Curran on Top in Trans-Am
Defending Trans-Am runner-up Brett Curran has returned to the top of the time sheets, claiming the round victory with three wins and a second placing at round four of the Performance Wheels Australian Trans-Am Series at Queensland Raceway.
A 12-car grid took to the track over the weekend as Trophy Series leader Shannon O’Brien (Pontiac Firebird) once again blitzed the field to claim pole position by eight tenths of a second ahead of Curran (Ford Mustang) and Ian Palmer (Pontiac Firebird).
O’Brien led from green to chequered in the opening race to claim the win over Curran and Palmer. However, a broken tail shaft in race two saw O’Brien fail to finish as a hard-charging Curran picked up the win in twilight conditions ahead of John Samios (Chevrolet Camaro) and Palmer.
Curran claimed the first win since the 2015 season for the Ford brand in Trans-Am in race two, leading home Samios and Palmer. The Mustang driver fended off O’Brien in the final two races for a successful return to form.
The Toowoomba driver was pleased with a commanding performance to take the round win.
“It’s been a great weekend for Cobie Rae and Team Angliss Meats,” said Curran.
“We qualified good on Saturday in second and moved forward from there.
“We hunted Shannon [O’Brien] down in the next race and unfortunately his car broke down and then he was playing catch up. We squared off in the last race and we came out as the victor.
“Trans-am is one of the greatest classes i’ve raced. There was a great roll-up of cars, the cars look awesome, they sound terrific and we’ve had a great weekend overall.”
Meanwhile, New Zealander Tony Rutherford (Ford Mustang) secured his second consecutive round victory in the Sportsman Series over returnee Harry Charalambous (Ford Mustang), as Dan Fleming (Ford Mustang) battled car troubles for most of the weekend.
Ron Prefontaine (Ford Mustang) secured another clean sweep of the 5 Litre Classics, with the championship well and truly up for grabs with two rounds remaining. The title fight has intensified, with only 36 points splitting class leader Gareth Jones (Ford Mustang), Mike Collins (Ford Mustang) and Prefontaine.
Attention now turns to the upcoming Touring Car Masters round at Queensland Raceway, where four cars from the Trans-Am paddock are likely to join the series as a support category to the Supercars Championship.
“We’ll be there on their radial tyres so we should be very competitive against the TCM cars,” said Curran
“We did well last year so we’re really looking forward to it.”
The Performance Wheels Australian Trans-Am Series returns to Lakeside Park for the fifth and penultimate round of the season, the Lakeside Classic, on August 12 and 13.