Néstor Girolami extends Sandown domination, wins shortened race two

Wall Racing’s wild card driver Néstor Girolami has extended his streak of winning in the TCR Australia series, taking victory in the first of two Sunday races at Sandown Raceway.

The Honda Civic Type R TCR driver won the shortened race after an incident-packed outing saw the race reduced to 17 laps from 20, condensing the battles throughout the hitout.

A rocket start for Girolami from pole saw the Honda driver put three car lengths on the chasing pack to Turn 1, Jordan Cox being the first chaser in his Garry Rogers Motorsport prepared Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR as Will Brown struggled to get off the line, dropping from second to sixth in the opening lap onboard the HMO Customer Racing Hyundai i30 N TCR.

The weekend’s first safety car was deployed on lap three as Nathan Morcom’s HMO Hyundai became stuck in the gravel trap at Dandenong Road after getting tagged by the Kelly Racing Holden Astra TCR of Bryce Fullwood, forcing officials to safely recover the stricken i30 N TCR.

Just before the yellow flags came out, Russell Ingall locked up the rear tyres of his Audi RS 3 LMS at Turn 1, hitting the fence and taking the Melbourne Performance Centre entry out of the race after moving up to fifth from twelfth on the grid.

Racing resumed on lap eight as the field scrambled down the front straight, Girolami coming under pressure from Cox who ran wide at the first corner, losing a spot to the Renault Megane RS TCR of James Moffat, elevating the other GRM driver to second as the Wall Racing Honda got out to a two second lead.

Contact between the Honda of John Martin and Garth Tander’s MPC Audi left the Wall Racing car coming second best, breaking its right front suspension as the pair fought over fourth place. Though Martin limped back to the pits, the MPC-run Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR of Alexandra Whitley parked up at the exit of Turn 4, meaning the safety car made its second appearance of the race.

With four laps to run as the race went time certain, Girolami led the pack to the green flag as he made a mistake coming onto the main straight, checking up the pack behind and again letting the #38 Honda stretch out to a healthy lead. A strong first lap for Tander saw him move past the GRM entries of Moffat and Cox to take second.

As championship contender Dylan O’Keeffe found himself battling to stay inside the top ten after struggling on cold tyres in the Ash Seward Motorsport run Alfa Romeo, championship leader Brown dropped through the field like a stone, running in eleventh despite starting up in second and obviously struggling for pace.

A tight battle on the last lap between Cox and Andre Heimgartner in the second Kelly Racing Astra saw the pair make contact at Turn 4, spinning the #7 Alfa Romeo out of contention and moving Heimgartner to fourth. He was handed a 30 second post-race penalty, dropping to twelfth and elevating the Honda of Tony D’Alberto to fourth and Aaron Cameron’s MPC Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR to fifth.

Girolami had no dramas through the race, taking victory with a healthy margin of one and a half seconds over Tander who took his first podium of the weekend ahead of Moffat. Though Jason Bright was able to move up to sixth at the race finish despite starting on the last row, all eyes were on seventh and eighth with Brown finishing ahead of O’Keeffe, extending his championship lead.