Cameron Crick has earned himself the overall win in round three of the Haltech V8 SuperUte Series following a pair of race wins in a drama filled Sunday at Sydney Motorsport Park.
The reverse top 50 percent grid race kicked off the day’s proceedings, with Ryal Harris vaulting from sixth on the grid to second by turn two and then taking the race lead later in the opening lap. Harris went on to win by three seconds while there was drama behind him. Matt McLean turned Jaiden Maggs around at turn two halfway through the race in the fight for third, leaving Crick to cruise on to the podium. Aaron Borg also made short work of recovering to the front as he charged to second in the opening laps from fifth on the grid, to complete the podium.
Race three for the weekend was a dramatic affair, seeing multiple lead changes between three different drivers leading to Crick taking his first win of the weekend. Borg and Harris muscled their way through the opening stages, allowing the rest of the field to join them in a sizeable scrap for the lead. The beating and banging appeared to take its toll, with Harris ailing late on while Borg suffered a tyre failure on the second-last lap. Through all the drama Crick emerged as the winner, ahead of McLean and David Sieders. Chris Formosa recorded his first top five finish of the year while the title protagonist’s Harris and Borg fell to sixth and 10th respectively.
The weekend wrapped up with another win for Crick ahead of Sieders and Borg on the podium. Borg harassed the back of Sieders for much of the race but was unable to find a way through. Harris was momentarily in the lead by virtue of a late braking move at turn two but was promptly relegated down the order by more mechanical gremlins. McLean was victim to a late tyre blowout not dissimilar to Borg’s in the previous race which saw him limp home on three wheels. Courtesy of his consistency across the weekend, Crick earned the round win from Borg in second and Harris in third.
“It was a big turnaround for us, we were sort of scratching our heads a bit yesterday,” said Crick.
“I still wouldn’t say the car was as quick as it could be today, but the boys did a good job to tune it up. We were fast enough to be there when the drama between Aaron (Borg) and Ryal (Harris) kicked off and we picked up the pieces. It’s such a big step forward for the series, putting on a full weekend of exciting racing and a lot of people took notice this weekend.”
“I’d say it was a good weekend overall, considering the issues we had,” said Borg.
“The tyre blowout in race three could have really hurt us but the team fought back and got us back out there with a straight car for race four and we did the best we could have in that race.”
“The big takeaway is that we’ve opened up the gap to Ryal (Harris) in the points, so we have a little buffer heading to Bathurst. It’s great for the series, we really went back to the good old days of close and hard racing this weekend, it should look pretty cool on the Mountain.”
The series will wrap up during the Bathurst 1000, concluding the first season with V8 engines for the category.
Series Points After Round 3:
1. Aaron Borg – 564 points
2. Ryal Harris – 528 points
3. Cameron Crick – 515 points
4. Craig Woods – 473 points
5. Craig Jenner – 396 points
6. Gerard Maggs – 393 points
7. Jaiden Maggs – 367 points
8. Chris Formosa – 352 points
9. David Sieders – 349 points
10. Matt McLean – 342 points
