ANOTHER SECOND-GENERATION RACER ENTERS TA2

Dalton Ellery, the son of former Supercars driver Steven is the latest next-generation driver to sign up to race in TA2 machinery.

Ellery will make his debut in the popular muscle car category this weekend, taking to Queensland Raceway as part of the TA2 Muscle Car Northern Series.

He is the third next-generation racer to enter into the event after Nash Morris, the son of 2014 Bathurst 1000 winner Paul and Jett Johnson who is the son of Steven and grandson of five-time Australian Touring Car champion Dick.

Ellery will drive a car with series winning pedagogy, steering a Ford Mustang that was driven to victory by Aaron Seton in the 2019 TA2 Muscle Car Series.

The car has been leased from Harris Racing and will be prepared by the team behind Beric Lynton’s production car outfit.

Although he has a good team behind him, Ellery is not getting ahead of himself.

“We’ve being thrown in the deep end a bit, we’ve done zero laps in the car, I’ve only sat in one of these once at Sydney at the start of the year,” Ellery explained.

“I’ve never driven on a slick tyre or a left-hand drive car with a four-speed gearbox on the right-hand side.

“There’s a lot of different challenges to tackle but it will be a good learning curve and it definitely will benefit me in the future.

“I’ll be racing the production car in the endurance round on Saturday along with the TA2, so that’ll be a big day between both cars but I can’t wait to get out on track.”

The Ellery’s moved into production cars at the start of last year through family friend Beric Lynton.

He has shared a BMW M3 with his older brother Tristan in the Queensland Production Car Series this year, which included a clean sweep at the latest round at Morgan Park.

As well as this, the brothers and father Steven teamed up in this year’s Bathurst 6 Hour, finishing fifth in the outright Class X in their M3.

Dalton Ellery expressed the plan was to do more car racing but had to change those plans due to COVID.

“We’re racing in the Production Car series at the moment in Queensland and we’ve been trying to do more national stuff but all of that’s fallen through this year due to the pandemic,” he said.

“When they changed all the ARG rounds to go along with Bathurst they dropped the production car round this year, so we’ve been looking at options to get there potentially for the 1000.”

Ellery expressed that he will assess his future in the series after the weekend concludes.

“One of the categories involved down there will be TA2,” he continued. “It’s always been a category I’ve wanted to be involved in, it’s a great class with good competition history so we started to look around at what was available.

“We found Craig Harris and we took his opportunity straight away to use his second car and it all came about pretty quickly in the last week.

“We’ll head to Queensland Raceway this weekend just to see how it all goes and then assess what happens after that.”

For more of the latest motorsport news pick up the current issue of Auto Action. Also make sure you follow us on social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or our weekly email newsletter for all the latest updates between issues.