Triumphs and Traumas in Tasmania, Joy in Japan and Pace in Poland. Your week in Motorsport.

Marco Giltrap takes round win, Ronan Murphy takes first Australian race win

Marco Giltrap dominated the field in Tasmania at the second round of the Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge series.

Having won the opening round of the series at Phillip Island, the 18-year-old Aucklander was quick straight out of the gate clinching pole position for race one before leading all the way in the opener to take the win with Greg Murphy’s son, Ronan chasing in second.

In race two, a frenetic opening lap saw Giltrap survive a wild moment at turn three as his car slid sideways, allowing teammate Zac Stichbury to take the lead. The pair ran nose-to-tail for the first half of the race before Giltrap pounced and passed his teammate for the lead.

They ran nose-to-tail for the remainder in the first 1-2 finish for Earl Bamber Motorsport and Team Porsche NZ in local Porsche competition. Harrison Goodman finished third while Ronan Murphy was in the mix throughout, finishing fourth.

On the Sunday, Ronan Murphy was the fast mover, starting from the second row he caught and passed both Giltrap and Stichbury with a series of decisive passes at the famous Symmons hairpin.

First getting the jump on Stichbury on lap 7 with pace to burn, Murphy only needed three more laps to pressure and ultimately pass Giltrap to take the race lead on the 11th lap to take the race lead and ultimately pull away to grab the victory in the Enduro Cup race and his first Australian race win.

Giltrap ultimately did enough to claim his second-straight round win in Porsche Michelin Challenge competition, taking the overall round honours over Murphy.

The Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge will return to the Repco Supercars Championship for Round 3 of the series at the Sydney SuperNight event on July 28-30, while the Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia returns to the circuit at the Darwin Triple Crown at Hidden Valley on June 16-18.

Mixed bag for Kiwi Supercar drivers in Tasmania

In contrast to the Kiwi Lockout in the Porsche Racing, Supercars wasn’t so kind to the Kiwi contingent. The weekend started well, especially for Andre Heimgartner who converted a third row on the grid start into a P2 in the first race, while Shane van Gisbergen qualified in an uncharacteristic P9 but would drive the wheels of his Red Bull Ampol Racing Camaro to third.

The Red Bull Ampol Racing team didn’t appear to have a good car in qualifying and van Gisbergen would again start race 2 from mid field. The mix of cooler ambient temperature, low grip, high-speed and no margin for error at Symmons Plains saw the reigning champ punted off on lap one. The impact with the tyre wall severe enough to take him out of the race.

Fragility and ease of repair in the Generation 3 Supercars is becoming an issue. Steering arms and racks are quick to be damaged, the later often damaging oil seals and creating a challenging fix for the team.

SVG, who has also been confirmed for a NASCAR start in July, worked his way through the field again in race 3 to secure 4^th. A combination of talent and clever strategy to give the driver a clear run to make up some time on track where possible.

Meanwhile fellow Kiwi and EBM alumni, Matthew Payne struggled also driving to 15^th as his best race result for the weekend.

Lawson shines in Japan

Liam Lawson has won another Super Formula race, this time at Autopolis circuit in Japan.

Heading into Round 4, the Championship Leader and Lawson’s team Mugen teammate, Tomoki Nojiri, was unable to contest this round due to a collapsed lung. Speaking after qualifying second, Lawson was full of praise for Nojiri’s willingness to come and help out the squad despite his condition.

“Firstly, I feel terrible for him,” said Lawson of Nojiri’s situation. “It’s so rare that you see this kind of thing happen, especially to someone who is leading the championship. It’s horrible, so I have huge respect that he is still here this weekend helping the team, because I think most drivers would not be doing what he is doing.”

Lawson didn’t have the speed to challenge pole-sitter Sho Tsuboi in the opening stanza and the Kiwi sat behind Tsuboi and Sena Sakaguchi Lawson almost looked like he would be relegated to fourth in a less than ideal opening lap.

Lawson pitted early however and maximised the advantage of fresh tyres to real in the pack. Despite now being down almost three seconds to the leaders.

The green tyres saw Lawson quickly catch Sakaguchi in third, who pitted just one lap later, and eyeing up Ritomo Miyata (p2) and Sho Tsuboi (p1) in the distance, both choosing a longer opening stint.

Tsuboi would stretch out an out a lead of nearly 5s over Miyata, and put himself well over 30s clear of Lawson. But as tyre degradation became a factor, Miyata and Lawson were able to bring the gap down to under a second by lap 24, Lawson now within striking distance.

Tsuboi pitted on lap 25, but rejoined behind Lawson who extracted the very last amount of grip he had to fend off Tsuboi to the finish.

Having secured another top step of the podium and with Nojiri unable to race, Lawson now takes the Super Formula Championship lead and yet another step toward to a potential career in Formula 1.

The reason for the Red Bull Driver to be competing in the Super Formula Championship is clear. Helmut Marko, head of Driver development for Red Bull, feels the top tier Japanese category is “Closer to Formula 1 than Formula 2”. The move to place Lawson in the series for a year seems very deliberate, Marko’s recent wording, both expressing frustration at the current Alpha Tauri driver line up, while ruling out a senior driver such as Daniel Riccardo stepping in next year, indicates Lawson is very close to achieving his dream to competing full time in F1.

Paddon on form at mid-way point of Rally Poland.

A very tight battle between Kiwi Hayden Paddon and Latvian, Mārtiṇš Sesks is brewing as we head into day 2 of the Rally Poland. Sesks underlined his intent by clocking the fastest time through Saturday’s opening test, the challenging 18.58km Świętajno run, to shoot up to second place overall, 0.2sec behind BRC Racing Team’s pacesetter Hayden Paddon.

Paddon, is currently the European Rally Championship points leader in a Pirelli-equipped Hyundai i20 N Rally2, responded with the quickest time on SS3 and SS4, but Sesks remained in close contention, just 1.4sec behind at the midday service halt in Mikołajki.

A trio of fastest times followed for Sesks and co-driver Renars Francis taking them to the top of time charts in their Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 by 9.5sec with just the repeat of the Mikołajki Arena super special remaining. The pairing once more took a cautious approach to the super special stage, allowing Paddon to claw back 1.3sec, but it unlikely to have dented the intent of Sesks.

Paddon reckoned he could have gone faster during Saturday morning’s loop of three stages but explained he wasn’t prepared to push to the maximum.

“When you are driving with the championship in mind you need to eliminate as much risk as you can,” said the New Zealander. “There’s a bit of a fight at the moment but we can’t think about that until maybe tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, we need to keep doing our own rally and keep playing the long game.”

Paddon would go on to claim second over all in the rally and further extends his lead on the European Rally Championship.