Southern Highlands racing driver Lachlan Mineeff and Ferrari Challenge competitor Mark Hudders have teamed up to win the return edition of the iconic Wakefield 300 endurance race at One Raceway in dramatic fashion, aboard their Maserati Super Trofeo.
After qualifying third, Mineeff ran inside the top two in the race’s early stages before handing over to Hudders during the team’s first compulsory pit stop on lap 41.
Hudders maintained the car’s position in the top five before swapping back to Mineeff for the run to the finish on lap 82.
The 22-year-old Burradoo driver worked his way back up to second position, and a safety car intervention with just 10 laps to go enabled him to close the gap to the race-leading Honda Civic shared by brothers Aaron and Matthew Giuntini, which had moved to the front of the field after a clever decision by the team to serve both their compulsory pit stops under a mid-race Safety Car.
However, a devastating front suspension failure eliminated the Giuntinis from proceedings with just seven laps to go, paving the way for Mineeff and Hudders to take a decisive outright victory, the win in Division B and a new Wakefield 300 race time record of 2 hours and 38 minutes.
Second place went to the father-and-son Mazda MX5 team of Tim and Brad Herring, while the well-driven Honda Civic of Jarrod MacLeod and John Taylor worked its way onto the outright podium from 16th on the grid, also winning Division C.
Division D honours went to Tim Weston and Josh Anderson, who staged a giant-killing performance in their Ford Fiesta to finish ninth outright, while 16th place overall was good enough for David Bailey and Matt Thewlis to win Division E in their BMW E36 318i.
The two cars in Division A - the pole-sitting Charlie Khoury/Josh Buchan Honda Civic and Benny Tran/Anthony Soole Honda Integra - both failed to finish with mechanical problems.
One Raceway owner Steve Shelley and his son Jake finished 10th overall; the Shelleys led the race at one stage and looked set for a potential podium after the pit stops were complete, but Steve was forced back into the pits for a second stop when the left-hand side tyres on his Mitsubishi Evo X delaminated.
Another car that attracted attention - for all the wrong reasons - was the Charlotte Flanagan/Christoph Heiniger Toyota 86, which crashed heavily into the wall during Saturday practice; the team worked until the early hours of Sunday morning to rebuild the car, and Flanagan and Heiniger successfully completed the race in 20th outright after starting at the back of the grid.
The Wakefield 300 was supported by five other categories over the weekend; the overall winners of those categories were Wil Longmore (Series X3 NSW), Scott Tidyman (Pulsar one-hour endurance races), Aiden Williams (Legend Cars) and Brad Herring (Mazda MX5 Cup), while the Stock Car race wins were shared by Daniel and Jeff Stubbs with two victories each.
