Recently turned 17-year-old Hunter McElrea was able to show his pace, at the opening round of the Australian Formula Ford Championship at Sandown last weekend.
In his first outing with Sonic Motor Racing Services, he was able to land the Eximm sponsored Mygale on the front row in qualifying, 2nd spot out of 31 of Australia’s best up and coming young drivers, less than 0.05 of seconded off first.
“Qualifying was quite a good session, I managed to put a decent lap together combined with a tow which really makes a qualifying lap around here. It feels great to start showing my true pace with the best team” said Hunter.
Race 1 was an exciting start for McElrea taking the lead of the race around the outside of turn 1, and leading the first three laps of the race before a slight mistake dropped him to 2nd. Unfortunately, an off track excursion meant Hunter would end up the race in 5th.
Before race two McElrea was handed a 5-place grid place penalty, deemed by officials for an unsafe return to the track after his off. Although McElrea and the team both disagreed with this, the 17-year-old was able to move from 10th back to 4th position in 4 laps, before the race was red flagged.
Race 3 was an eventful one for Hunter, with a mistake attempting to pass for second backfiring and dropping the youngster to sixth, before a move out of his control from another driver meant that he would drop back to last. From then on the race did not get any better with McElrea getting into another incident, which ultimately meant Hunter did not finish the weekend like he wanted.
“I am pretty annoyed with myself to be honest, I had great pace all weekend, even led a fair bit of a race, but I threw it all away with mistakes in racing. I know I have the speed and have the package (in terms of team and car) to win, but I need to work on my race craft. I would really like to thank all my supportive sponsors, everyone at team Sonic, especially; Mick, Maria, Tom, and my mechanic Stevo.” McElrea concluded.
ENDS
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