Leitch and Miles nab Phillip Island podium on GT World Challenge return

Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles came away from the first GT World Challenge Powered by AWS round at Phillip Island with a third place trophy, a fifth place finish, and fourth in the points.

In what proved to be a challenging weekend for the pair, the Dayle ITM Melbourne Performance Centre Audi R8 LMS qualified seventh for both 60-minute races.

After their breakout performance a year ago, finding a fast set-up proved to be a challenge, though that didn’t stop the pair from improving on their starting spots.

Miles began race one and made immediate headway to hold his own inside the top bunch before handing the reins over to Leitch who maintained fifth place.

The Kiwi battled an ill-handling car but was given a position when the Alex Peroni/Mark Rosser Team BRM Audi R8 was penalised for an unsafe release during the compulsory pit stop and had 15 seconds added to their race time.

That put Leitch and Miles up to fourth, which became third on the final lap when their MPC teammates Broc Feeney and Brad Schumacher suffered a puncture that dropped them to ninth.

In the end, Leitch crossed the line five seconds behind the race leaders Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte of Arise Racing. Jayden Ojeda and Paul Lucchitti claimed second place for Tigani Motorsports.

The second race of the weekend began with Leitch in the car, who made up two places to fifth by turn one. Leitch threatened to displace Evans before the pit stops but ran wide in the first turn and dropped back a place behind the other Arise Racing Ferrari 296 of Jordan Love.

Leitch handed the car over to Miles at the compulsory pit stop and came out in fourth. Struggling on cold rear tyres, Miles tagged the back of the Lucchitti Mercedes-AMG and tipped it into a spin at turn four.

They received a 15-second penalty for the clash, which looked like it would drop them to the back end of the top 10. However, a late shower meant the margins blew out and Leitch and Miles were able to keep their fifth place finish.

All told, the team came away with 25 points to put themselves fourth in the points. Evans and Schutte lead on 41 points ahead of Volante Rosso Motorsport’s Declan Fraser and Liam Talbot on 28 points. Feeney and Schumacher have 27 points.

“Good weekend for us. Never really found a fantastic balance for the car. The team worked really hard to help find it,” said Leitch.

“We made an improvement, which still wasn’t quite enough to fight for the overall win. Tim drove really well both races, in particular his start in the Saturday race was awesome.

“It was really good to come away with a third and a fifth and consolidate some points considering a lot of teams and cars had topsy-turvy weekends and we weren’t the fastest car.

“I think we’re in a good spot, a little bit behind the first car in the championship. I think that was one of their strong tracks. They’ve generally been very good at Phillip Island, and so have we but we just weren’t quite there this weekend.”

GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS takes a short break before returning on May 2-4 at Sydney Motorsport Park.