D’Alberto gets GT drive, Bargwanna makes switch

Tony D’Alberto will drive a fan favourite Lamborghini in GT World Challenge Australia, while Ben Bargwanna has made a significant career switch.

This weekend at the Race Tasmania event, the 2025 Trans Am season starts and one of the new faces will be Bargwanna.

The son of 2000 Bathurst 1000 winner Jason will make the change from TCR to Trans Am.

He had been a mainstay of that category and became a regular winner with 10 podiums from four years.

But now he will take on the bigger V8 powered Trans Ams in a privately run #97 Mustang that was driven to the 2023 TA2 Muscle Car Series title by Dylan Thomas.

Whilst Bargwanna still has passion for TCR, his focus is now on Trans Am.

Trans Am is a really cool category,” said Bargwanna.

“It’s been alongside TCR for the last few years and I got to watch Dad win a Trans Am race, which excited me a lot. The Trans Am route just made sense for us, especially with Dad being Jimmy Golding’s engineer last year.

“The cars are loud. They’ve got big V8s, they move around and the racing is awesome, so I’m stoked to be even thinking about racing it.

“It’s exciting to race under the Bargwanna Motorsport banner again. It’s been a while since we’ve done that.

“TCR has been my home for the past few years. It’s a passion of mine and I love it. I love everything it’s offered and has been able to provide to me by racing overseas against the best of the best alongside some really cool things in my years of TCR. It’s a category that holds a place in my heart and it always will.

“It’s not that I’m ever ruling out having another go at TCR again, but Trans Am is a new challenge and this is where we are at for the moment.”

D’Alberto will form part of Wall Racing’s return to the category where it will field the eye-catching Lamborghini Huracan Evo2.

The eye-catching Wall Racing Lamborghini is back. Image: RACE PROJECT

Alongside the former Supercars co-driver will be Adrian Deitz, who was also part of the team when it took Silver Cup class honours at the recent Bathurst 12 Hour.

At that event D’Alberto marked his intentions of competing full time in GT World Challenge Australia with TCR no longer on his agenda.

The car will continue sporting the red and white livery based off the BASF look in early 1980’s PROCAR.

“I think anytime you can drive a GT3 car around some of Australia’s best circuits is a good day,” said D’Alberto.

“Driving with my mate Adrian as well. We’ve had some good success at the Bathurst 12 Hour most recently and we want to keep building on that alongside Adrian’s confidence in the car.

“We want to keep learning about the car as we haven’t done a lot of miles in it. We haven’t been to Phillip Island in it, we’ve only raced at Bathurst, Sydney Motorsport Park and The Bend, so we think there is a bit more time to find in it as we develop it further.

“I need to get as many as I can throughout the year. We talk about Supercars enduros, there’s only two test days all year and one has already been used up prior to the opening round, which co-drivers do limited running.

“I’d much rather be sitting in a Lambo getting miles than sitting on the couch.

“It will be interesting how we stack up against the other teams as there’s plenty of nice cars out there run by some great teams.”

The GT World Challenge Australia season begins at Phillip Island on April 4-6.

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