Dean Tighe has added back-to-back Motorsport Australia Supersprint Championship titles to an impressive trophy cabinet after he won this year’s event at Morgan Park.
Run by the Porsche Car Club of Queensland, there were 34 entries at the Warwick circuit who strove to record their best times with 11 allocated sessions available on the 3.0km circuit.
Tighe went into the event as a firm favourite and was fast out the blocks in his F1 Judd V8-powered Dallara. He finished off with 1:05.891 which was well under the outright lap record. The next best competitor was Steven Woodbridge in his Dallara F3, whose best lap was 7.8s off, while Slade Orsmond aboard his Porsche 911 GT3 rounded out the podium a further 3.8s off.
Just 400ths of a second off Orsmond in fourth place was Brad Gall (Radical SR3) with Phil Sutcliffe (Ginetta G50Z) next in front of Wayne Hennig (Porsche 992 Cup), Kevin Vedelago (991 GT3), Sven Koremans (997.2 GT3), Shane Freese (997.1) and Brad Rankin (Porsche).
Tighe who is the current Australian Hillclimb Champion, has several state hillclimb titles as well. He took out the 2022 Supersprint Championship at Sydney Motorsport Park.
“It was a good feeling to win and go back-to-back in this championship. The car was perfect and even though I made no changes to it, we got quicker and quicker as the weekend went on,” Tighe said after his time which produced a lap average speed of 160kmh, and his top speed was 242kmh.
“I went into the event knowing that I would be in a good position to win, but to break the record was the sweetener. I felt like we kind of earned the title with the record because if any of the major players had shown up, they would have had to be on their A-game to beat me.”
The last time the Australian Supersprint Championship ran at Morgan Park was in 2017 where the best lap from Day 1 around the 3.0km circuit and the second day on the 2.1km layout were added together and lowest tally won – in this case by Vicki Paxton.
