Dylan o’keeffe

O’Keeffe Perseveres Through Character Building Bathurst Weekend

Dylan O’Keeffe has maintained his enthusiasm and competitive spirit, despite battling through his most character-building weekend at Bathurst to date.

Sharing the Bendix Matt Stone Racing Camaro with Nick Percat for the Repco Bathurst 1000, O’Keeffe suffered a scare when he found the wall in Friday morning’s practice session at Griffin’s Bend.

“At the top of Mountain Straight, I made a mistake by touching the grass in the braking zone, which made it difficult to pull the car up,” O’Keeffe said.

“Changing from the left-hand-drive Porsche to the right-hand-drive Supercar might have caught me out with judging where I was positioned on the track, but fortunately the crew did a great job to fix the car and get it back on track for the next session.”

Despite the setback, Percat qualified 13th while O’Keeffe’s remaining pre-race running was focused on longer-distance race simulation programs.

In the race, Percat started strongly and handed the car over to O’Keeffe, who maintained the car’s position just outside the top 10 throughout his double stint.

“The goal was to circulate, punch out consistent lap times and avoid trouble, and I made sure I fulfilled those requirements,” O’Keeffe said.

The duo were well in contention for a top 10 result when Percat climbed aboard for the run home, but sadly an unlatched passenger-side door forced the car back into the pits for an unscheduled stop, falling off the lead lap and outside the top 20.

The unusually low attrition rate and lack of Safety Cars meant there were few opportunities to make up the lost time and positions, but Percat managed to recover to 17th at the finish.

“Normally at Bathurst, there are opportunities to recover if you have a small issue, but this year’s race was unusual in that there was only one Safety Car and hardly any cars with problems, so it was tough to recover from the extra stop,” O’Keeffe said.

“After the rough start to the weekend, I felt like we fought back pretty well, but unfortunately didn’t end up with a result to show for it.”

O’Keeffe’s Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup round was also plagued with difficulties which started in qualifying.

“After practice, our pace on old tyres was good so we were confident heading into qualifying, but we didn’t get the new tyre gain we expected,” O’Keeffe said.

In Race 1, O’Keeffe finished seventh but dropped to ninth in Race 2 after being squeezed against the pit wall at the start and losing his front splitter.

O’Keeffe had good pace in Race 3, setting the second-fastest lap, but an attempted overtaking move at the Chase went awry, dropping him to 12th.

“It wasn’t my best Carrera Cup round of the year, but Race 3 showed our race pace was still there, so I look forward to fighting back in the next round on the Gold Coast,” O’Keeffe concluded.