BATHURST brother Kyle and Blake Aubin’s bid for outright class glory in this year’s Australian Production Car Series remains on track following a solid weekend at the Queensland Raceway.
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The siblings are racing a Renault Megane RS265 Trophy R in this year’s series and after round two, hold the Class C lead.
A first and a second placing in the two 300 kilometre races at the Queensland Raceway added to a clean sweep in Sandown’s opening round to put them on 267 series points. Nearest rival Callum Jones is 75 points behind them.
“A solid weekend for the championship hunt,” the brothers said.
“The crew this weekend did not miss a beat and we couldn’t get these trophies without every single one of them. We are already planning round three at Winton in five weeks.”
The Aubins qualified for the first race of the Queensland round – Saturday’s ‘Fight in the Night’ – in 26th position as they cut their maiden laps at the Ipswich venue.
By the time the race had finished they had improved to 12th outright and first in class as a tactical pit stop under yellow flag conditions paid dividends.
“We didn’t have much practice time, this is our first time at Queensland Raceway and we only had the practice on Friday last night and then [Saturday] morning in the day,” Kyle Aubin said.
“We were still learning the track at the start and that put us a bit behind and we definitely weren’t as fast as the other guys at the start, but towards the end of the race we were getting pace that was good.
“It was a pretty interesting race. We made a bit of a strategy call early on and it ended up being a good call.
“We had to do two stops otherwise Blake would have gone over his driver time. We did that when a safety car was out, jumped back out there and came away with the win which is pretty awesome.”
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Sunday saw the team get just 10 minutes in a warm-up session before lining up on the grid for the second 300km race.
This time around the class honours belonged to the Mazda 3 MPS of Mitch Naylor and Leigh Naylor, with the Aubin Brothers Racing Renault second.
“Second in class today. The car struggled a little in the 28 degree heat, but we still gave it a good shot,” the brothers said.
Meanwhile, Orange native Tim Leahy and his team-mate Beric Lynton took the outright round honours.
The duo, who race a Class A1 BMW M3, claimed the chequered flag in Saturday’s Fight in the Night before placing fourth outright on Sunday.
“We were lucky, and we were really low on fuel – there was a lot going on but it is a great result, but we had to work really hard for it,” Leahy said of Saturday’s win.