It was always going to be an interesting debut in this brand new championship, but it was certainly a lot more challenging than anyone had expected. This was a three hour race at the Blackwood Reverse circuit, with Eduardo de Souza and Craig Taylor at the wheel of our XRR. We qualified 20th of 28th; and were hoping for a top 15 by the end of the race.

The race began before the green flag was shown; some horrendous driving on the pace car lap saw one car on its side before the startline and already showed us why the league is called the 'GT Amateur League'. After this chaos, our Brazillian, de Souza, tried his best to avoid the ensuing mayhem and was running well until a disconnection on lap 11. This cost our team at least a lap, and had us on the back foot for the rest of the race. De Souza struggled with cooling tyres late-on in his stint, and had a collision with a lapping car that got too close.

As de Souza turned into the pitlane, it was time for Craig Taylor to show his mettle. Craig would drive the last hour and a half and did a remarkable job. He had just one scary moment in which his car nearly flipped over. The XRR is a very top heavy car and therefore is a bit of a handful when going over the tall kerbs of Blackwood. Because of the disconnection and lack of a tracker, it was nearly impossible to work out where we were in the actual positions, so when every car on the track was showing us a blue flag, we had no choice but to let them past for fear of blocking a leader. In the end, several DNFs and DQs later, the race finished with the Karma team taking victory. We would finish in an overall 16th position after the results were calculated manually by an admin, after tracker problems.

 This has definitely been a learning experience for the team, and we are still looking forward to the next race at Westhill, where we feel the XRR can perform to its best.

Here is a selection of de Souza's and Taylor's comments:

'16th position, that'll do. I wish I could've done a little better... the race could've been a whole lot worse. At least we finished the race, scored some points, kept out of trouble and gained some experience.' - Craig Taylor

 'The car is undrivable with cold tyres, so the end of my stint was a genuine example of how NOT to drive... But that's the point, right? Now we know' - Eduardo de Souza.