PRESS RELEASE – Vernon takes the podium at Sandown

 

The safety car featured in the final race of the CAMS Jayco Australian Formula 4 Championship as the young drivers came to grips with the challenges and bumps of Sandown Raceway.

Jordan Lloyd managed a clean sweep of the weekend with three race wins to romp ahead in the points. Carnage featured heavily in his wake with a number of drivers finding their way off the track.

Zane Goddard was blitzing the pace in the final race until a small mistake sent him into a tire wall. The safety car followed and the drivers bunched up behind the Championship leader.

Luck finally rolled the way of Jimmy Vernon with the Toolforce Racing driver avoiding trouble to claim third behind Lloyd and Leeds in the restart. However Thomas Randle was making his ways though the pack after starting with the backmarkers. Jimmy showed a very steady head and some great focus to hold off a ducking and diving Randle and take his first national round podium with a third place finish for the round.

Jimmy explained his success, “I made sure I got really good exits from all the corners because around Sandown there are long straights.

‘I really concentrated on the exits and really tried to stop looking in my mirrors because he was all over me so it was really important to concentrate forward and I think that worked well”.

Jordan Love also had a personal best weekend with his best results of the series so far enough to hand the Western Australian driver the Rookie of the Round award. Love finished fourth and third in the first two races despite a Race one penalty and kept his car out of trouble to finish eighth in Sunday’s race.

It was a great result result considering it was his first time at Sandown.

“It was quite a good round for us. I’m really happy with the results, made a few mistakes in the final race for the weekend and ended back in eighth.

‘Obviously we will learn from those mistakes, bring that to the next round and keep the results coming.

‘I managed to learn the track quite well, we found a good set up quite early and managed to qualify well which always helps”.

IQ Option Racing Driver Tom Grech also had his best finish so far claiming a fourth place in Race two.

Grech was disappointed with how Race Three panned out.

“Race 3 was pretty challenging, we didn’t get a good start and got shuffled down the back pretty quickly so it was just a case of hanging in there and trying to get the race finished.”

However the Victorian is looking forward to getting his teeth into the next round.

“Finally we were able to get on top of the car with all the technical issues. It’s unfortunate its taken us this long to get on top of it but now we just look forward and get as many points as we can.”

Cars Galore driver Will Brown ran into some problems for his race weekend with a number of issues denying him the top results.

“This round was a challenging one, we finished third in the first race but due to a penalty I got put back to seventh. Second race I had an issue with the rear wing and I was forced to pit ended the race in last so that was disappointing.

‘The last race was good. Started out of sixth, I was sixth for a fair while. There was a safety car got a good restart after the safety car and got up to fifth and maintained that to the finish.

‘The next round is a street race so I’ll just be consistent in my laps and stay off the walls and just try and get more points.”

Meanwhile the first female Formula 4 driver in the Australian championship finished the weekend with a big smile and a clean car.

“We progressed more which is all we can really ask for this weekend. We stayed on the back and it’s been really good. I’ve just adapted to the car over the weekend a lot more, feeling how it drives and I’m quite happy with how we’ve come over the weekend.”

The young Novacastrian was extremely grateful for the drive that came courtesy of a three local Jayco dealers.

“I was so privileged to represent Jayco this weekend it was an amazing opportunity for them to support me to get here this weekend. I hope they are happy with the car because I thought it looked really, really good out on track and it’s been a really great weekend.”

Formula 4 will take to the iconic streets of the Gold Coast for Round 5 October 23-25. The second street race of the season is sure to provide plenty more edge of your seat racing for the young hopefuls.