Dayle ITM’s Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles claimed third in a thrilling three-hour Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS race at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Leitch topped his Pro-only qualifying sessions on Saturday in the Melbourne Performance Centre-run Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO II by 0.666s before Miles went fourth fastest in his session. Their combined effort put them second overall behind the sister Audi of Will Brown and Brad Schumacher.
Miles set the sixth fastest time in the Super Pole Shootout but was promoted to fifth on the grid after a penalty to another team.
Miles was swamped initially off the start and fell to seventh but almost immediately got back to fifth when two cars tangled at Turn 4. By the end of the first lap, Miles was fourth.
An early Safety Car just 23 minutes into the race brought Miles to the pit lane and Leitch jumped in for his first stint.
Leitch worked his way up to second and as the race hit the 35-minute mark, the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe champion pulled off a bold dive into Turn 2 to pass two-time Bathurst 1000 winner Chaz Mostert in the Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 for the lead.
Leitch set about extending his lead but had it slashed when James Koundouris spun and stalled his Mercedes-AMG GT3 at the final turn, bringing out the second Safety Car. Leitch pitted and put Miles in the Audi for his second and final stint.
There was mass confusion in the middle of the Safety Car sequence. The Leitch/Miles car was picked up as the race leader despite showing up third on the timing screen after pitting. The Declan Fraser/Peter Hackett Triple Eight Race Engineering Mercedes-AMG GT3 was correctly classified as the leader after staying out, but in a bizarre seqeuence was allowed to pass the Safety Car for reasons unexplained. The same was true for the Jayden Ojeda/Paul Lucchitti Mercedes-AMG classified second. Both cars tagged onto the back of the pack effectively a lap ahead while Miles led the train of cars under Safety Car.
After a lengthy Safety Car, timing was adjusted and Miles was classified first ahead of Liam Talbot in the Ferrari he shared with Mostert. The Kiwi led the field to green and slowly dropped back to third. The team opted to run Miles long and give Leitch the best opportunity for a late comeback on fresher tyres relative to his rivals.
Miles pitted just shy of one hour remaining for Leitch to bring the car home. He started his final stint with a more than 20-second gap to the third-placed Ferrari of Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte. Leitch quickly drew the gap back and with just a few minutes remaining pulled off another signature divebomb pass on Evans into Turn 2 to take the final step on the podium.
At the head of the field, Ojeda pulled off a fuel strategy gamble and won with Lucchitti by seven seconds over Mostert and Talbot.
“That was a wild race from start to finish. Despite the small field, there was plenty going on with cars going off the track and managing the pit stop strategy,” said Leitch.
“Some weird stuff in the middle of the race there really mixed things up and the result might have looked a lot different if not for that Safety Car sequence playing out the way it did. I’m glad that Tim and I were able to stand on the podium but maybe we could have been another step higher.
“Tim was excellent during his stints. We really pushed him hard to put us in the best position possible for the end of the race. He did absolutely everything right, stayed out of trouble, and kept us in touch with the leaders.
“For me, that race was really satisfying. Going toe-to-toe with some of the best Supercars drivers in Australia is always a great test and being able to beat them in a straight fight definitely doesn’t hurt the confidence.”
After a string of consecutive race weekends, Leitch will have a short break before the Bathurst International on November 8-10.
“A result like this is great heading to Mount Panorama,” said Leitch.
“Unfortunately, we’re a long way back in the Sprint Cup points but we’re definitely in with a shout of the top three if everything goes to plan. Tim has a ton of experience at The Mountain so I’ll be leaning on him for a bit of guidance.”
Header Image: Race Project (Supplied)
