Lambos, Ferraris Duke it out Down Under

The popularity of this series has seen it divided into three divisions, the Championship, Challenge and Production. Four Lamborghini Gallardos and Nick O’Halloran’s Ferrari 430GT3 battled the Dodge Vipers, an Aston Martin DBRS9, two Mosler MT900 GT3s and Porsches for Championship honours. Keith Wong and Andrew Barlow ran their Ferrari 360s in the Challenge section against the Porsche army. The Production division saw the sole BMW M3 of Beric Lynton take on three Lotus Exiges.

Practice and qualifying on Thursday and Friday had Craig Baird’s seven litre Mosler on pole by over a second for the first of Saturday’s two races. Baird made it a clean sweep over the weekend, taking all three of the eleven lap races. He was headed only once, on lap eight on Sunday. The rest of the field had the real race to themselves!

In race 1, behind the Porsches, the Gallardos of Andrew Taplin, Mark Eddy and Dean Grant came home 7th, 8th and 9th. With Taplin’s DNF in race 2, Eddy and Grant took 7th and 8th and Grant increased his points with 6th place on Sunday. Klark Quinn’s Porsche GT3 had the legs in the Challenge division over the Ferraris 360s.

The Italians had the upper hand, however, in the Murray Walker Extreme Machines display behind the Pit straight grandstand. During the on-track demonstration runs, the Ferrari F430, F430 Scuderia, Lamborghini Diablo VT-R, Gallardo S and Maserati GT GranTurismo showed the crowds what real road cars should look and sound like. When the Formula 1 Grand Prix went 500 miles east to Melbourne over a decade ago, the Clipsal 500, with its distinctly Aussie Ford vs Holden V8 races, became South Australia’s premier motorsport event. The Australian GT Series, featuring the best of American, British and European supercars, has returned the international flavour to Adelaide’s city streets.