Brown maximises ‘great car’ to dominate TCR

Whilst lots of the noise surrounded the future of Will Brown, he remained focused on Ipswich to produce one of the more dominant weekends in TCR Australia history.

There was no stopping the brilliant Brown at Queensland Raceway, who topped six of the seven on-track sessions in the fifth round of the 2023 Supercheap Auto TCR Australia season.

The #9 Melbourne Performance Centre Audi RS3 LMS TCR was easily the class of the field, leading the way on Friday, storming to both Saturday poles and claiming the first and third races of the weekend.

The only time Brown’s big smile did not appear in victory lane was race two, but he still appeared on the podium in third.

To say Brown’s TCR season needed a lift like this is an understatement. 

Whilst he is near the top of the Supercars Championship, he headed to Queensland Raceway 16th and last in the TCR world after a string of unlucky mechanical gremlins such as driveshaft and suspension failures, while he was in America during Winton.

But he has bounced back in a big way and now sits 13th after the biggest haul of points collected across a single weekend of the year.

Brown could not speak anymore highly of his Melbourne Performance Centre team after dialling in the new Audi for the first time.  

“It is awesome,” he said post race. 

“Big thanks to Liqui Moly and MPC for getting the car back up to the front this weekend.

“It was absolutely obvious we did not have the best start to the season.

“It was great because we just had such good pace. 

“It seems that when you are behind you have a bit of a disadvantage, so we had the advantage of getting ahead and we were very consistent.”

After converting pole to victory on Saturday, Brown walked into Sunday full of confidence.

Although he fell short in race two, he still showed great pace throughout the 21-lap reverse top 10 race and only just fell short of victory.

Brown started 10th, but charged into the podium places as early as lap five and ultimately finished third, just 1s off the back of winner Brad Harris.

Although Brown led every lap of the 21-lap finale he still had some nervous moments.

His initial charge was interrupted by a Safety Car after champion contenders Tony D’Alberto and Jordan Cox collided.

Brown had established a 6s advantage over Cameron when another Safety Car was required late in the piece when Kody Garland retired.

This meant the race came down to a one-lap shootout, but Brown remained composed to score a 1s win.

Whilst all the outside noise was on Brown’s rumoured switch from Erebus Motorsport to Triple Eight, he insisted all of his focus was on TCR and it paid off.

“It was all about TCR this weekend. All my focus was on track and it showed,” Brown concluded.

Brown will make an interesting return to Erebus at The Bend this weekend, while TCR returns to Sandown on September 8-10.

Image: Daniel Kalisz

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