Porsche Carrera Cup Australia Round 1

Matt started the new season with the same intensity as he finished with last year by putting the Nuveau Constructions Porsche on the front row beside V8 Supercar driver Ash Walsh.

In race 1 he won the drag race to the turn 1 chicane and lead a reasonably uneventful race from start to finish.

In race two Matt and Alex Davison both lost an argument over the same patch of road putting them both into the tyre wall at turn 4.

Matt managed to recover some ground to get back up to 9th place from the rear of the field.

In race 3 he started from grid 9 and drove a superb race to catch and pass most of the other Pro drivers eventually finishing second after McBride was penalised 5 seconds for jumping the start.

Despite a far from perfect weekend, he is currently third in the Championship and only 19 points off-the-lead.

Although Duvashen qualified 7th, had his lap time been 5/100s of a second quicker he would have qualified on the second row of the grid in 3rd!

Yep, Carrera Cup is that tight at the top!

In race 1 he got Duvashen was shuffled back and his final result of 10th wasn't a fair representation of his pace or race-craft.

In race 2 he made a couple of small errors which cost him dearly dropping him to the back of the pack before he drove back through to 13th in Pro class.

In race 3 he did a great job to work his way from 18th on the grid up to 9th outright and 8th in Pro class.

Duvashen's speed in qualifying and top 4 pace in the final race show that he has the speed to be on the podium soon. We are really looking forward to letting him loose at the AGP next week!

Like his more experienced Carrera Cup team mates, James did a great job in qualifying to finished 11th in Pro ahead of his fellow GT3 Cup Challenge graduate, Dylan O’Keffe.

Unfortunately, he got tangled up with another car between the concrete walls on the first lap which put him out of the race with damage too bad to continue.

In race 2 he started from the rear of the grid and had a relatively quiet race to finish 12th in Pro class.

He started race 3 from 13th and progressed through the field to an impressive 9th in Pro class all-the-while racing hard-but-fair with team-mate Duvashen.

There is no doubt James learned a huge amount in his first Carrera Cup round and did a great job considering the tough street circuit and enormous competition in Carrera Cup.

After guiding Shane to his first Tag Challenge championship victory in his first season with MR last year, we were in no doubt the opposition, particularly Tony Bates, would be lifting their game for 2016.

Shane had a good start to the weekend qualifying on pole in the Tag Heuer Challenge category and an impressive 11th outright.

In race 1 he got a good start but was bundled-up in the typical ducking and weaving on the first lap which allowed Bates to get past.

He sat patiently behind Bates waiting for an opportunity to get past and finished behind him to collect some valuable Championship points.

In race 2 he got the better of Bates off the start and drove the wheels off his car to stay ahead, but had a small moment at turn 9 after letting pros Alex Davison and team mate Matt Campbell by which unfortunately allowed Bates to take advantage and squeeze past.

Race 3 didn't last long when Shane became a victim of Ash Walsh's turn 1 accident and Shane lost transmission drive as a result.