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Nathan Morcom’s Sydney Motorsport Park bounce back
Despite an early setback last weekend at Round 4 of the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series at Sydney Motorsport Park, Nathan Morcom broke through to score his first win since 2019 on home turf.
Highlighted prior to the round as pre-event favourites due to last year’s dominant performances from teammate Josh Buchan, HMO Customer Racing proved this to be correct by winning two races.
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Buchan was the only driver to drop into the 1m 32s bracket in qualifying to take Hyundai’s second pole for the season as converted this to Race 1 honours.
It was a difficult start to the weekend for Morcom after the HMO Customer Racing crew elected to complete an engine change prior to qualifying. It didn’t hamper his speed, but a five grid position penalty was applied dropping Morcom from second to seventh.
Contesting the first race for the category at night, Morcom progressed up one place as focus was firmly put on Race 2 where an inverted top 10 was to form the grid.
Saving a good set of tyres for the second race, Morcom challenged for the lead early before settling into third, putting his weekend back on track.
After fighting Swyftx GRM Peugeot’s Jordan Cox off the start, Morcom led home a team 1-2 as Buchan charged to follow behind, even putting on the pressure during the closing stages.
“What a fantastic weekend for the team; it’s certainly been our strongest one so far this year,” said Morcom.
“To get the race win monkey off my back for this year feels awesome, especially at our home circuit.
“We played a good hand with our tyre strategy over all three races – the boys did a great job with that. We ran out of grip a little bit at the end of the last race, but we sacrificed that in order to get up the front in Race 2.
“It’s a shame we had to take a penalty with the engine change, as we could have been even stronger. But that’s what we had to do to get here on the winner’s rostrum.”
Morcom’s big weekend at home elevated him to seventh in the points from 13th as the fight for the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia title closes up.
The next round of the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series is at Queensland Raceway on August 5-7, as you can catch all the action live, uninterrupted and on-demand on Stan Sport.