HE began racing as a six-year-old and his family has a long history in speedway but on Thursday night Nathan Hearne added a very different motor sport win to his resume.
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Hearne became the first round winner of the Australian Racing Group's inaugural eSport Cup. It was a round held at Bathurst's Mount Panorama.
With the real racing world cast into a state of silence due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, there was a mammoth 52-car grid for the virtual Mount Panorama round.
While the two entertaining and wild races were held around the 'virtual' mountain circuit were won by former British Touring Car champion Ash Sutton and Kiwi Rowan Shepherd, it was young gun Hearn who finished on top of the round ladder.
Herne, who's regular seat is in a Trans Am in the TA2 Muscle Car series, leads the title charge on 63 points, marginally ahead of Dylan O'Keeffe, Sutton and James Golding.
O'Keeffe fired the first shots of the night, with the Garry Rogers Motorsport Renault driver starting from pole ahead of Sutton.
The pair built a solid gap on the field as they swapped positions throughout the 30-minute battle, with Sutton taking the win by three-tenths of a second after making a pass for the lead up Mountain Straight into turn two.
Herne finished third.
The top 26 was reversed for the second race, with the New Zealand TCR racer Shepherd taking a dominant lights-to-flag victory for Track Tec Racing as mayhem ensued behind.
Starting eighth, Brett Holdsworth drove a clean race and charged through the pack to second ahead of Team Valvoline GRM driver Aaron Cameron.
Miraculously former Supercars star Garth Tander recovered to 12th after experiencing a crash of Murphy-Ambrose proportions on the run up to The Cutting.
Michael Clemente put Tander into the fence and upside down before more cars sent him pirouetting multiple times into the sky.
The next round of the carsales ARG eSport Cup will be held at Zolder in Belgium on August 9.
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