at Winton.
The rising star logged his first Supercar laps after receiving a call-up to undertake an evaluation day with the Bathurst 1000 winning squad.
O’Keeffe shared Anton De Pasquale’s ZB Commodore with Super2 regular Adam Marjoram, who conducted the bulk of the running, as Erebus evaluated the drivers while testing reliability of components.
Having focussed his career around Porsches and GT3 machines, the 20-year-old, who is third in the Carrera Cup standings, relished the opportunity to test a Supercar.
“I’ve been watching Supercars for pretty much my entire life so to finally get the opportunity to drive one was cool in itself, but it fulfilled all my expectations,” O’Keeffe told Speedcafe.com.
“You have to manhandle the things a bit more than what I’m used to and the steering is quite heavy.
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“I came to terms with it pretty quickly.
“I feel like I did a good job and it was my first time. You can do all the homework you want but until you’ve actually driven one you don’t know.
“It was cool and easy for me to learn and all the engineers were there and they were really easy to get along with.
“It was perfect. Hopefully I have provided them (the team) with the right feedback and it helps them out, and I hope to get invited back.”
Erebus team principal Barry Ryan felt the rookie acquitted himself well given his lack of experience in a Supercar.
“He did a really good job. We noticed the step up he’s taken this year in his driving in the Porsche Carrera Cup and that was the reason we wanted to give him a go,” Ryan told Speedcafe.com.
“He was solid, he didn’t run off the track and we’d love to give him more laps.
“There are a couple of things you have to deal with when transitioning from a Porsche to a Supercar.
“You have learn how to blip the throttle again and change gears with the other hand, and not that he had any problems with that, but you can see how that isn’t easy.
“It was good to give him a go.
“Adam (Majoram) has already got some experience so we relied on him to gives the feedback on a couple of things we were testing.
“We then gave Dylan some laps and asked for his opinion on the things too. They both did a really good job.”
O’Keeffe enjoyed working alongside reigning Bathurst 1000 winner David Reynolds who was on hand to set benchmark times in his permitted 10 laps as per regulations.
“I’ve known David for a while but I have never really worked too much with him,” he added.
“It was good to pick his brain and he has got heaps of experience so we could relate to each other.
“It was nothing too serious we just looked at the data and little things like that. There was nothing huge that I needed much help with but he was the perfect guy to feed off.”
O’Keeffe says he is keen to explore Supercars as his career progresses.
“In the future, Supercars is my ultimate goal but I’m still trying to work out what I want to do next year,” he said.
“I still have a plenty of time up my sleeve but at the same time I’ve got to start planning out what I want to do.
“I want to finish the year off well in Carrera Cup but next year I’m not sure if I will do Super2 or try Porsche Supercup.”
Meanwhile, Erebus Motorsport aims to complete its first in-season test day with its primary drivers later in the year.
“We didn’t really want to do a performance test day at the moment,” Ryan added.
“We always want to develop performance things but there were a couple of reliability things we wanted to test, so we can save the test days for later in the year.”
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