Orange's Tim Leahey snared a win in the opening round of the 2020 MRF Tyres Australian Production Cars after plenty of fanfare saw two one-hour races held in wildly different conditions at Sydney Motorsport Park.
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Leahey, alongside long-time co-driver Beric Lynton, took out the outright and Class A1 round victories in the #23 Bruce Lynton BM Service BMW M3.
Very wet weather for the morning's race - which only had Lynton racing - saw it start under safety car conditions for the opening laps. When things got underway, it was Agathos, Yucel and Keene who really excelled, with the B1, C1 and D class entrants locking out the outright race podium.
Fourth outright and the first for the A-class cars was Lynton, while his fellow A1 competitor Duane West rounded out the top five in the DWE Motorsport HSV. Carter and Mitchell won Class AM from 8th outright.
In the afternoon, much drier yet still slippery conditions greeted the APC field as it was accompanied by the NSW Production Touring Cars for the final of the four one-hour races.
Agathos, the winner of races one and three, was forced to retire just after the 20 minute mark with a right hand rear suspension failure in his Subaru.
Leahey in the A1 BMW M3 took advantage of the better conditions to dominate the race outright ahead of Iain Salteri in the #40 (C1 winner), Shane Smollen in the #56 Bruce Lynton BM Service BMW, David Krusza in the #89 Pinnacle Automotive 1994 BMW E36 M3 and West in his HSV.
The Orange driver said the conditions hadn't been ideal.
"We managed to get rid of the traction control soon after Beric's race so we kept the car running for about an hour which is not ideal but got on there and managed to keep the traction control off," Leahey said.
"The changing weather conditions had made the track really, really slippery but the car was pretty good.
"It was a pretty simple strategy, I had to get past a few and try and get the biggest gap we could because we had to overcome a bit of a pace deficit we have with some engine issues we have going on and also because of the tyre strategy with changing two tyres while the B class cars only change one tyre."
He said the drivers were able to stick to the plan and get the win, which he said was good, but the issues could have been avoided.
"We shouldn't have these issues, we should have the car sorted but they are Production Cars - they have so many modules, so many computers, so many sensors for so many thins and we try and turn them into a race car so they provide a challenge," Leahey said.
"It is a bit weird but we will put it in the truck, go back to the drawing board and find out what it is."
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