GT4 Australia Round 1

Phillip Island Circuit

Published on Tuesday, 31st of March 2026

It’s fair to say MR is extremely proud to welcome a second BMW M4 EVO to our GT4 program for 2026. Nathan Murray will continue in his new car from the 2025 championship, which he shared with son Jay for the final 3 rounds of the 2025 campaign. Over the break a brand new M4 arrived for Jay proudly carrying major sponsorship from Slatterys Auctions and Valuations.

We had completed a solid test program focussed on getting Jay right to the pointy-end of the grid and Nathan's evolution to a front running 'Am' category driver.

We are also excited to bring legendary race and performance engineer Erik Pender as team manager of our GT4 program. Needless to say, we were itching to get stuck in to it!

Nathan Murray #5

Am Class

Erik Pender

Rob Clark

Nathan started race 1 on wet tyres as the track was wet but drying. We stopped him at the beginning of his pit window to switch him to slicks and he did a great job to set a personal best lap time of 1:39.96.

In race 2 Nathan started from grid 21 (in a 33 car field) courtesy of his outstanding performance in wet quali 2. Unfortunately, he was punted off the road at turn 1 on lap 1 and had to play catch up for the rest of the race.

Jay Murray #7

Silver Class

Erik Pender

Shaun Simpson

In race 1 Jay started from grid 15 and had a solid first half of the race making up ground, then after his compulsory pit stop ended up in a frantic battle eventually taking an impressive top 10 result.

In race 2 he started well, and sat inside the top 10 until the pitstop window opened. The team’s strategy to pit early worked well and Jay raced his way up to 8th outright and 6th in Silver class.

Jay Murray #7 racing at Phillip Island Circuit 2026

Summary

Nathan and the team were rapt with his progress highlighted by a personal best lap time in race 1. Jay did a phenomenal job all weekend, and his impressive learning and development continues at a great rate.

Unfortunately, in this category there is a system known as BOP (Balance of Performance) where the category management have set of adjustments for the various makes and models that compete in GT4 racing globally. The intention of BOP is for each car to have the same overall lap time - if driven extremely well, of course - and they use a global set of parameters. However, here in Australia for some unknown reason, the Ford Mustangs have a large horsepower advantage over other makes - especially the BMW, which the category management in Europe are struggling to identify.

It seems there will be as almost as much work done in the political space, as the workshop, over the coming weeks ...