Melbourne Performance Centre Press Release
New Melbourne Performance Centre Audi R8 recruit Steve McLaughlan has taken out the season ending Island Magic event at Phillip Island.
Against a field of 42 Sports and GT cars, the newly crowned Australian GT Championship presented by Pirelli Trophy Class Champion and reigning Victorian Sports Car Champion withstood mounting pressure from a fleet of Porsches to claim the win in his recently acquired R8 LMS GT3. After claiming a win and a second placed finish in the two short preliminary races the day prior, McLaughlan played strategy perfectly in the one hour final, using the pace of the Audi and the durability of his Pirelli to close down his competition in the dying stages of the race to win by almost two seconds. In a race that was littered with Safety Car periods and slower cars, McLaughlan was never really troubled admitting that he felt he had the measure of all challengers.
He will now form part of an extended Melbourne Performance Centre team in the 2014 Australian GT Championship which gets underway in March [28-30] at Melbourne's Sandown Park.
Photo credit: RacerLink Australia-NZ
