Oran Park II: Round three race two summary

Ricciardello's two wins means championship lead. West Australian Tony Ricciardello jumped to the top of the leader board after a narrow win in the second heat of round three of the Reward Insurance Australian Sports Sedan Championship at Oran Park ...

Ricciardello's two wins means championship lead.

West Australian Tony Ricciardello jumped to the top of the leader board after a narrow win in the second heat of round three of the Reward Insurance Australian Sports Sedan Championship at Oran Park Raceway on Sunday July 28. The win follows his dominating performance in Saturday's first heat where his Chevrolet-powered Alfa Romeo led from start to finish.

The second heat win was a much closer encounter for he was beaten off the start by the Nissan/Chev of Kerry Baily and spent the opening two laps of the scheduled 12, looking for a way past. Ricciardello's move to take the lead came at the last corner of lap three where he was able to slip through. Then the two settled down to run all the way to the wire, the race shortened when Mark Stinson crashed his Chev-powered Calibra into a wall at the same corner.

With the race declared at the last completed lap (lap nine) Stinson retained fourth spot behind Darren Hossack whose Saab/Chev led the series coming into this event. The team is now four points in arrears of the reigning champion. "We seem to struggle getting off the line and that can win it or lose it here," Hossack said.

Fifth place became a tussle between long-time rivals Des Wall (Toyota Supra/Chev) and Jeff Barnes (Pontiac Trans Am), the former hanging on narrowly as the Queensland made a late charge. In seventh was Daniel Jameson, his Jaguar/Chev handling poorly after contact with a concrete wall at the end of the first race.

Ivan Mikac's Mazda RX7 was eighth and the first non-V8, beating the larger capacity Commodore/Chev of Tony Wilson and Dean Randle's Saab/Chev while Andrew Fawcett in the New Zealand Transam Jaguar XKR rallied to fifth after a penalty stop/go pit visit for a starting infringement.

Highlights of each round of the REWARD INSURANCE AUSTRALIAN SPORTS SEDAN CHAMPIONSHIP can be seen on Network TEN's Trackside program. Each of the five rounds of the series will be scheduled for the program, which generally airs the week after the round. Trackside is a 90-minute program featured on Sunday afternoons from 2:30 pm right after RPM.