Photo: TCR Australia

Jason Bright and Volkswagen strike first in TCR Australia debut

Jason Bright led all 16 laps to become the first winner of the TCR Australia series thanks to a controlled performance in the categories first ever race at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Bright started from the outside of the front row, however his Alliance Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR beat pole-sitter Tony D’Alberto into the first corner and was never headed from there to take a comfortable 2.1 second victory.

Having earlier scored the series’ first pole position award, D’Alberto’s Wall Racing Honda held second for the duration while Will Brown completed the podium in his HMO Customer Racing Hyundai i30 N TCR.

After D’Alberto pressured Bright early, he then spent the remainder of the race sustaining an attack from Brown for third.

The Hyundai driver battled a minor technical issue late in the race but was able to secure the final step on the podium despite an attack from Dylan O’Keeffe’s Alfa Romeo in the closing laps.

However, no one could catch Bright as the 46-year-old Victorian and Volkswagen created their own little slice of TCR History.

“It feels awesome. It’s been a lot of hard work getting to this point. Thanks to the Matt Stone Racing guys and everyone who’s helped out,” Bright said.

“It was a great start, looked after it’s tyres well. That race was a bit of an unknown and we didn’t know who was going to be coming at us. I thought if Will had got past Tony he may have come at us so I pushed to maintain that gap.

“They were brought in pretty late at the media day and they worked on the cars at the media day they worked pretty hard to get it right for qualifying. Tony just pipped it but pretty happy to win the first one for sure.”

A solid start to D’Alberto’s campaign saw the Wall Racing Honda team leave with a Pole position and a second-placed finish – a slow start ultimately costing the Victorian driver.

“To grab the first ever pole position for the series was fantastic. To get a podium in the first race was pretty special too,” he said.

“I made a mistake at the start and didn’t quite get off the line well enough. Bright got away from me and didn’t really have anything for him for the rest of the race so I just tried to manage my tyres and fend off Will.

“I wasn’t sure how hard I could push and what was acceptable and what wasn’t, so we’ve learnt a lot from that which we’ll take into tomorrow’s two races.”

Third-placed Brown said he was confident that he had the pace to challenge the leading Volkswagen, however rued the limited overtaking opportunities at Sydney Motorsport Park that makes track position key.

“I loved every second of the first race. No one really knew what they were doing off the start but I got a good start, jumped up to third and had a crack into turn two. I knew it wasn’t going to work but at least it looked good!” he explained.

“From there we battled hard with Tony for a few laps and had a really good race. We had something go wrong at the front which was dropping oil all over the front tyres so that’s why we dropped back a bit to the Alfa.”

Held in perfect conditions, the 17-car-field was reduced by one prior to the start when James Moffat’s Garry Rogers Motorsport Renault Megane failed on the formation lap.

Later diagnosed to be a turbo issue, the former Supercars race winner was a non-starter however will be repaired for Sunday’s two races. After a combative opening few laps, the race settled down for the duration with a few key moves occurring late in the race to change the order in the top-ten.

On his Australian racing debut, Dutch driver Rik Breukers finished fifth in his Melbourne Performance Centre Audi to make it five brands in the top five.

He passed Nathan Morcom (HMO Hyundai) late in the race to grab his spot, while the second Honda of John Martin trailed the i30 N entry.

Aaron Cameron finished eighth while Andre Heimgartner (Subaru) and Chris Pither (Renault) battled for the final spot in the top-ten throughout the race, the all-New Zealand battle ultimately settled in favour of the latter at the end.

Having topped Friday’s practice sessions, Michael Almond qualified fifth however saw his car damaged early in the race – the South Australian forced to pit lane to repair damage to his bonnet.

As well as winning the race, Bright also established the Sydney Motorsport Park TCR Lap record thanks to his fastest lap of 1m35.9107s on the fourth lap.

Earlier in the day, D’Alberto grabbed pole position for Honda after a flying lap late in the session saw him edge Bright for pole by 0.15 seconds.

Dylan O’Keeffe and Will Brown made up the second row with Almond fifth.

The top-ten was completed by John Martin, Nathan Morcom, Rik Breukers, Andre Heimgartner and Jimmy Vernon – the first nine covered by just 0.9 seconds.

Two 16-lap races will complete the first round of TCR Australia on Sunday, the races to be run back-to-back with a 30-minute break between them in a format unique to the sport in Australia.

Both races will be streamed live via the series website.