Finally the opening round of the Toyota 86 scholarship series at Sydney Motorsport park is done and dusted!

This round was a one day event on 14 April, it was a jam packed day but was extremely well run, so great job to the Toyota 86 scholarship series for making it all run smoothly!

This round was my first ever time at smsp and only my 3rd time in the car so we knew it was going to be a huge challenge as we are up against a lot of talent.

The 50 min practice session in the morning was my first ever time on the track and I was able to grab 8th place which was a great result for the team!

Unfortunately for qualifying being a new car to us we went by the factory fuel gauge to see how much fuel we had left after practice. The gauge read empty so we refuelled going into qualifying, after qualifying Marcus from 99 Motorsport suggest we empty the tank to find what fuel we had left. Unfortunately we had around 35 litres too much which wouldn’t have helped the result, but was a big learning curve, and something we will make sure we check for the rest of the season. As we’re forced to have a new set of tyres for qualifying, we will work on making the most of our new rubber in qualy to try gain some track position moving forward into the season.

In race one I was able to grab a couple positions off the line which ended up in me moving up from 13th to the top ten.

Race two was another good clean race which resulted in another top ten for the team.

In race 3 I had a good dice for tenth and managed to hold on for another top ten result.

Overall it was a great day, and getting a top ten for the round was a great confidence builder for the team going into the next round!

Our next round will be at the bend on 24-26 May. Being at a track I am more familiar with, and having the lap record there in the E30 series, we are hoping to be knocking on the door of the top five.

I’d like to give a huge thanks to Marcus and his team from 99motorsport for helping dad and I throughout the day.

And a big thanks to all of our sponsors:

Glen and Peter Knight, David Reddy, Graeme, Jo, Lawrence, and Shaaron from BMWDCM, Ross and Sharon Wilkinson, Greg and Nean, and Ashley Rogers

Royce Lyne | Member #406
BMW Drivers Club Melbourne