With competitors getting six runs at the three-kilometre course, Cothill’s fastest time of the day proved too good for the talented entry list, which included some high-profile names such as Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series star John Martin and rally legend Ross Dunkerton.

 

Attending the event for the first time, Cothill drove like a seasoned campaigner as he steered his Nissan R35 GTR to the fastest time on the first two runs, before going slightly slower than Raymond Vandersee in the third run of the event.

 

However, the 33-year-old bounced back in style on the following run and posted the fastest time of the whole event up until that point, going under 1:46 for the first time.

From there, he posted the outright quickest time on the remaining two attempts, including his final run time of 1:45.523 which proved the difference. 

Although Vandersee had been Cothill’s biggest challenger for the whole weekend, the Skelta G-Force S/c pilot ended the event in third place after losing out to Cody Davidson and his Subaru Impreza WRX by just three tenths of a second on the penultimate run.

Very little separated the top three at the end of the event though with Cothill’s best time on the 26-corner course just over one second faster than Vandersee, an eventual result he was surprised with.

 

“It’s an amazing feeling to win this, especially since we had no intention to win the event, only to simply come and go for a top 10 finish,” Cothill said.

 

“Honestly, we hadn’t even prepared for the event as I was convinced by some mates to do it, so to go fastest in almost every run was a little bit of a surprise, but a welcome one.

 

“I suppose the good times came because we got the car working in a way I felt comfortable in. We haven’t made major adjustments to it, so I had to utilise the skills that I teach as part of my Driver Training business, Skid Control.

 

“I was a little surprised that we were up at the top for so long. We thought that as there were many more experienced drivers in the field, that we would lose it at some point, but the times kept coming to us and stayed in the lead.

“A big thank you to all officials and organisers that put the event together. It was such a fantastic event and I had such a good time there – really looking forward to the next one.”

 

While the battle for the outright podium was close, just behind them was an even closer affair as Ross Mackay steered his Ford Escort Mk 1 to fourth place over Phillip Sutcliffe in the Mitsubishi EVO IX by less than one tenth of a second.

 

Rounding out the top 10 was Jay Davidson, Martin, Scott Dean, Wayne Rosenberg and David Richardson, Martin being the only other driver in the group to take out a class win.

 

Other class winners from the event include Allan Ridgewell, Matt Duncan – both of whom were in the top 20 - John White and Ryan Campbell.