Scott Taylor ends Darwin round with overall podium

Scott Taylor has come away from his round at the famous Hidden Valley Raceway with some silverware after finishing the Combined Sedans event in second place, capping off his Australian road trip in style.

Behind the wheel of #222 2013 Porsche 911 GT3R (Type 997.2), Taylor dominated the field for most of the weekend and finished every race in first place, only for multiple penalties to see him miss out on the overall round win and end up second overall.

Right from the get go, Taylor was in fine form, going second fastest in Friday morning’s practice session before putting the Porsche on pole by one tenth over Mark Duggan in qualifying.

Taylor then led every lap in Race 1 on Friday afternoon and broke the lap record in the process before receiving a time penalty for exceeding the designated speed limit.

In Saturday morning’s Race 2, Taylor again crossed the line in first place having led every lap again after a good start – this time the Queenslander kept his victory after crossing the line just over a second ahead of Duggan.

While Taylor did the same in Race 3, unfortunately he exceeded the designated speed limit again and was handed a 15-second penalty, which caused him to drop to second after a late safety car intervention bunched the field back together in the final stages of the race.

The visit to Darwin caps off the epic Road Trip for the Scott Taylor Motorsport team, which saw him complete more than 10,000km around Australia having raced in Perth and Darwin across three busy weeks.

Taylor’s next round will be back with V8 SuperUte Series at the NTI Townsville 500 in Townsville on July 11-13.

QUOTES

Scott Taylor
#222 2013 Porsche 911 GT3R (Type 997.2)

“I’ve had a great time in Darwin racing our Porsche GT3. It’s a car which I love. It’s probably my favourite car to drive because it’s so predictable,” said Taylor.

“We were allowed to race in the Combined Sedans, which is very much a combination of fast and slower cars. And so with that in mind, we had to race to a certain lap time.

“I’m not really good on the stopwatch because normally in a race car, you try and go as fast as you can. I had to back off on the straight all the time to slow the car down, and unfortunately, I didn’t slow it down by one tenth of a second in the first race and by two tenths in the third race.

“My lap time was a minimum of 1 minute 15 second lap time, and this car’s probably capable of doing a 1 minute 8 seconds – as fast as what a Supercar is.

“Anyway, it’s just great to be in Darwin. I enjoyed all the people around. They are so complimentary and welcoming – we’ll definitely be back next year.

“And now it’s back into the truck to end our road trip, but we’ve got five days to go! It’s my birthday on Tuesday too and I’ll spend that day driving my truck in the middle of Australia, which is what I love doing, and we’ll do some extra filming and to showcase the sights and sounds of our trucks going through outback Australia, dodging kangaroos, camels and bulls.”