The Motorsport Australia SCCSA 2021 State Motor Race Championship took place for the second time this year as The Bend Motorsport Park played host for the South Australian state championship.
With more than 120 competitors across nine categories spread over six fields competing in the event, there was plenty of entertainment for spectators as every category got five races.
A major highlight for the weekend was the return of the Sports Sedans category, which made its first appearance at the championships in a number of years.
Sharing the track with Sports Cars, Keith Short in a TransAm Replica Mustang and Myles Bond in the Ford Escort were the best performers throughout the weekend, despite the latter not finishing twice.
Although he had two DNFs, Bond was the only driver in the category to take it to those in the Sports Cars, finishing with an outright podium in the third race.
Outside of that moment of brilliance, the weekend belonged to the Sports Cars competitors as Mark Rosser steered his Audi R8 LMSGT3 to the best set of finishes – two wins and two second places.
Other big results in the category saw Yasser Shahin take out two wins on the Saturday before withdrawing on Sunday and Panayot Boyaci as the only driver to finish in the top three in every race, the Porsche 991 driver also grabbing a win.
As usual, the Circuit Excels were the largest category of the weekend with 42 cars entered, but it was the number one seed in Asher Johnson who once again dominated the field to pick up four wins out of the five.
Just behind him in almost every race was Bradley Vaughan who produced a productive weekend of five podiums in five races.
Jayden Wanzek was the other one in the category with unique results. The driver experienced all kinds of emotions across the two days- improving from fourth to third to a race victory on Saturday before his weekend took a turn for the worse on Sunday as he got disqualified from race four and was handed a 30 second penalty for the final race.
Like the Excels, the Racing cars had one driver come extremely close to a clean sweep, a DNF to Max de Meyrick in race four ending his perfect run. Remarkably, the Dallara F307 pilot got straight back to business with a win in the final race.
Timothy Cook was the only other driver in the category to win a race for the weekend, the Radical driver adding the victory to his three podiums.
It was a similar story in the combined Formula Ford and Formula Vee field as Samuel Woodland’s perfect weekend was ruined in the fourth race of the round.
Having won the first three races, the Formula Ford driver was on track for four from four but retired in the race, while Adam Newton running his Formula Vee 1600 took out that race, as well as picking up both the qualifying and race lap records for his class.
Only one driver managed a clean sweep of wins from the weekend - Shawn Jamieson in the joint Saloon Cars/HQ Holdens grid.
Behind the wheel of a Holden Commodore VY, Jamieson proved just too good for the field, including Wayne King, who was the next best performer during the round with five podiums.
The Holden Commodore VT pilot battled hard against Battery World Aussie Racing Cars Super Series’ star Joel Heinrich, with the Ford Falcon driver actually having King’s measure until a DNF in race unfortunately ended the battle.
Darryl Crouch fastest of the Holden HQs on four occasions, while Corey Bradley took out one class win.
From a category where one driver dominated to another where there was no standout performer throughout all five races, the Improved Production cars had five different race winners and no driver to place on the podium more than three times.
The only driver to get on the podium three times was Andy Sarandis, with top three finishes either side of his race two win.
Gregory Faggotter notched up a fourth, fifth and sixth on Saturday but improved dramatically on Sunday, getting a win and second place, his win coming in a chaotic final race where there were five DNFs.
Other winners for the category included Scott Cook, Grant Maitland and Christopher Brown.
The next round of the Motorsport Australia SCCSA 2021 State Motor Race Championship takes place at Mallala Motorsport Park on 31 July- 1 August.