HIS Sunday qualifying lap was electrifying, but unfortunately Bathurst driver Brad Schumacher was unable to build on that to take out class honours at the penultimate round of the CUE Enduro Super Series.
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Racing at Winton for the first time in his career, both Schumacher and his Kelso Electrical Racing crew had to adjust to the circuit.
The work they did on the set up of the Porsche 991 GT3 saw them the fastest Class A qualifier for both Saturday and Sunday's one-hour races, but Schumacher had to settle for third in his category.
He admitted driver errors cost the team in both races.
"We've never been to Winton before at all, my first time as a driver ... so we had to adapt to the circuit as a team and it's a very tricky circuit down there actually, it's not very wide and it's got quite a lot of technical turns, it's not that high-paced," he said.
"In Saturday's race just had a horror start off the line basically - I jumped the start and I was given a five-second penalty. The clutch friction point just released a little quickly and the car jumped and then bogged and I lost three positions before turn one as well."
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While Schumacher peeled off the fastest-race lap for his class in as he battled to make amends - a 1:23.6218 - Jason Miller and Geoff Morgan both finished ahead of him.
It was on Sunday that Schumacher enjoyed the highlight of his round when he peeled off a scorching qualifying lap. It was more than half a second faster than any of his Class A rivals.
But unfortunately he finished the race which followed third in class.
"In qualifying I had an absolutely cracking lap of 1:22.7, that's super fast, a lot of people were like 'Wow'," he said.
"I think the pole position lap two years ago from the pros in the Michelin GT Cup Challenge was only a 23.6, so it was a flyer.
"Obviously we went into the race confident and had a good start and we were basically just cruising along and holding the lead for awhile. But I made an error at turn three, just going a little bit too deep under brakes and just run wide.
"The racing under race pace was just so close that it created the room for Sergio Pires and Jason Miller to slip through the inside. It's such a difficult circuit to try and overtake people down there that you've just got to push on the back of somebody and hope they make a mistake, but those guys didn't make any mistakes."
Schumacher had thought he was running third in the series heading in the Winton round, but he was actually tied for the outright lead given a driver's worst round of points are dropped from calculations.
"I wasn't aware of that, for me they dropped my Bathurst round because that was my worst and I was actually tied with two others - Daniel Gaunt and Gary Higgon," he said.
"After the two thirds down there I'm not exactly sure where we stand now ... but it means we need to get a good result at Phillip Island to win the championship or at least stand on the podium."
The final round will be staged on November 24-25.
