Jean-Karl Vernay claims win from pole as points leader Will Brown finishes last
Jean-Karl Vernay has continued his near-perfect start to a cameo in TCR Australia series by claiming the first race of the weekend after starting from pole at Queensland Raceway.
Driving in a one-off round appearance for Melbourne Performance Centre, the former TCR International series champion adapted to the track quickly and took the Audi RS 3 LMS to a convincing victory in the opening race of the Ipswich round.
Though the standout performance of the race came from Vernay delivering a crushing victory, all eyes were on championship leader Will Brown as the HMO Customer Racing driver ended up in a lap one incident, dropping to the bottom of the order.
Vernay got the fastest start off the line despite being on the dirty line, holding off Wall Racing’s John Martin and a fast charging Brown into Turn 1 as Dylan O’Keeffe tried to make his way into the top three in the Ash Seward Motorsport Alfa Romeo on the opening lap, battling side-by-side with Brown down the back straight.
At the close of the first lap, Vernay extended his lead while Brown tried to make a move on Martin at Turn 6, making contact with the Honda and falling off the road, dropping to the back of the order and hurting his championship aspirations.
Martin suffered a tyre failure from second place after the contact with Brown, losing grip into Turn 4 and going off the road. On his way back to the pits, his Honda shed some bodywork onto the circuit, forcing the safety car to come out while the track was cleaned.
With the race restarted soon after, Vernay started to open up a gap to Tony D’Alberto’s Honda and O’Keeffe’s Alfa as Russell Ingall patiently sat in fourth driving the MPC Audi.
Brown’s woes continued when he was handed a pit lane penalty with eleven laps remaining, given to the championship leader after he took a shortcut between Turn 3 and 6, trying to catch up to the pack as the safety car was deployed. The penalty dropped Brown to 17th and last on the road as Martin continued to encounter issues, running 16th.
Andre Heimgartner in the Kelly Racing Holden Astra TCR came to a halt only a handful of laps before the end with an engine drama, continuing his run of bad luck in 2019 which saw the team take him out of a Subaru and into the Holden for this round.
Out front, Vernay extended his lead in the closing stages of the race as both O’Keeffe and Ingall found their way past D’Alberto for the podium spots, staying there until the end of the race. Vernay took a crushing win by over six seconds, establishing himself as the cream of the crop on Saturday at Queensland Raceway.
With the progressive grid in TCR Australia series, the field will line up for Race 2 tomorrow in the same order they finished today’s race with Will Brown being the biggest loser after starting third and ending up 16th.
