Haber all fired up despite GT pains

THERE is always this morning for Mackay local and Australian GT Championship newcomer Morgan Haber.

The 21- year- old former Dunlop Series driver and Erebus team member hopes to wave the flag for North Queensland at this weekend’s Townsville 400 despite finishing 10th in yesterday’s first GT qualifier.

Maranello’s Tony D’Albertro finish on top in that session, ahead of Steven Owen ( Supaloe Racing), Nathan Antunes ( Skwirk) and Klark Quinn ( Darrell Lea).

Haber wants to make a statement when the GTs roar again from 8.30am today.

“It’s a bit daunting, first time back on a street circuit again, but I think it’s going OK,” he said.

“We had a pretty good session with the first practice, so it was unfortunate to struggle a bit in qualifying. We’ve got another qualifying session ( today) and we’ll try and tune the car up a bit better and go from there.”

Haber raced at Reid Park last year but faces a whole new set of challenges behind the wheel of his re- shelled # 28 Erebus Motorsport SLS AMG GT3.

His new car took about 400 hours to rebuild following his opening race crash in Adelaide, which kept him out of the category’s first two rounds.

“We started looking around for something different last year and Erebus had a pretty good deal on the table, so we took the opportunity,” he said.

“It’s pretty amazing when you think the team is racing seven cars this weekend and it’s a great team that’s spread out over a few categories.”

Haber got his start racing karts, which he did for about 10 years, then moved to the Australian Swift Racing Series in 2011, and on to the Dunlop Series and then the GTs.

He feels no extra pressure to perform well at his “home” race, but is still keen to do North Queensland proud.

“I want to put on a good show for the crowd and for my fans back home,” Haber said.

“We’ll just see how it all goes for now, stick with the GT stuff and hopefully I keep progressing.”