Jay Hanson claims his and new Audi’s maiden TCR Australia win

[Steve Q]

Jay Hanson got his TCR Australia season off to the perfect start on Saturday, claiming both his and the new Audi RS3 LMS TCR’s first win in the series at Symmons Plains Raceway.

Having qualified his Melbourne Performance Centre-run car in second earlier in the day, Hanson made the better start when the lights went out to leapfrog pole-sitter Nathan Morcom’s Hyundai into the first turn.

Morcom’s HMO Customer Racing team-mate Josh Buchan then took second on the next lap, as Hanson began to open up an advantage of over a second over the chasing pack. 

Ultimately, Hanson would take a comfortable maiden win in the series, and the first for the new-spec Audi in a national TCR series, as a challenge from Buchan never really materialised in the calm season-opener.

Buchan took the chequered flag over five seconds back, whilst Morcom would complete the podium in the second Hyundai i30.

James Moffat was fourth in his GRM Renault, having passed Will Brown’s Audi for the position on the second lap of the race at the penultimate corner.

Brown, the 2019 champion, had a challenging first race in his Audi, which was driven by Chaz Mostert to the 2021 title, as on the next lap he lost two further places to Aaron Cameron’s Peugeot and Zac Soutar’s Honda.

After that, Brown would stabilise and hold position for the rest of the race in seventh, as Team Valvoline GRM’s Cameron held on to fifth and Soutar a career-best-equalling sixth in his privately-run Honda.

Tony D’Alberto was the leading Wall Racing Honda in eighth, whilst the top ten was completed by Dylan O’Keeffe’s Peugeot and Brad Shiels’ Hyundai, after some fierce battling that also saw guest racer Fabian Coulthard briefly in tenth after battling hard with Shiels at the mid-stage of the race.

Coulthard thus finished in 11^th in his Honda and just missed out on the reverse grid, ahead of the recovering Michael Caruso in 12^th, the Alfa Romeo driver having started from the back of the grid after qualifying troubles.

HMO’s newcomer Bailey Sweeny had been occupying tenth until lap eight, when Shiels and Coulthard muscled through, and the youngster then dropped down the order over the following laps to ultimately take the chequered flag in 15^th.

Jordan Cox, who had qualified in tenth, had to start the race from the pitlane due to a technical issue, and could only recover to 16^th in the race which featured no dropouts.

Kody Garland failed to take the start, having withdrawn from the weekend after crashing his GRM Renault in practice.

Sunday’s second race will see the grid formed by the top ten positions in qualifying being reversed.

Another new change will mean that Sunday’s final race will feature a grid determined by the aggregate points scored in the first two races of the weekend.

Race two is scheduled to get underway at 14:25 local time on Sunday (03:25 GMT, 04:25 CET) followed by race three at 16:20 local time (05:20 GMT, 06:20 CET). 

https://www.touringcars.net/2022/02/jay-hanson-claims-his-and-new-audis-maiden-tcr-australia-win