AUS: Series Eastern Creek summary

ROGER LAGO LIGHTS UP THE CREEK WITH ROUND WIN

ROGER LAGO has closed to within thirty points of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Australia Series presented by Mission Foods series lead after taking his first overall round win at the weekend.

In a combative, controversial and exciting penultimate round of the 2010 series, Eastern Creek Raceway in Sydney provided plenty of thrills and spills for competitors with the title race now well and truly alive after a below-par weekend for leader Matt Kingsley.

Kingsley could do no better than sixth overall as the Eastern Creek layout suited the later model 997 GT3 Cup Cars as driven by Lago.

The Falcon Property Group / Lago Coldstores 997 GT3 Cup Car driver now has 300 points to leader Kingsley's 322, with 90 up for grabs at the season finale in October.

Lago ended the weekend with two seconds and a win in race two amidst a round that produced three different winners from three races.

Lago won race two - held Sunday morning - after making a superb start and jumping to an early lead before a safety car was called when Ray Angus, Jon Trende and Yuey Tan were involved in an incident at turn nine.

On the race restart Lago led a six-car freight-train including Shaun Juniper, Jeff Bobik, Sven Burchartz and Matt Kingsley.

The former and current champions had started down the field after their contact in Saturday's first race, Burchartz penalised for his part in the incident that saw 25 seconds added to his race one time - moving him from the race win to the bottom of the top ten.

An already-elated Terry Knight was elevated to the top spot, but was black-flagged for rolling at the start in race two and was therefore unable to capitalise on his pole position.

Lago held off the pack to take his first outright win of the season and close the margin to Kingsley.

Race three featured more of the same, Lago leading early before Shaun Juniper slipped past just before half-race distance to a lead he wouldn't lose.

Juniper eventually won by two seconds, whilst Lago secured second place after having everything thrown at him by both Burchartz (third) and an aggressive Kingsley (fourth) behind him.

Terry Knight scythed his way through the field to move from eleventh to fifth place after his race two disappointments with Smollen, Skinner, Bobik, Tan - who charged into the top ten from thirteenth at the end of lap one - and Bolinowsky completing the top ten.

Lago topped Shaun Juniper in the round honours, with Jeff Bobik scoring third in his best weekend of the year - despite slipping down the order in the final race.

Pole sitter Jon Trende had a weekend to forget, his stunning pole position lap on Saturday the only highlight that saw a 14th place finish in race one turn into a DNF in the second and a non-start in the third, due to the damage sustained.

Anthony Skinner (Travelplan 996 GT3) once again belied the fact he races the oldest model in the field by taking out class D, and finishing the weekend with finishes of sixth, seventh and seventh in the three races, respectively.

Indiran Padayachee won class D, Kingsley led home Knight and the ever-consistent John Goodacre to take the 996 class honours whilst Lago naturally won class D.

The final round of the 2010 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Australia Series presented by Mission Foods will be contested at Melbourne's Sandown Raceway on October 23-24.

Action from the fifth round of the series will be broadcast on SBS Speedweek this Sunday, from 12:30PM on SBS ONE.

-source: gt3cupchallenge.com.au