It was thrilling finish to the Btuned Ipswich 3 Hour to kick off a new era for the Game Over Australian Endurance Championship as Tony Quinn and Matt McCutcheon combined to take victory at Queensland Raceway.
A late Pace Car period late in the race allowed the Speedcafe.com BMW F82 M3 of Rob Gooley and Oscar Targett close up on the Game Over Toyota GR Supra, but it was McCutcheon in the latter driving to outright victory and the Class 2 win.
It was interesting beginning to the race through a Le Mans start, with John Nikolovski taking tumble and co-driver Fabian Coulthard was left to chase the field in their Mercedes-AMG GT.
Added to the delay, the Mercedes-AMG refused to start prior to the warm up session forcing the AR Nineteen entry to start from the garage.
Coulthard was the star in the opening stint when he took the lead within the race’s first 30-minutes.
There was a traffic jam leaving the pit lane, but it was the sister AR Nineteen Mercedes-AMG GT shared by Jamie Arratoon and Luke King leading the early running.
AR Nineteen’s pair of Mercedes-AMG’s dominated the early running through King and Coulthard, but the third of Mark Griffith failed to make it cleanly through the first stint when it caused the first Pace Car intervention prior to the opening sequence of pit stops.
This handed the lead to the new BMW of Eric Ebert and his co-driver Luke van Herwarrde, who took the opening stint. Despite staying out, it failed to reward the duo as the M240iX dropped down the order after pitting during green running.
Anthony Soole and Grant Denyer also enjoyed a strong beginning to the race sharing the Property Investment Store McLaren 570s, but retired during the closing stages.
Once the McLaren was out of the picture, McCutcheon was on the way to victory after taking over from Quinn halfway through the race.
When the Ebert Alientech BMW stopped in the final 10-minutes, it left a two lap shootout to the finish between McCutcheon and the Speedcafe.com BMW with Targett at the helm.
However, McCutcheon held his nerve to take the win ahead of Targett and Coulthard a lap down.
Class 1 was led by Nikolovski/Coulthard from Griffith/Hayman and Arratoon/King.
Quinn/McCutcheon led home Gooley/Targett and the quick Ben Gersekwoski in his KCK Lubricants BMW E92 M3 to win Class 2.
Buccini father-daughter pairing Paul and Karlie took the Class 3 honours in their BMW 340i following retirements for the Jim Manteufel/Garry Beggs HSV Clubsport R8 and Andrew Milford/Ettore Vosolo’s BMW E92 M3.
The Game Over Australian Endurance Championship moves to Sydney Motorsport Park for Round 2 as part of the Hi-Tec Oils Super Series on July 17-18.
