AARON Cameron is in prime position to claim the S5000 Tasman Series at Mount Panorama this weekend at the Repco Bathurst 1000.
Cameron will take in a 22-point lead into the fourth and final race on Sunday morning over BRM’s Roberto Merhi with 60 points still on offer for victory in Race 4.
GRM’s James Golding (29 points behind) and UCS Group TMR’s Tim Macrow (46 points behind) still remain in mathematical contention for the prestigious crown.
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The Tasman Series is one of the most prestigious trophies in Australian open-wheel racing, contested by visiting Formula 1 stars in the 1960s and Formula 5000 aces in the 1970s.
Originally awarded for an annual series of races on both sides of the Tasman Sea between 1964 and 1975, the Tasman Cup was revived for a pair of New Zealand-based series for Formula Holdens in 1999 and 2000.
Previous winners of the Tasman Series include three-time Formula 1 world champion Jackie Stewart, two-time Formula 1 world champion Jim Clark, Chris Amon and Bruce McLaren.
“I want to add my name to the Tasman Series winners,” Cameron told V8 Sleuth.
“We are cruising around getting points, that’s pretty much what I am here to do this weekend. Obviously qualifying went better than expected and other than that, we are just gaining points.
“We’ve got a sticker made up we can hopefully put on my car at the end of the weekend.
“That’s the real goal so we will see what happens tomorrow, fingers crossed.”
This has also prevented drivers from having a crack of the Mount Panorama outright lap record, set by Christopher Mies in an unrestricted Audi in 2018 with a 1m59.2190s lap time.
The best lap this week for the S5000 cars was set by Golding in Race 1 with a 1m59.8375s time.
The Hoosier tyres appear to get faster the more laps they do, which is why a lack of green laps has interfered with any attempt at a record-breaking lap.
Cameron admitted that this was a source of disappointment for himself and his teammates at GRM that they couldn’t have a real go at achieving that record lap.
“The last couple of races we haven’t been able to show what we can do just because guys are having little accidents which is disappointing for all of us,” he said.
“We aren’t here to have red flags and run under Safety Cars, we are here to do green laps and we want to get under the 1:59 bracket,” he said.
“Me and Jimmy have done it so far and Nathan [Herne] is busting to get under that and I am sure BRM, AGI and all of the other boys would like to do it as well.”
Cameron, who is driving both S5000 and TCR this week, finished third in Race 3 in what was a red-flagged affected race that featured a big incident on lap one at The Chase.
“I didn’t get the best of starts, Jimmy [Golding] got me pretty easily off the line so that wasn’t ideal there, but other than that, we were not too bad,” he said.
“I’ve been struggling (going) between the TCR and this, it takes me three or four laps to get back into the groove of how much drive traction these things have compared to TCR.
“That’s what we are struggling with most, after that we are on the pace.
“It has been pretty good, our qualifying setup was obviously spot on, our race setup is a bit more hairy just for trying to pass people down the straights, so over the top it is a bit scary but it is pretty good so far.”
The fourth and final race of the S5000 Tasman Series will commence at 10:15am AEDT Sunday morning.
