Sydney sweeps for Harri Jones and Adrian Flack as Carrera Cup title race hits half-way

HARRI JONES and Adrian Flack have swept Sydney before them to claim dominant victories in Round 4 of the Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia Championship at Sydney Motorsport Park. 

The pair head into a mid-season break holding commanding leads in their respective title battles thanks to imperious weekends at Sydney Motorsport Park that saw Jones take pole and three wins in Equity-One Pro, and Flack achieve the same in SP Tools Pro-Am.

Jones led home Dylan O'Keeffe and David Russell in the Pro class, while Flack was joined on the Pro-Am podium by second-placed Rodney Jane and Matt Belford.

With a two-month break prior to the next round at Sandown, Jones' championship lead provisionally sits at 145 points, with Jackson Walls second and Russell third, just nine points further back.

Adrian Flack leads Matt Slavin and Rodney Jane in the Pro-Am class, though drivers will need to drop their worst round of the year prior to the end of the season, with only 7 of the 8 rounds counting.

The fifth round of the 2024 Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia Championship will be held at the Sandown 500 in Melbourne on 13-15 September. 

RACE 3

Jones completed his Sydney sweep with another lights-to-flag victory ahead of Dylan O'Keeffe in Race 3 at Sydney Motorsport Park, however there was plenty of action in his wake. 

The two leaders finished well ahead of the chasing pack, which included a busy three-car battle for the final spot in the top three that at the line went to Fabian Coulthard.

The Kiwi had spent much of the race first in a battle with Marco Giltrap and then with David Russell and had passed the TekworkX driver to cross the line in third - however a five-second penalty for a driving infringement, related to the battle with Giltrap, ultimately saw the BWT Porsche drop to sixth in the final standings.

That returned Russell to the top three with Jackson Walls fourth and Garth Tander a stunning fifth.

The Bathurst winner started 15th but scythed his way through the field with better condition tyres than those around him, catching the battling Russell and Walls' in the race's closing stages.

Angelo Mouzouris, Marco Giltrap, Bayley Hall and Ryder Quinn completed the top-10, which included plenty of hard battles through the field.

Drama on the opening lap for Marcos Flack and Nick McBride dropped them down the order - the former recovering to 14th position.

Flack again won the SP Tools Pro-Am class ahead of Jane and Matt Belford, which also replicated the overall round podium.

RACE 2 (Endurance Cup) 

HARRI JONES posted another emphatic performance to claim his second straight Enduro Cup win on Sunday morning at Sydney Motorsport Park. 

As he did in race one, Jones nailed the start and used supreme cold tyre pace to build his lead over a racy Jackson Walls early, and was never headed from there.

Walls chased hard throughout the 45-minute encounter, the pair trading quickest laps and never split by more than three seconds – in turn, finishing 10 seconds ahead of third-placed Coulthard.

The BWT driver had a racy affair, slipping past Dylan O’Keeffe mid-race following a lengthy battle to secure his first top three finish since the Gold Coast last year. With O’Keeffe settling for fourth, David Russell finished fifth and Marco Giltrap sixth – the pair having battled for much of the race.

Behind them were challenging tails for some, Bayley Hall crossing the line just behind Giltrap before a five second penalty relegated him to 11th in the final standings. Tom McLennan (18th) and Garth Tander (17th) were also recipients of a track limits penalty.

Dale Wood, David Wall, Nash Morris and Angelo Mouzouris completed the top-10 in the enduro cup affair.

Adrian Flack secured his eleventh straight SP Tools Pro-Am class win, once again mixing it with the Equity-One Pro runners en route to 19th outright.

The victory was the 37th of his career, which pulled him clear of Stephen Grove in the all-time Pro-Am winners list – Flack now only trailing three-time class champion Max Twigg (48 wins) in the all-time leaderboard.

While Flack ran away in front, a furious battle was fought for second, third and fourth: Matt Belford fighting off Matt Slavin by just one-tenth of a second – with Rodney Jane right behind them with the trio split by just 0.4 seconds as the line.

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Jones, Flack claim Sydney night race victories in Carrera Cup show