Sandown Raceway Monochrome GT4 Round 4
Published on the 13th of August by McElrea RacingNathan was joined by his 16 year old son Jay for Jay’s first ever race weekend out of go karts. This meant a change of category to the ‘Silver Am’ class in his BMW GT4 Evo in the Monochrome GT4 Australia championship. Jay had done 3 test days with us before the weekend, and had done a great job, so we had no doubts he was ready for the challenge despite his youth and inexperience.
Nathan & Jay Murray #5
9th, 6th – SRO Monochrome GT4 Australia 'Am Class'
Summary
Jay did a great job on wet tyres in qualifying and was sitting inside the top 5 until some optimistic drivers gambled on slicks, which paid off as the track dried on the last lap. Nathan was also happy to qualify 8th in Silver Am. Jay was hit and spun by another car on the first lap of race 1 but he kept his composure and pressed on in the race with top-5 pace among the pro driver group before handing over to dad Nathan, who did a great job in difficult and slippery conditions.
In race 2 Nathan started and didn’t get much of a swing at it due to the high number of safety car interventions. We were issued a completely incorrect drive through penalty after an official make a mistake and claimed that we were working on our tyre pressures after the 3 minute board. This was incorrect and subsequently acknowledged by the SRO GT4 officials but had obviously ruined our chances of an appropriate result for us on Jay’s debut. Jay took over near the midway point and did an outstanding job highlighted by his pace being only 3/10ths of a second off the fastest pro drivers in BMW M4s.
The weekend was also notable for the amazing tribute by SRO and all the other teams, to our great mate Tim Miles.
