John Martin wins S5000 as Anton de Pasquale hampered by penalties

John Martin scored an unlikely S5000 feature win in an incident-packed single-seater feature race at The Bend in South Australia.

Anton de Pasquale was first to the flag but was penalised twice, once for tagging his team-mate Tom Randle on the first lap of the race and the second time for a jump-start, with the 15-second hit dropping him to fourth.

So the revised order put Randle into the runner-up spot with Will Brown in third.

The South Australian weekend was only the second in the history of S5000 and the finale, after a qualifying sprint and then a reverse-grid contest, was drama packed with rare car-to-car contact.

The opening lap was when de Pasquale touched the rear of Randle, who had led from the grid, and that opened the way for a runaway at the front that was offset by penalties and led to a Martin-versus-Randle battle for the win.

Martin made one big mistake when he slid sideways down the hill, but he was able to block Randle and hold his lead, securing his first win in the class.

There were three retirements that left seven cars at the finishing flag, but James Golding and Tim Macrow both went out after contact and Michael Gibson had a rare S5000 mechanical failure.

With Sandown and The Bend meetings in the record books, the category’s attention turns to a full championship in 2020, with the first round to be held at Albert Park, supporting the Australian Grand Prix.