Young Kiwi racing star Tom Bewley is expecting a wet and wild weekend of racing on the Gold Coast for the penultimate round of the Australian Porsche Carrera Cup championship.
The 18-year-old rookie heads into new territory in his Porsche New Zealand scholarship car having never raced on the streets of Surfers Paradise or driven the 992 in wet conditions.
“It’s looking wet every single day and quite a lot of rain. I’ve never raced on a street circuit in the rain before or driven the 992 in the wet apart from an out lap at The Bend before that race was cancelled. It’ll be an all new experience, definitely it’ll be something different with the curbs and the track being so skinny, definitely the rain will spice it up” said Bewley.
As usual Belwey has prepared as best he can on the simulator, doing heaps of laps and admits to plenty of on-line crashes as well.
“I’ve also watched heaps of videos of past years of wet and dry laps so that sort of gives you visuals of what to expect.”
There will be two 25-minute and one 30-minute races for Porsche Equity-One Carrera Cup Australia this weekend after two 25-minute practice sessions on Friday with qualifying early Saturday afternoon New Zealand time.
“Going to a street circuit especially in the rain you never know what the grips like with white lines and where the puddles form. And a street circuit can change from year to year depending on what patching up on the road they’ve done. At least we get two practice sessions so there’s plenty of time to get used to it.”
While the Surfers Paradise circuit is all new to Bewley he did race the older version Sprint Challenge car at Townsville last year where he set a new lap record in just his second session on the track, a much more open circuit than he’ll face this weekend.
“Townsville is a lot more forgiving, there’s spots to run off and the track is wider with grass areas so it’s more half street circuit and half not. I think there’s only three run-offs at the Gold Coast into braking zones so it’s going to be a lot more difficult to get confidence on. It’s way narrower and the curbs are nothing like I’ve ever done before, even in go-karts there’s nothing really with curbs this big.”
Bewley heads to the Gold Coast from a disappointing Bathurst debut where he retired in the first race with minor damage while running inside the top ten before being caught out by a false start in the second race and suffering enough damage to rule him out of the final race.
After setting pole position at two previous rounds Belwey was on for another potential pole at Bathurst before a red flag ruined his lap.
Following this penultimate round, the season concludes at the V8 Supercars Adelaide finale in late November.
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