Phelps grills the field to take the win at Texas!!

Round 5 of the ANZCAR Thunder Series 3 2022 saw the series on the road again to Texas for a 100-lap race.
Josh Michelmore would take the pole position for this race with Norman Clark also putting in a great lap to start on the outside of the front row. Steven Williams, Raymond Jaeger, Tom Neil and Phil Otto would make up the remaining spots of the front 3 rows. Great to see different driver names up near the front of the field.

The start of the race would see Michelmore get a good jump from the start to lead away. Back down the pack would see 3 wide action as the After Dark racing drivers would be making moves to get to the front early on.

Williams would hound the back of Michelmores car early on but be unable to make the pass but a hit to the outside wall would see Williams pick up a lot of damage on the right front.

Lap 19 would see the first caution of the night. Brett Campbell making a correction error to avoid hitting another car. This would see all the cars pit and compress the field again.

Lap 29 would see Jaeger power past Michelmore for the lead. Raymond seeming to find another gear as he pulled away and opened a good gap to the field. However lap 35 would see a somewhat bizarre incident with the 274 of Luke Georgeson after powering his way up to 2nd experiencing a network connection issue of some kind.

Luke would disappear from the track for a few seconds and return sliding sideways across the track in front of the field. After sliding down into the inside wall his cars night would be done from the heavy damage.

The caution would see the bulk of the field pit but we would also start to see a bit of strategy start coming into it with a number of cars opting to pit on the next lap around and some drivers taking fuel only.

Phil Otto would restart the race running on older tires but would be swamped by the field immediately and to add insult to injury would have to come in for a stop and go penalty for a breach of the race restart rules.

Drivers would be on the bubble of making it home without needing another pit stop. Jaeger would power away at the front while the drivers behind would be taking it easy. Another quick caution would come out on lap 47. The leading pack of cars would stay out and fuel save under caution.

Ruben Phelps in what would be a race winning move would pit for tires and fuel. Having been riding around the back for the first part of the race he would be restarting the race in 9th position.

Another rapid-fire caution and the race would restart again on lap 59 going green to the end of the race from here.
Phelps would use the about 12 laps fresher tires to get past Hamish Gallagher for the lead on lap 68 and from here he would be able to hold a comfortable lead to bring it home for the win.

The battle for 6th through to 10th would heat up with 10 laps to go with Clark, Matthew Raymond, Williams and Garry Wellman duking it out.

Results:
1st: Ruben Phelps
2nd: Hamish Gallagher
3rd: Josh Michelmore
4th: Raymond Jaeger
5th: Jamie Nankervis

Notes:
Lap 19: Car 015 Brett Campbell - Single car spin
Lap 35: Car 274 Luke Georgeson – Single car spin
Lap 47: Car 38 Tom Neil – Incident noted
Lap 53: Car 131 Steve Hoppitt – incident noted

None.
For a replay of the live race broadcast head to Performance E Streaming YouTube or on the ANZCAR Facebook page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx0bx18_Tms

Next week the series heads to Talladega Super Speedway for 68 laps.

As your rally co-driver would say “Left flat out, Left Flat out, Left flat out, Left flat out”