Bromley claims second round victory for 2024

Oil Baron Supply’s Miles Bromley has taken his second round victory of the 2024 Giti Australian Formula Open after claiming the feature race on Sunday at Sydney Motorsport Park (May 24-26).

Having claimed the points lead after Round 2 at Winton Raceway, Bromley (#9) finished the round on equal points with Tim Macrow Racing stablemate Ryan MacMillan (#20) however took the overall victory due to finishing higher in the final race. MacMillan won two of the three races across the weekend to be within three points of Bromley in the outright championship.

PRACTICE
Championship leader Bromley suffered gearbox issues (selector barrel pins broke) in various Friday practice sessions, while engine issues in Jayden Hamilton’s Mygale F4 resulted in the rookie getting less than 10 laps total on track before qualifying.

QUALIFYING
MacMillan and Beau Russell (#22) swapped top times in qualifying outright, while Bromley caused a red flag after one only flying lap due to electrical issues that saw him stop on the track with no throttle at Turn 2. With time on the clock having run out, an extension of 5 minutes was given but Bromley only managed 4th fastest after just one more flying lap. Russell managed to go faster than his previous best lap to top the timesheet with a 1m24.8492s lap; a time that was 0.85secs faster than MacMillan and good enough for his first career pole position.

RACE 1
MacMillan got the better start than Russell in the opening race on Saturday afternoon and took the lead off the start. While both held their positions all race, the polesitter Russell was given a 5-second penalty for rolling on the start which resulted in him being relegated back to 4th outright. Unfortunately, Bromley stalled on lights out and soon had the whole field passing him, giving the points leader the challenge of racing from rear of grid. A safety car was called on lap two for George Kantzios (#27) who spun and needed recovery.

The race restarted with just over four mins to go with Macmillan and Russell leading Kyle Evans (#17) and Bromley; the latter two being promoted to 2nd and 3rd outright post penalties.

Kantzios suffered fuel system issues and spent a late night at the track to fix the Dallara before Sunday morning Race 2. Meanwhile Chris Huang (#16) made his race return to AFO but in his new F3 T318, finishing 9th up front an 18th start, but received a 5-second penalty (which equated to two finishing positions) due to overlapping on the restart after the Safety Car.

In AFO4, Jayden Hamilton #43 unfortunately had to withdraw after engine issues put paid to his weekend, giving Isaac McNeill clean air to take a the race class win over Tim Boydle from AGI Sport.

RACE 2
Sunday morning’s Race 2 was greeted with heavy fog over the 3.93km Gardner circuit layout, mostly from Turns 1-3 and then clearing up from Turns 4 to the front straight. Kantzios thankfully received assistance from the Gilmour Racing crew overnight who helped remedy their mechanical issues, after discovering their dropped cylinders were caused by disintegrating foam in the fuel tank.

The race itself was incident free with MacMillan and Evans starting off the front row, but Bromley soon slotted in between the frontrunners before the end of the opening lap and stayed in second by the chequered flag. MacMillan’s win gave him the points advantage in the championship, taking the lead after winning the first two races of the weekend.

Russell made a costly error at the end of lap 1, spinning coming onto the front straight (Turn 11) and losing several places. The polesitter would go on to finish fourth. Huang spun around the back of corporate hill on Lap 5 but with a drained battery was unable to restart. AFO4 frontrunner McNeill finished first again over Boydle.

RACE 3
The final feature race on Sunday afternoon saw MacMillan and Bromley starting 1-2 for Tim Macrow Racing, however it was Bromley who made the better start and the early lead into Turn 1. Russell was also out to prove a point and squeezed past MacMillan into second. Miles eventually extended his lead by nearly four seconds, while the two battling for second raced side by side for most of the race. Evans was not far behind to finish fourth.

In AFO3 Huang climbed from 18th outright to a top-10 finish with a faultless run in the new F3 T318 to take the win for his class. While in AFO4 McNeill drove an impressive race to finish 5th outright behind the frontrunning F3 cars which makes three round victories for the 14-year-old in 2024. Boydle finished second in class for his first appearance in Giti AFO for AGI Sport.

Full championship points can be found here.

QUOTEBOOK

#9 MILES BROMLEY: “Considering what we were facing in Friday practice with our technical issues and then stalling on the grid for race one, the weekend didn’t start ideal! But to fight back and get the win is incredible especially since I had my sponsors from Oil Barron Supply here this weekend too. I knew my only chance to win a race was to get a better start compared to Ryan, and at this circuit it’s tricky because the grid is downhill so you really have to manage the handbrake, clutch and throttle all at the same time. But well done to Beau and Ryan for a great race, it’s been a fantastic weekend and really happy to take another round win.”

#20 #RYAN MACMILLAN: ”I didn’t have a great start, had a bit to much wheel spin and had a slow gear shift to 2nd. This put me back into third place and ⁠I sat behind Beau [Ruseell] trying to get past. ⁠I tried the best I could but as he wouldn’t budge the tyres just kept getting hotter and hotter making the car slide a lot. ⁠Unfortunately this meant that I went back to 2nd on the round points from finishing 3rd in the feature race. ⁠Was a great race though and I learnt a lot and I will go home and study the footage to make sure I am better next time.”

#22 BEAU RUSSELL: “I showed strong pace all race, and had to pull a few moves I didn’t even know I had, to defend from Ryan. Great racing to the boys, felt awesome to have a battle like that again, and to finally have a good start that bumped me from 4th to fighting for 1st into T2 off the start, now I have so much more confidence in the car, and will just keep getting

The Giti Australian Formula Open will next race at Shell V-Power Motorsport Park (The Bend) at Tailem Bend in South Australia from June 7-9, 2024.