Boss Surveillance C63 AMG pilots Karl Begg and Justin Anthony have continued their winning form, scoring the Class A2 round victory in the Australian Production Car Series opening round at Sandown on the weekend.
After qualifying 20th outright in Friday’s wet weather conditions, Begg stormed through the field in Saturday’s first one-hour race, finishing fourth outright.
Anthony was installed in the car for Race 2, and was again running competitively before he was forced into retirement with a belt tensioner failure.
In Race 3, Anthony was running inside the top five before pitting for his compulsory pit stop on lap seven. Unfortunately, a pit stop procedure infringement saw Anthony called in for a second stop on lap 19, but he recovered strongly to finish in eighth spot.
Begg returned to the Boss C63 AMG for the fourth and final race, and make an excellent start to improve from eighth to third on the opening lap. He was able to hold the outright top-three position through to the chequered flag.
In a season where they have set themselves modest expectations, Begg and Anthony were once again delighted with the result.
“Like the Bathurst 6 Hour, we didn’t come into the weekend with overly optimistic goals – we would have been happy to finish inside the top three in Class A2 and the top 10 outright, especially considering we hadn’t raced at Sandown before,” Begg said.
“To win the class and score outright top-four finishes in two of the races definitely exceeded our objectives. The DNF in Race 2 was obviously not ideal, but we still scored enough points in the other three races to secure the overall class win.”
Begg and Anthony are looking forward to fine-tuning the handling of the C63 AMG ahead of the next APCS round.
“There are still some areas of the car we would like to improve,” Begg said.
“The brakes were fading in the last race, so that’s an issue we would like to address, and also the way it puts its power to the ground.
“The top-end speed is good but because the engine produces so much torque, it’s easy to spin the wheels when accelerating out of a low-speed corner.
“The good news is that the next round is on our home turf at Queensland Raceway, so we’ll have the chance to do some more testing and development, and then race on a circuit we’re very familiar with,” Begg concluded.
Round 2 of the Australian Production Car Series, which includes the popular “Fight in the Night” endurance race, will be held on 27-29 July.
