At the second round of the SRO Shannons SpeedSeries, under lights Ojeda lapped the Sydney Motorsport Park GP circuit in 1:25.9267 which undercut race lap record (held by Max Hofer) by 1.5s.

However the margin the Tigani Motorsport driver in the Mercedes-AMG he shares with Paul Lucchitti is slim. At the wheel of Brad Schumacher’s MPC R8 LMS EVO II, Broc Feeney was just 0.11s away while Ryan Wood with Steve Brooks (MPC Audi) were another three tenths behind.

Fourth fastest was the first of the Arise Racing Ferrari 296s with Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte ahead of Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles (Audi), Declan Fraser and Liam Talbot (Aston Martin AMR Vantage) and Jordan Love and Stephen Wyatt (Ferrari) who were 0.79s of Ojeda’s time.

Pro Am teams with Alex Peroni/Mark Rosser (Audi), Tony D’Alberto/Adrian Dietz (Lamborghini Huracan), Thomas Randle/Marcel Zalloua (Mercedes) and George King/Sergio Pires (Mercedes) completed a Pro Am top 11.

Renee Gracie (Audi) was the fastest of the Am class and 12 th overall, ahead of Ben Schoots/Shane Woodman (Mercedes) and Theo and James Koundouris (Mercedes) while Matt Stoupis and Garry Higgon (Audi R8 LMS) had the Trophy honours.

The track was wet for the first of two practice sessions that preceded pre-qualifying. Wood and Brooks were the pacesetters with Wood posting a best of 1:26.7475 that set the trend of undercutting the lap record set in 2023.

Second fastest were Evans and Schutte ahead of Peroni/Rosser and Feeney/Schumacher respectively, along with King/Pries in the 1:27s. Best of the Ams was Gracie in ninth place.

Rain soaked the track before the second session with only half the field venturing out at the start. The sun was out mostly and the track dried in time.

It was the Tigani entry of Randle and Zalloua that was fastest by the end, ahead of Feeney/Schumacher, King/Pires, Evans/Schutte and Love/Wyatt.

Qualifying is set to start at 1:40 pm AEST on Saturday before Race 1 under lights, scheduled to commence at 7:55 pm. The livestream and free-to-air broadcast will be on 7 Plus and 7 Mate respectively.