CLAIMING a surprise chequered flag, clocking his quickest lap of the weekend to earn a podium and making an audacious three-wide move down Conrod Straight - Brad Shiels' Easter at Mount Panorama was a whole lot better than he'd anticipated.
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The talented Bathurst driver was on double duties for the Tilton Racing Team over the course of this year's Bathurst 6 Hour event as he tackled both the TCR Australia and Radical Australia Cup support category races.
Prior to the start of the three-day event, Shiels felt a mixture of excitement at getting the chance to race on his home circuit and frustration as he thought about what lay ahead.
The Hyundai i30N he races in the TCR series had electrical issues he expected to hamper his efforts, while in the Radical Cup, the professional driver time penalties he knew he would have to serve during pit stops meant victories in those races seemed unlikely.
But as it unfolded, his TCR car ran without problems and yellow flag periods in the Radical Cup worked in his favour as he won race one and placed second in race two.
His victory in the opening Radical race on Saturday was his maiden success in that category and though denied a second win by just 0.8205 seconds on Sunday morning by three-time champion Peter Paddon, Shiels clocked a hot 2:011.6500 on his final lap.
It was not quite good enough to eclipse the Radical SR3 Mount Panorama lap record he clocked in 2019 - a 2:11.5252 - but it was it was faster than any other driver in his class managed for the weekend.
Across the three TCR races, where Shiels was on a grid that included the likes of Chaz Mostert, Garth Tander and Lee Holdsworth, he notched up two seventh placings and an eighth.
A highlight came in race two when he went three wide in his #333 entry down Conrod Straight trying to pass Holdsworth and Jordan Cox.
"It was pretty cool, they are all just cars to me, but yeah it was pretty full on three-wide down Conrod banging doors. I didn't know how that was going to turn out but we all kept it on the black stuff, it was full on, it was really cool," he enthused.
"They are actually really, really cool cars to drive here, they are a lot more planted and you can throw them around the top a lot, more than I expected I could. They are actually heaps of fun to drive here."
It was Shiels' best weekend in the category thus far and after three rounds he sits in ninth outright, ahead of drivers such as Tony D'Alberto, James Moffat and Michael Caruso.
It is a position he hopes he can improve on as the season unfolds.
"It's heaps better than it has been, the engine is doing what it should now which is really good. I tell you what, it feels pretty good for especially given the year we've had so far. We are headed in the right direction."
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