A winning debut for Jean-Karl Vernay in TCR Australia

Guest star Jean-Karl Vernay dominated the first TCR Australia race at Queensland Raceway. The Frenchman and his Audi RS 3 LMS took a lights-to-flag win ahead of Dylan O’Keeffe’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta and the second Audi of veteran Russell Ingall who claimed his first podium result in the series.
Vernay sprinted from the pole to take the lead at the start, from John Martin, O’Keeffe, Will Brown and Tony D’Alberto. During the first lap Brown overtook O’Keeffe for third and then attacked Martin for the second position. They made contact at T3, Brown went off and Martin pitted with a broken rear wheel. D’Alberto benefitted from the commotion to overtake O’Keeffe for second.
The safety car was deployed to remove pieces of Martin’s tyre from the track. Both Brown and Martin rejoined one lap down, but later Brown had to serve a drive through for causing the incident.
Vernay, steadily, pulled away leaving his pursuers to fight for the positions; behind him the trio of D’Alberto, O’Keeffe and Ingall delivered a nice battle for second until lap 18, when D’Alberto made a mistake at T1 and dropped to fourth.
Vernay won with a 7-second margin from O’Keeffe, Ingall, D’Alberto and Jordan Cox who finished a brilliant fifth on his first appearance in the second Alfa Romeo. Cox benefitted from the withdrawal of Andre Heimgartner’s Holden Astra that pulled over with an engine issue with five laps to go.
Aaron Cameron and James Moffat recovered to finish 6^th and 9^th respectively after they both started from the pit lane; Moffat’s teammate Chris Pither did not start due to an engine issue in Qualifying.
With Moffat 9^th and Brown 16^th, O’Keeffe has moved into the second position of the standings, reducing his gap from Brown to 102 points.
Race 2 will start tomorrow at 13:15 local time (05:15 CET) with the grid based on Race 1 result; Race 3 will follow one hour later. Both will be streamed live at www.tcr-series.com and www.tcr-series.tv.

Race 1
1. Jean-Karl Vernay (Melbourne Performance, Audi RS 3 LMS), 21 laps
2. Dylan O’Keeffe (Ashley Seward Motorsport, Alfa Romeo Giulietta), 7.9520
3. Russel Ingall (Melbourne Performance, Audi RS 3 LMS), 8.5712
4. Tony D’Alberto (Wall Racing, Honda Civic FK7), 12.3434
5. Jordan Cox (Ashley Seward Motorsport, Alfa Romeo Giulietta), 13.2959

Championship points
1. Will Brown 365 pts; 2. O’Keeffe 263; 3. James Moffat 249