Minda Motorsport

Minda Motorsport (MMS) was split between states over the weekend of August 13 – 15. There were 10 historic cars racing at the Winton Festival of Speed in Victoria while the team also headed up to the south west QLD track of Morgan Park for the 4th round of the Australian Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge, team drivers Jan Jinadasa and Dean Koutsoumidis, both supporting new car livery looked forward to competing at the newly extended Warwick circuit.

Practice 1

Having never been at the undulating circuit before Koutsoumidis used this session as purely a sighting session, as did Jinadasa as the track had been modified since his debut there in 2009. Both drivers did a great job and did what team had asked of them, finishing the whole session and picking track markers etc.

Practice 2

After using practice 1 to find their feet, this session the boys were confident of improvement, Jinadasa in the JJA Consulting 997 was the best of the MMS drivers, setting a respectable time to place him 11th, a hand full of tenths would have placed him in top 6.
Koutsoumidis in the Teren / equity-one 997 finished the session a creditable 16th in  only his second round in the beautiful duck egg blue car.

Practice 3
The team arrived to a warm and sunny, if not overcast Morgan Park on Saturday morning, the teams plan was to use the practice 3 session to make sure the information and changes made from Friday nights data studies were in the right direction, Jinadasa again headed the MMS drivers and found himself around the top 10, Koutsoumidis continued his improvement and again went faster.

Qualifying

There was a sense of confidence in the team going into qualifying, improvements to both cars and drivers meant the team had hopes of a rewarding session, the guys didn’t let the team down, Jinadasa placed his JJA consulting car in 9th, a mere ½ a second of a top 5 spot, and this was in a session were Jinadasa struggled to get a clear lap
Koutsoumidis continued find more pace and ended the session in 17th.

Race 1

Jinadasa made a great start, but unfortunately was forced to the left hand side of the track going into turn 1 and a few cars got past, then while trying to avoid a spinning Bobik, Jinadasa spun himself and dropped to the rear of the field, with little chance of getting the pack back Jinadasa had spirited but unrewarding drive to the finish.
Koutsoumidis had a race long battle and came home s fighting 16th.

Race 2

Koutsoumidis had a good run from his competitive 16th grid spot and was up to 14th by the end of lap 1, running with Rankin who went onto finish 8th, but a spin at turn 7 dropped the Melbournian driver back to the rear of the field, he then drove a great second part of the race to get back to the last group of cars, even passing 1.
Jinadasa starting from his last spot on the grid due to race 1 spin punched out some great times and raced hard to reward himself with a fighting 12th, a great effort.

Race 3

The final race of the weekend is the feature, and it proved to be a high light for the MMS team, Jinadasa put his head down and really did do a superb job from his 12th grid spot he drove a calm and measured race to drive his way to a fantastic 6th place result, his best drive to date.
Jinadasa was not the only one driving a great race Koutsoumidis also put his best race to date in the 997, running with more experienced and practiced drivers giving Koutsoumidis a personal best result in the GT3 Cup Challenge.

The team now looks forward to the next round at western Sydney’s Eastern Creek in mid Sept.