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Astuti Motorsport has broken though for their first win as a team in the Australian GT Championship after John Kaias took his Aston Martin DBRS9 to the overall victory in round four of the 2008 championship held at Eastern Creek Raceway.
After qualifying on pole position by over six-tenths of a second, Kaias won two races at Eastern Creek yesterday and finished third in the other to win the round convincingly and record both his, the teams’ and Aston Martin’s first race wins in the revitalised championship.
Kaias lead early in race one dropped to a safe third behind Peter Lucas and Peter Hackett at the end of the 12-lap race.
Race two, however, was different with the Aston Martin coming though from fourth place on the opening lap to run second by lap ten. The next lap Kaias struck and passed the Lotus to take the lead where he escaped by almost three seconds to record his first GT Championship win.
Firmly on top, Kaias led all 12 laps of race three to record an 11-second win and lock away the top points for the round overall.
Kaias now sits third in the Australian GT Championship with 239 points, just 20 from the lead of the championship with two rounds remaining – at Phillip Island and Sandown, respectively.
Kaias said that the performance was the result of a measured approach to his weekend.
“I hadn’t been in a car since the Grand Prix, but from the first practice session I just felt very comfortable and confident in the car,” he said.
“Qualifying was fantastic – I set my initial lap on a 1m33.0 and thought ‘how am I going to go quicker?’, but even with a few mistakes I was able to go quicker and get pole. Everything was going well for me in qualifying!”
“I was pretty nervous prior to race one having never led a rolling start before and I was a bit frustrated to come away with third place because I knew we could do better. I put my head down in the second race and waited patiently for someone ahead to make a mistake – and when Hackett locked up I got past and then got by Peter Lucas and that was it.”
“Race three was perfect and even though we had about 80kg of success ballast I was able to set a really good best lap. I was just so pleased in the end, it all came together fantastically well and it was a brilliant weekend.”
“We had a small scare in that the clutch failed as we pulled into parc ferme’ – so obviously we were meant to win that race!” he added.
Team Owner Sam Astuti was delighted at his teams breakthrough win in GT racing after many wins in Formula 3 competition.
“We have been waiting a long time, but always kept the faith that the team and that John could do the job,” Astuti said.
“We have always had the speed but it was just a matter of putting the results together throughout the weekend. John was a bit nervous before race one but in the second and third races he was excellent, kept his head and did a fantastic job. It was nice for us to win when we did against another Aston Martin in the field.
“All of a sudden we are third in the championship and within 20 points of the leading Lamborghini – so I’m confident that we’re going to give it a really big shake.”
The next round of the Australian GT Championship will be held at Phillip Island, where the Astuti Motorsport will also be competing in the penultimate round of the Kumho Tyres Australian Formula 3 Championship for the CAMS Gold Star.
