Lucchitti, Ojeda Conquer Sydney Three-Hour Enduro

Tigani Motorsport pair Paul Lucchitti and Jayden Ojeda took their first victory of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS season in Saturday evening’s three-hour endurance race at Sydney Motorsport Park.

The occupants No. 66 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo were able to take advantage of a series of safety car periods in the first hour of the race to beat Arise Racing GT Ferrari pair Chaz Mostert and Liam Talbot by a little under eight seconds.

Taking advantage of special rules dictating a minimum of three compulsory pitstops, Lucchitti brought in the Tigani car under the first safety car to hand over to Ojeda as Mark Rosser suffered an off at Turn 1 in his Team BRM Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II.

Ojeda promptly returned to the pits just one lap later, meaning that the No. 66 crew already had two mandatory stops out of the way.

This paved the way for Lucchitti to make way for Ojeda again just beyond the halfway mark, which ultimately gave Ojeda an advantage of almost one minute over Mostert’s Ferrari that he was able to nurse to the finish while saving fuel.

Third went to the Melbourne Performance Centre Audi of Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles after Leitch caught and passed Jaxon Evans in the second of the Arise Ferrari 296 GT3s (shared with Elliott Schutte) late in the race.

Paul Stokell and Renee Gracie completed the top five in their MPC Audi, with Stokell having led the early laps of the race, ahead of the Am class-winning RAM Motorsport Mercedes-AMG of Mike Sheargold and Garth Walden.

Despite missing out on victory at SMP, second place alongside Mostert was enough to give Talbot the Endurance Cup title, based on the results of both Saturday’s enduro plus the Repco Bathurst 12 Hour back in February.

The final round of the Fanatec GT Australia season will be held at Bathurst on Nov. 8-10. Mostert and Talbot continue to lead the drivers’ table by 30 points, with the SMP round not counting towards the Sprint championship standings.