Will Brown avoids chaos behind to claim Race 2 win at The Bend

HMO Customer Racing’s Will Brown secured his fourth TCR Australia series win of the season in Race 2 at The Bend Motorsport Park, which twice featured the safety car.

Brown got the jump on pole-sitter and Race 1 winner Garth Tander off the line and claimed a straight-forward victory in his Hyundai i30 N TCR.

Tander brought his Melbourne Performance Centre Audi RS 3 LMS home second, but only after the Renault Megane of Chris Pither retired late on.

The Garry Rogers Motorsport driver had been running comfortably ahead of Tander heading into the final two laps, but locked his rear brakes approaching the first corner and went into the barriers heavily.

That allowed GRM team-mate James Moffat to take the final step on the podium in the second Megane ahead of John Martin’s Honda Civic Type TCR.

Martin started third but battled past Tander at the penultimate corner on the opening lap to try and take the fight to Brown out front.

Brown’s lead at the end of the lap stood at over a second and was extending gradually before the safety car came out for the first time, to recover the stricken Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR of Alexandra Whitley.

The Matt Stone Racing driver suffered front end damage to her Golf and pulled over at the side of the road exiting Turn 17 with a cooling issue as a result.

At the restart, Martin had a superb run on Brown who was slow to get back up to speed heading into Turn 1. Pither also got involved and the trio went three-wide down the main straight, with the Renault eventually taking second under braking.

Now up to speed, Brown broke clear by nearly a second-and-a-half over Pither, while Tander surged past Martin for third place on the inside of Turn 6.

The safety car then came out once more after contact between the GRM Alfa Romeo of Jimmy Vernon and the Holden of Alex Rullo coming through Turn 10.

Vernon ran wide on the exit of the corner and slewed into the side of the on-coming Rullo as he tried to regain control of the car.

Rullo’s car suffered extensive damage and was out on the spot, while Vernon crawled back to the pits to retire.

Brown remained out front at the final restart and headed Pither, Tander, Martin and Moffat.

Moffat managed to squeeze past Martin for fourth place, which became third in the closing stages thanks to Pither’s accident.

Brown took the win by just over half a second from Tander in the end, while the former’s chief title rival made Dylan O’Keefe made amends for his Race 1 retirement with points for 10th place in his GRM Alfa Romeo.

Race 3 is scheduled to take place at 13:45 AEST.