After one of the most incredible races in Australian motorsport history, the Equity-One Motorsport Class B Audi R8 has emerged from the madness to claim a sixth-placed finish in class and fourteenth outright on a day where they were forced to run well below par after an early performance issue drained them of significant horsepower.
“What can you do,” team-boss Dean Koutsoumidis shrugged post-race. “I had to make a decision whether to park the car or do the best with what we had. We tried a couple of things but we couldn’t fix the problem. I decided we would keep going despite being down on power and not able to fight for the category B podium. It was disappointing but better than the car being on the trailer before the end of the day.”
The day had started perfectly, former V8 Supercar regular Dean Fiore starting the car in the dawn light at 6:15am, the West Australian forging through the field to be on the tail of the top five before his first stop.
Dean Koutsoumidis was next in, and he continued to punch out laps in the 12s and 13s, some five seconds a lap faster than he had been in 2013. “I think the time I spent driving the Radical around here this weekend really helped [Koutsoumidis also entered the Radical support category to earn more valuable miles around Mount Panorama]. It’s funny, they say that the faster you go in these aero cars, the slower everything feels, and I think I finally reached that mark. After the car lost power, it was just so busy, but when you really make the aero and the grip work, it’s so easy..”
“Dean Grant was next in, but part way through his opening stint the experienced sportscar campaigner noticed that something wasn’t right. “He felt the car was losing power, so to his credit he bought it straight in,” Equity-One’s Andrew McInnes explained.
“They couldn’t find anything initially, so he went out again, but came back in and the team did some diagnostics, where the data showed a problem with cylinder five which appeared to be an electrical coil. We replaced it, but it didn’t seem to help, so we had to make a call about whether we continued on, or pull the car out. In the end it made the finish, but after that it wasn’t pretty.”
Sadly it was ‘fait-accompli’ from that point, but all four drivers pressed on, ultimately claiming fourteenth at the close of the 12-Hour endure, with 271-laps credited to the team.
Dean Fiore, Dean Grant and Michael Loccisano all shared the driving duties with the boss and were consistent all day producing an impressive performance from a car that was giving away a lot of horsepower to its rivals.