SETON ROARS TO $10K V8 GLORY
SON of a gun Aaron Seton flagged himself as a supercars driver of the future by blowing away the field in the Tasmania Ten Thousand at Baskerville Raceway on Sunday to pocket $10,000 cash.
The 22-year-old Queenslander started on pole and stayed at the front of a field of 16 thundering 525-horsepower V8 Trans Ams from start to finish.
Despite the best efforts of Tasmanian Owen Kelly, who started on the front row alongside Seton, the son of supercars legend Glenn Seton could not be caught in the 25lap showdown.
He took the chequered flag, and a 7kg Tasmania Ten Thousand trophy shaped like a Trans Am, ahead of Kelly,
NSW teenager Nathan Herne, Victorian Brett Holdsworth and hard-charging local Tim Shaw.
“It’s definitely the best trophy I’ve got,” Seton said.
“I’ll keep it in a special place.”
Officials had to lock the gates at 12.30pm when the track hit its 5000-people COVID-19 allowance for the second instalment of Race Tasmania, featuring S5000s, TCR two-litre tourers and Touring Car Masters, having raced at Symmons Plains early last week.
In the Trans Am final, Seton built up a comfortable gap by halfway through and was laughing all the way to the bank with five laps remaining.
The young star will not be going on a spending spree.
“The money will go toward the rest of the campaign this year,” he said.
“It was an awesome weekend and I could not have done it without my team. It has been quite difficult getting the cars ready for double-headers over the past 10 days.
“I just came here to do my
best so I am stoked with how it turned out.”
Kelly had hoped to jump Seton early.
“It’s really won on the start and Aaron did a really good job at the start to keep the lead,” Kelly said.
“We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.
“Our team has only had this car for two weeks so to figure out everything on it and run as well as we did, we’re proud of that.”
The S5000 cars were limited to demonstration laps, so an official lap record was not possible.
However, on-board data from James Golding’s GRM car registered a lap of 48.53 seconds — under John Bowe’s 40-year-old outright record of 50.16s set in his Ralt RT4.