LIKE any 18-year-old motor sport fan, attending the Bathurst 1000 for the first time will long live in the memory of Tyler Everingham - but he can boast something most teenagers can only dream of.
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His first race week experience included starting on the front row of the grid behind the wheel of a Supercar.
The Dubbo native formed part of the Super2 Series field which acted as one of the support categories to the Supercars during this year's Bathurst 1000 event.
Though he had previously raced at Mount Panorama - last year he earned a Bathurst 12 Hour class podium - the track time he spent on Thursday, Friday and Saturday was special.
"It's a really cool experience, it's my first time in a Supercar around Bathurst and it was an absolute amazing experience. This is actually the first 1000 I've been to as well," Everingham said.
"I've enjoyed every minute of it, it's a great weekend, probably the best one on the calendar to be honest."
In Friday's qualifying session, Everingham peeled off a 2:07.5718 behind the wheel of his MW Motorsport Nissan Altima. It was the second fastest lap and saw him start Saturday's mini enduro from the front row.
Everingham made a solid start to the 250 kilometre race as he followed pole sitter Bryce Fullwood up Mountain Straight.
On lap three, while under pressure from former Supercars full-timer Ash Walsh, he ran wide at The Chase and dropped to position six.
But he continued to peel off good laps and after all the compulsory pit stops were completed, found himself in fifth.
With six laps left he ran wide out of Murray's Corner while trying to improve his position which dropped him to seventh, but four laps later after errors from two of his rivals, was back in fifth.
That was were he finished, to not only be the best performed first rookie in the field but post his first top-five result in the series. It lifted him to seventh in the overall championship standing.
"Decently happy. The weekend started great off, we got P2 that was absolutely amazing to start on the front row," he said.
"I got a good start but unfortunately just made two little mistakes, but otherwise the car was great. I'd like to thank the team for the way they set up the car, it was awesome and ran great all weekend.
"That was just too much speed, just trying to push too hard, trying to chase people and climb and it just didn't work out.
"That would have been the longest sprint style race I've done. It was pretty intense, we were all pushing pretty hard ... we were all trying to keep it on the track.
"I'm happy with that, the car is straight so that's a win. It was big points."