Cairns mango farmer John Magro has become the fifth different winner of the City of Goulburn Cup in five years, winning the Australian Formula 3 Championship feature race at Wakefield Park on Sunday afternoon, and breaking the outright circuit record on his way to his 15thF3 race victory of the season.
Magro lowered the Wakefield Park benchmark to 0:53.4s, taking 0.3s off the previous best time around the circuit, set by Harri Jones in 2018.
Josh Buchan scored a pair of second-place finishes, while Shane Wilson finished third overall in the Championship Class, after Reilly Brook took an off-track excursion at Turn 10 in the final race.
The overall National Class (for pre-2008 model cars) win went to Gerrit Ruff ahead of Ryan Astley and Roman Krumins; Ruff leads Krumins by just four points with one round remaining.
Formula 3 was just one of the categories on the program for the Wakefield Park round of the Australian Motor Racing Series, which also featured the GT-1 Australia category (for exotic sports cars), Mazda RX8 Cup, Miniature Race Car Series (for motorcycle-powered vehicles) and combined field of NSW Historic Touring Cars and V8 Utes.
Rod Salmon became the fourth different GT-1 Australia round winner of 2019, taking overall honours in his Audi R8 by finishing sixth and first in today’s two 50-minute races in Round 5 of the Australian Motor Racing Series (AMRS) at Wakefield Park Raceway.
Salmon fell down the order in Race 1 as the result of a long compulsory pit stop time, but the reverse was true in Race 2, when a sequence of fast laps and smart pit-stop timing enabled him to emerge in front of the pack.
Geoff Taunton (MARC II Coupe) finished second overall in the outright class, despite spinning into the Turn 2 sand trap due to a bump from fellow MARC II driver Adam Hargraves in Race 2, and necessitating a Code 40 interruption while his car was retrieved.
Third place went to John Morriss, who finished seventh and second in the two races, and emerged from the weekend with the championship lead following Matt Stoupas’ Saturday qualifying dramas.
Aaron Prosser sealed the Mazda RX8 Cup championship by winning all five races.
While Prosser scored comfortable lights-to-flag victories in each race, Lougher, O’Hara and Will Harris battled vigorously for second position, swapping places on several occasions.
Will Harris chalked up a DNF in Race 5 after making late-race contact with O’Hara, but Harris still secured second in the series ahead of Terry Lewis, who limped to the line with a mechanical problem in the final.
He broke the lap record and won all three Sunday races, but Chad Cotton (Future Racer) missed out on the round win in the Miniature Race Car Series, due to the DNF he suffered in Race 1 on Saturday. That honour instead went to Craig White, also driving a Future Racer, who backed up his two Saturday wins with a trio of second-place finishes in today’s races, to emerge with the overall round victory ahead of Peter Griffiths (Aussie Racing Car). The final spot on the overall podium went to Stephen Chilby in his Legend Car, after Matt Thewlis spun at Turn 10 in the final race.
Mustang driver Adam Walton and Torana racer Chris Thomas staged an entertaining battle in the Historic Touring Cars; Walton won Race 1, but Thomas won Races 2 and 3 after Walton suffered a mechanical problem. Walton used the superior horsepower of his Mustang to blast into the Race 4 lead, and led from start to finish in Race 5.
The Aussie Racing Utes round win went to former Australian Paralympian Colin Sieders, who scored three race victories.
