O’Keeffe continues his Sandown Porsche love-affair

Dylan O’Keeffe has had a successful return to Sandown in the Porsche Carrera Cup, taking advantage of a false start by Callum Hedge to take Race 1.

It’s O’Keeffe’s first win since Sandown of last year, with the Supercars co-driver enjoying his weekend of double duties to put on his best performance of a disappointing one-make season by his own standards.

Hedge took a penalty at the drop of the green, as O’Keeffe and Bayley Hall were promoted up the podium, whilst Hedge held onto third.

With that podium Hedge is close to tying up the Michelin Junior battle, with Jackson Walls finishing in P10, and five seconds behind after the penalty was applied.

Race 1 of the Carrera Cup got rolling with O’Keeffe off pole, as Hedge looked to tie up the Michelin Junior title from next to him, with his chief opponent Jackson Walls down in P13.

Hedge got off to a flyer into Turn 1 and jumped a few lengths in front early, over O’Keeffe, Hall, and Vidau, but race control had their eye on the jump, giving the young kiwi a five second penalty.

Championship challenger Vidau then lost control of his own doing into the Turn 4 wall and lost his rear wing, with the race staying green and Vidau taking a DNF, promoting Russell into fourth.

The race had developed an interesting angle up the front of the field with Hedge’s penalty, as O’Keeffe could afford to sit back, but also had to defend from Hall as he eyed off a maiden Carrera win.

Mouzouris went off at Turn 12 into the grass for the second time in the race and went to the rear of the field.

With six laps left the top three remained tight, as Miles took an awkward spin at Turn 7 to drop back through the Am class field, with Shahin leading that by just over one second.

Russell was also four seconds off the front three but holding provisional third if he stayed under the Hedge penalty time who still held the lead, but had O’Keeffe on his tail.

As the laps ticked down, Hedge found the necessary extra pace to gap himself from Russell in fourth as the Kiwi gun salvaged a podium by finishing +7.155 ahead of the Supercars Erebus co-driver.

Hall took second, just +1.118s behind O’Keefe, whilst Shahin had a comfortable 2+ second win in the Am class, whilst GT driver Liam Talbot took a third, driving as a replacement for Pro driver Luke King.

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