Lakeside GOAT 7hr

#710 Audi A3 – 1st in class – 2nd outright in the GOAT race

With so much attention on the Camry over the past few months it was nice to get back in the A3 again and have some fun. This car is absolutely incredible to drive and we also took fastest lap of the race by about 13 thousands of a second thanks to Laz.

It was a scorching day at Lakeside and after a few test sessions there with Russ and Laz we were confident that the car would be hard to beat. Russell started the race at the pointy end of the grid and was making moves towards the front when he missed a call for a yellow flag due to a faulty radio. After signalling for Russ to come into the pits we lost a bunch of time replacing the radio before joining again at the back of the grid.

With around 36 cars on track it was not easy finding clear track but we put our heads down and started picking off car one by one, we were running 60 min stints due to the heat to keep us fresh. Shane and Laz would do 2 stints each and Russ would do 3 stints including bringing the car home.

The car ran beautifully all day and had so much grip that we could pass cars just about anywhere on track. The Farm Find BMW was also running strong at the front of the field but we were catching them. We were around 5 laps down on the BMW when trouble stuck for them with just 10 mins to go. They had blown a power steering hose right at the end and had about 6 mins to fix it before we passed them for outright victory.

Unfortunately for us they managed to quickly fix the hose and get back out on track to take the chequered flag just 1 lap in front of us. The A3 finished strong in 2nd place but leading their class by 5 laps. A massive come back but just fell short of outright honours.

This was the second race in a row where we took class victory but just missed out on outright victory to the Farm Find BMW. We are back at QR in May for a 12 hour race where we hope to go one better and take outright victory.