Dylan O’Keeffe will make his first appearance at Townsville in a Porsche this weekend, when he lines up in his Dexion/RAM Motorsport GT3 Cup car for Round 4 of the championship at this weekend’s NTI Townsville 500.
While O’Keeffe competed in Carrera Cup from 2016-18, the series never visited the Reid Park circuit during any of those seasons and his only prior experience at the track came in 2019, when he competed there in the Dunlop Super2 Series.
Nevertheless, O’Keeffe is looking forward to returning to a warmer climate this weekend, and is feeling confident after back-to-back podium finishes in the last two rounds.
“Following on from our last round in Darwin, it’s good to have another event up north to allow us to escape the wintery Melbourne weather,” O’Keeffe said.
“We’re carrying some good momentum into the weekend, having finished third at Winton and Hidden Valley and I’ve been especially happy with our qualifying speed over the last two rounds.
“We need a little more race pace to be able to take the next step and start winning races, but my engineer Dejan and I are working well together and know we can find those small improvements.”
The unforgiving nature of the Townsville track has proven to be rather bruising on Carrera Cup cars in the past and O’Keeffe said qualifying up the front will again be paramount, and not just because of race results.
“With the margins in Carrera Cup so tight and the cars so evenly-matched, qualifying is always super-important but at Townsville, we’ve seen in previous years that there is a high propensity for trouble in the mid-pack, so we need to make sure we’re ahead of the danger zone.”
This weekend, Carrera Cup will once again use the split qualifying format that was last implemented at Winton, with the Pro and Pro-Am drivers separated into their own 10 minute sessions.
“The split qualifying worked well at Winton because it minimised the chances of being held up by slower cars, but at the same time it does add some pressure because you really only get one flying lap where the tyres are at their peak performance,” O’Keeffe said.
“Anyway, I got pole at Winton so hopefully that’s a good omen for this weekend!”
Practice will be held on Friday with qualifying and racing on Saturday and Sunday.
Carrera Cup Round 4 Schedule
Friday, 8 July
9:30am – Practice 1 (25 min)
1:10pm – Practice 2 (25 min)
Saturday, 9 July
8:25am – Am Driver Qualifying (10 min)
8:40am – Pro Driver Qualifying (10 min)
12:45pm – Race 1 (17 laps)
Sunday, 10 July
8:30am – Race 2 (28 laps)
12:45pm – Race 3 (17 laps)
