Dylan O’Keeffe is banking on his vast Bathurst experience to propel him to another podium finish in the seventh and final round of the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series at Mount Panorama this weekend.
The Autoglym Lynk & Co driver finished second overall in the previous round of the series at Sydney Motorsport Park, and while the result was a valuable confidence boost for O’Keeffe and the Ashley Seward Motorsport team, it does come with a trade-off – the addition of success ballast.
“We’ll be carrying some extra weight this weekend, which might cost us a bit of straight-line speed – I’ll just have to use my track knowledge to absolutely gun it across the top!” O’Keeffe said.
“It’s good heading back to the Mountain just a few weeks after I raced there last, and the track is still fresh in my head.”
The Ashley Seward Motorsport squad has brought on a new engineer this weekend, someone with experience working with the Lynk & Co package.
“Our new engineer has experience working on the Lynk & Co in overseas TCR categories, so we’ll be able to tap into his expertise and further explore the aspects of the car that we learned and improved at Sydney Motorsport Park.”
While the title is realistically out of reach, O’Keeffe’s run of podiums elevated him a few places in the championship, and he is aiming to gain some more spots on the ladder.
“It’s been an up-and-down season, but the points table is tightly-packed, so if we have another good weekend, we have the chance to finish well inside the top five,” he said.
The TCR cars will hit the track for practice on Friday, followed by qualifying and racing on Saturday and Sunday; the racing action will be broadcast live on 7PLUS.
TCR Australia Round 7
Friday, 8 November
11:20am – Practice 1 (30 min)
4:40pm – Practice 2 (30 min)
Saturday, 9 November
9:10am – Qualifying 1 (15 min)
9:30am – Qualifying 2 (10 min)
2:05pm – Race 1 (30 min)
Sunday, 10 November
10:05am – Race 2 (30 min)
2:10pm – Race 3 (30 min)