MOTORSPORT: Windy start at The Bend

The first national race meeting at South Australia’s new circuit, The Bend Motorsport Park, was a windy affair, with the format of the feature event needing to be revamped.

Instead of the Australian Endurance Championship race being run in two parts, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, on the 7.77km GT circuit as planned, it became one continuous Sunday race on the 4.95km international layout that the V8 Supercars will use in August.

Despite rain on Friday, strong winds had blown a lot of dust on to the back half of the longer circuit, making it unsuitable for racing.

The consolidated two-hour 40-minute race was won by a Mercedes-AMG GT3 driven by Max Twigg and Tony D’Alberto. They led more than half the 78 laps.

John Martin and Liam Talbot finished second in the Walkinshaw Porsche 911 GT3-R, nine seconds behind the Merc after a late safety car.

Third was the Steven Richards BMW M6 GT3 that the multiple Bathurst 1000 winner shared with Michael Almond.

The safety car was called out soon after the start when Yasser Shahin, a member of the family that has developed the $110 million venue 100km south-east of Adelaide, spun the Mercedes-AMG he shared with Luke Youlden on the opening lap.

Reigning Bathurst 1000 champion David Reynolds’ fastest lap of the race in a Mercedes-AMG, at 1:47.698, stands as the circuit record, but he and co-driver Jaie Robson were classified only 14th of the 19 cars in the race, 14 laps down.

Teenage rookies dominated the Porsche Michelin GT3 Cup Challenge round.

Adelaide’s Max Vidau, last year’s National Formula Ford Series champion who only turns 17 next week, won Sunday’s two Porsche races, while Cooper Murray, a 16-year-old Victorian with a string of karting titles to his credit, won Saturday’s race.

Tekno Autosports’ new Supercar driver Jack Le Broque won the round of the Heritage Touring Cars – a new addition to the Shannons Nationals program – in a 1992 Ford Sierra.

Power runner-up at Long Beach
Toowoomba’s Will Power couldn’t get past American Alex Rossi in the closing laps of the third round of the IndyCar Series on the streets of California’s Long Beach and had to settle for second.

Power had led six of the 85 laps in his Team Penske Chevrolet-engined Dallara but Honda-powered Andretti Autosport driver Rossi led 71 on the way to winning by 1.2413 seconds.

Rossi now leads Power’s American teammate and reigning champion Josef Newgarden by 22 points, while 2014 champion Power is eighth in the series with the fourth round – the Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama – next Sunday.