Orange driver Cody Burcher wins at Wakefield Park Raceway in Australian Formula Ford Series

The Orange driver grabbed a win and a second place while he solidified himself as a bona fide contender for the season championship.

"We've made some decent inroads from the first round," he said.

"Obviously any time you can come away with a win it's a positive. I was in pretty different conditions all weekend as well. It was foggy and 0 degrees up until 10am so it was pretty different to what we were used to, especially in an open wheel car."

In the first race of the weekend Burcher grabbed a P2 after qualifying 3^rd.

He made his way up into second on the first lap and managed to reduce the gap on the lead from two seconds to just under half a second.

The second race was where he really shone though.

He had a good battle throughout the race with Young's Thomas Sargent and made the move for the lead on the last lap last corner and came home with the win.

"Some of the other teams have found some pretty sizeable gains in their cars over Covid, so it definitely made it a lot harder," he said.

"We haven't quite found that, but it's not from a lack of trying. The team and everyone involved has put a huge amount of work in and we're starting to make some good inroads.

"The main goal was to close that gap a little bit and we've definitely done that. We've still got a bit to go, but we're making some changes and they're working and it's getting a lot closer and we're starting to challenge for wins."

The top two finishes left him tied for the round win, but due to a qualifying countback, he finished second behind Sargent.

Asked if coming so close would motivate him going into the next race he said: "Yeah, 100 per cent."

"It definitely gives us some confidence going into the next round."

Burcher currently sits second in the season standings, 14 points behind Sargent and 28 points ahead of Noah Sands in third. The next round will take place from June 11-13 at Winton Motor Raceway.

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