Australian Trans-Am Brings Old-School Muscle to Ipswich

The Performance Wheels Australian Trans-Am Series heads to Queensland Raceway for round two of the 2018 series, bringing their brand of old-school racing to the Ipswich Festival of Cars on April 20-22.

The Trans-Ams have become a crowd-favourite in the Queensland motorsport scene, with teams and drivers happy to show off their classic American muscle to race fans in the pits, while the drivers aren’t afraid to race door-to-door on track.

While defending champion Shannon O’Brien has been missing from the grid, Russell Wright took the spoils with a clean sweep at the season opening Lakeside Tribute in March. He’ll be up against some tough competition from the return of regular series front-runner Brett Curran, as well as John English and Anthony Tenkate who are backing up from round one.

The Ipswich Festival of Cars will prove to be a busy weekend for Wright as well as fellow Mustang racer Tenkate, who will both share double duties in the Australian TA2 Muscle Cars across the weekend.

Mike Collins took out the opening round of the Five Litre Classics in his Ford Mustang at Lakeside ahead of Len Balme and Mark Bowtell, they’ll be joined this weekend by Tricia Chant as well as the return of defending 5-Litre champion Ron Prefontaine. The Five Litre Classics is a popular sub-class within Australian Trans-Am for cars not exceeding a Five-Litre engine capacity.

Meanwhile, an impressive run of two outright podiums and two fourths rewarded Alwyn Bishop with a clean sweep of the Sportsman class over Shane Wilson (Ford Mustang) and Martin O’Kane (Chevrolet Camaro), with Harry Charalambous in fourth. The Sportsman class is another sub-class within Australian Trans-Am classified for “drivers of over 5-Litre vehicles doing it as much for fun as they are success.”

The three sub-classes within the Australian Trans-Am Series is classified by the outer tips of the Performance Wheels windscreen banner: Red for Trophy, Yellow for Sportsman and Blue for 5-Litre.

The Trans-Ams are set for four exciting sprint races at the paperclip, in support of the Willowbank 300 endurance race.

For the latest Australian Trans-Am news visit www.australiantransam.com.au, ‘Like’ Australian Trans-Am on Facebook and ‘Follow’ @AusTransAm on Twitter for updates as they come across the weekend.