AUSF3: Winton: Tom Tweedie weekend summary

VERY REWARDING WINTON WEEKEND FOR TWEEDIE

TOM TWEEDIE has completed a most rewarding weekend on his first visit to Victoria's Winton Motor Raceway in Australia's fastest racing cars.

Tweedie took his Battery World / Tizzana Vineyards / Team Tom Dallara F304 to a handy pair of F3 National Class wins, but it wasn't the class points that gave the small team the most satisfaction at the weekend.

What did was, firstly, a strong rebound from challenging practice and qualifying sessions and secondly, two spirited races that saw the Blue and Yellow Dallara mixing it up with the latest and greatest cars contesting the Australian Drivers' Championship this year.

Tweedie finished fourth outright in both races at the 3.0km circuit in his older model 2004 Dallara, racing the 2007-spec outright cars hard on both occasions.

Tweedies' only major incident of the weekend came when he was turned around by Mat Sofi in the first race, sending the Team Tom Dallara into a harmless spin in turn eleven.

Earlier in the weekend the team had struggled for setup but after some timely advice from 2007-champion Tim Macrow and hard work from the team, Tweedie bounced back with two stunning performances on Sunday.

As a result he now leads the National Class by 30 points ahead of his first race on ‘home turf', at Eastern Creek in July.

"It was a really good weekend in the end, the pace we had today (race day) were very satisfying," said Tweedie.

"Mat and I were dicing after he had a bad start and had a shot down the inside at turn eleven, in race one. He just clipped my rear wheel and that sent both of us out into the mud. It was a bit frustrating but he came and apologised afterwards and in the end it was just one of those incidents that can happen.

"I'm really happy with the pace of the car. We went back to basics and lapped in the same times as Ben Crighton and Mat Sofi so that was very pleasing.

The next round of the Formula 3 Australian Drivers' Championship will be held at Sydney's Eastern Creek Raceway, the scene of Tweedies' first ever tests of an F3 car mid way last year.

"Given Eastern Creek was the first place I drove an F3 car, it's going to be good to go back there and actually race one on what is basically my home track," he said.

"We're on the right track. We had a really good weekend at Winton and we're looking forward to going to Eastern Creek to keep trying to race with the ‘07 cars at the front."

The Eastern Creek round will be held between July 17 - 19.

Tom Tweedie would like to thank supporters including Battery World, Tizzana Vineyards, the Team Tom Membership base and everyone else who has provided support throughout the 2009 championship.

-credit: tweedie