Grant and Iain Sherrin have won Race 2 of MRF Tyres Australian Production Cars’ Phillip Island 600 despite their BMW being hampered by electrical problems.
The Sherrin Racing M4 was hit with a recurrence of the limp mode issue which afflicted it in Saturday’s Round 2 opener, first with Iain Sherrin behind the wheel on the out lap and formation lap.
Grant Sherrin encountered the problem again in the latter stages and had to reset the BMW multiple times.
He took the chequered flag almost 23 seconds up on the second placed Subaru WRX of Dimitri Agathos/Matthew Boylan, but that margin had in fact roughly halved in just a few laps.
As such, the Sherrins took outright and Class A1 honours for both the race and round, while Agathos/Boylan headed up Class B1 on the day and weekend as a whole.
“We have this little limp mode issue that has come up, I got it a couple of times in my stint,” recalled Grant Sherrin.
“Iain got it at the start so we were a bit worried but then it went away and his stint went alright from then, he did a great job and kept it straight.
“The tyres held up really well; we have had problems here in the past here with tyres and wear and we didn’t have any of that wear.
“We came in and changed them and we probably didn’t have to, it was more that we had the chance to be safe and cautious, and that was the same as what we did with the fuel stop.
“It was just a cautionary fuel stop we did so we knew we were comfortable and knew we had ticked all the boxes so we could bring it home.”
Bradley Carr and Ashley Jarvis prevailed in Class A2 with an outright race podium in the Carr Motorsport BMW M3, while Anthony Soole and Andrew Fisher (BMW M4) fought back from two mechanical black flags for fluid to take fourth outright and second in Class A1.
Fifth outright in the 68-lap race was the Class AM1 HSV VE GTS piloted by Chris Lillis and Nathan Callaghan.
One position further back was a car which hit the wall at the exit of the final corner but made the finish line, namely the Class B1 BMW 135i of Scott Turner and Rob Rubis.
Race 1 winners Zak and Ellexandra Best were 12th outright and fifth of five cars in Class B1 due to tyre issues for their Lancer Evo.
Round 3 is another twin 300km affair, including the Fight in the Night, at the Queensland Raceway Shannons Nationals meeting on August 2-4.
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