Triple Eight and Shaw & Partners MPC wins GTWC Australia races at The Bend

The weekend of FANATEC GT World Challenge Australia saw the Arise GT Ferraris impose their pace like when at Philip Island, but failing to capitalize as both wins slipped away for the No. 888 Triple Eight Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo of Declan Fraser and Peter Hackett and the No. 87 Shaw & Partners MPC Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Will Brown and Brad Schumacher.
 
A four-wide run to the first corners in Race 1 had the No. 45 RAM GWR Mercedes winning the drag race while leaving the No. 87 Shaw & Partners MPC Audi as prey for the No. 1 Arise Ferrari, with the No. 888 Triple Eight Mercedes having a close look of the action. It took ten minutes for the No. 1 to go ahead, but it was a decisive power move for second place.
 
Surprisingly, Garth Walden was keeping up the defense by staying quite far from Liam Talbot, and delivered the No. 45 to Mike Sheargold in the lead during the pit window, but the cycle favored the No. 888 as the No. 1 got boxed in second place again, and while Chaz Mostert was pushing the Ferrari to try a move, Declan Fraser was keeping the No. 888 at a safe distance, with traffic also playing a part as the minutes were going down.
 
Mostert really tried all the time, but Fraser made sure the No. 888 Triple Eight Mercedes was always two seconds ahead of the No. 1 Arise Ferrari, with the race finishing exactly like this. In the Am Cup, the No. 45 RAM GWR Mercedes tumbled down the order and opened the gap for the No. 44 Valmont/Tigani Audi to win the class.
 
GTWC Australia - The Bend Race 1 results
 

Arise GT had control of the front row for Race 2, and while the No. 93 Wall Lamborghini and the No. 44 Valmont/Tigani Audi were spinning at the back, the No. 1 car capitalized on the team defense in the first corners while the No. 8 Ferrari had a huge drop to fourth while still attracting competition.
 
During the whole initial stint the No. 7 Dayle ITM MPC Audi and the No. 87 Shaw & Partners MPC Audi were boxed by the Arise Ferraris, but once the pit window was done with extra time and other stuff, the No. 87 was carrying the No. 7 in an Audi 1-2, and not only the Ferraris were kept 10 seconds away, but Brad Schumacher managed to get away from Tim Miles and the No. 7 as he lost some of his steam.
 
With eight minutes to go, Liam Talbot finally managed a pass with the No. 1 Arise Ferrari on the No. 7, but with 14 seconds off to the No. 87 Shaw & Partners MPC Audi, there wasn’t much to revert the result. Behind the obvious top two, the No. 8 Arise Ferrari went to the podium with a risky maneuver from Elliott Schutte in the final minute of racing.
 
The only Trophy class car of the field, the No. 38 KMB Aston Martin, still managed to be in front of the whole Am Cup field, of which the No. 45 RAM/GWR Mercedes was declared the winner after a messy final minute where it got involved in contact with traffic that took it off track, although it wasn’t too much lost time to lose the class win.
 
GTWC Australia - The Bend Race 2 results
 
The duo Talbot/Mostert (No. 1) leads the table with 75 points against the duo Schumacher/Brown (No. 87) while the pairs of the cars Nos. 7 and 8 stay within 10 points off the leaders.
 
Next in the calendar is a trip to the paperclip as Queensland Raceway hosts the Round 4 double header on 3 and 4 August.
 
PHOTOS: SRO/Daniel Kalisz