Gerard “Maverick” McLeod has won the 350th V8 Ute Championship Race, which was Race 2 of Round 7 of the 2015 East Coast Bullbars Australian V8 Ute Racing Series at the Gold Coast 600, Saturday, 24th October.
“Maverick” was quick off the line taking the lead early, and managed to avoid the non-stop mayhem behind him to take the win from Kim Jane in a one lap dash to the line after two safety car periods.
“A wins a win in my book, I started off the front row so I had the best possible chance, I just put my head down and there were a couple of safety car restarts there, it got a bit hairy at the end but we fought hard, had a good battle with Kim Jane and the car didn’t have a scratch on it,” said McLeod.
Jane pushed McLeod hard but wasn’t able to pass the RYCO/ 24-7 Holden Ute and came home in second ahead of Craig Dontas in third, Rookie Aaren Russell in fourth and local lad Cam “Slideways” Wilson in fifth.
The first safety car period was called at Turn 5 on the first lap when Peter Burnitt and Charlie Kovacs made contact causing Bruce Oaklands to end up in the side of Burnitt. Andrew Fisher did well to avoid the initial incident but when returning to the track had contact from “Handlebars” Kovacs, ending the Jesus Racing’s driver’s race.
Ryan Hansford was also stopped in his tracks by the incident but did well to rejoin the field and made up ground to end the race in 6th.
The second safety car was called after Leigh Nicolaou and New Zealander Peter Ward had a coming together, leaving Nicolaou’s Shamick Racing Holden stuck on the wall at Turn 11.
Following the restart for the final lap, Mason Barbera and Craig Dontas came together and started a ricochet effect that left drivers with nowhere to go and effectively blocking the track.
Dontas emerged from the mire to come home in third, Barbera ended up in 22nd. Nathan Pretty went from fourth to 11th, Adam Marjoram dropped from sixth to twelvth and David Sieders was lucky to make it over the finish line after going into the wall at turn 11, limping home in 14th trying to salvage some valuable points.
“I still limped over the line and should look inside the top six for the next race which gives us a shot to still get on the podium - but we’ll see how we go, it’s a concrete jungle as we just worked out in that race that anything can happen,” said Sieders.
Rhys McNally also drove out of the incident to finish in 7th ahead of Danny Buzadzic in 8th, George Miedecke in 9th and Ryal Harris rounded out the top ten, securing himself more championship points ahead of contender Walton who ended up 21st overall after getting up to 9th position before the incident.
“You’ve just got to finish races, it’s hard with races like that as it was an absolute nightmare, and we were lucky to finish. We had bent steering and got caught up with Jeremy Gray, in the middle of the race on the restart I got punted into the offshoot on turn 11 but I think the guys that are second and third behind me in the championship had a bad race as well so we’re just happy to finish in stay in the lead of the championship,” said Harris.
The V8 Utes will be back on track tomorrow morning at 10:05am for the final Race of the weekend, Race 3, which will be televised live on Network ten and Fox Sports.
