After starting slightly out of position in fourth, Gray’s day was almost over in just one corner, when a move from Jarrod Hughes on Aaron Seton went badly wrong.
Contact from the JGI Triple Eight Mercedes-AMG sent the Gomersall Motorsport Mustang spinning in front of the pack, forcing Gray out wide and into the sand trap, while Method Motorsport’s Tom Hayman ran away at the front.
The championship hopes for Seton’s Silver-Am title rivals went up in smoke at the same time, as further back in the pack, contact from Nathan Callaghan sent Cameron Crick spinning, causing rear suspension damage to the DA Campbell Transport Mustang when he was hit in the left rear wheel by another car.
A quick safety car to clean up the opening lap debris resulted in confusion on the restart, when leader Tom Hayman was overtaken by a number of local entries, including four-time Bathurst 1000 winner Greg Murphy, shuffling the McLaren back into fifth position.
From there, Hayman’s troubled afternoon began. A poorly executed move from Nash Morris resulted in heavy contact into the rear of the McLaren, spinning it at the downhill hairpin. With the McLaren stranded, facing backwards on the corner exit, it was collected the local Toyota Supra of Allan Sargeant.
The McLaren suffered heavy front and rear body damage but was able to continue, circulating in 19th position on the road.
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Perhaps the biggest saving grace to Hayman and co-driver Max Geoghegan’s case was that only five Silver Cup entries made the trip to New Zealand, so they still received points for 5th position, keeping back-to-back title hopes for Hayman alive.
After the pit stop cycle, and a hard-fought drive from Rylan Gray, George Miedecke emerged in second position on the road and the class lead.
A late safety car set up a one-lap dash to the finish, where Summer Rintoule lined up in fourth on the road, but second position in class.
After three second-place finishes in 2025, all eyes were on the young star to move forward and challenge Miedecke for the class lead, but it was not to be.
Miedecke took first, leading home Gray’s father Jeremy, who took the class win in Silver-Am in his first Monochrome GT4 Australia start alongside Tayler Bryant. Hughes and Rintoule came home third.
The Am Cup title is all but wrapped up for Randall Racing’s Jacob Lawrence thanks to his fourth place finish and another class win, while Silver-Am honours swing heavily in favour of Aaron Seton and Jason Gomersall.
Monochrome GT4 Australia returns on Sunday for the final one-hour race of the season.
Tune in to 7plus or the Repco NextGen NZ Championship YouTube channel from 8:45am local time (6:45am AEDT) to catch all the day’s action.
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