Max Vidau has rallied after twice being taken out at Sandown, to maintain his lead in the race for Rookie of the Year honours in the 2024 Dunlop Super2 Series.
It was a challenging weekend for the 23-year-old, who battled significant handling woes for the bulk of the weekend before being escorted off the road twice in Race 2 on Sunday.
A cracked sway bar limited Vidau’s speed on Friday, with the Anderson Motorsport team making the necessary repairs overnight in time for a wet qualifying session on Saturday morning. Despite regularly being a standout in wet conditions across his Porsche career, the #17 Ford Mustang lacked for overall grip and left Vidau to wrestle his way to 13th on the grid.
Vidau’s ability to consistently grab results came to the fore once again, after initially being demoted to 15th early on the opening lap. The South Australian methodically worked his way forward to claim 10th place and his sixth Top 10 finish of the season.
Qualifying on Sunday was held on slick tyres across a rapidly drying track. Vidau repeatedly topped the timing sheets across the first half of the session, but slipped down the order as the track improved and car setup played a larger role in overall lap time.
Starting once again from 13th Vidau was first shovelled off the road at the final corner in the early stages, scampering back on track and hanging on to 14th place. Later on in the race, Vidau was turned around by a desperate dive at Turn 9 that dropped the Exedy Mustang to 20th. It was a determined drive from there which saw Vidau claw his way back to finish in 13th place.
The results were enough for Vidau to maintain his place as the leading rookie in the Championship, and fourth overall in the standings with two rounds to go.
Round five sees a return to Bathurst where for the first time Vidau will be able to draw on prior Supercar knowledge around the circuit, with this the second trip to Mount Panorama for Super2 in 2024.
Quotes
Max Vidau – #17 Exedy Mustang
“We just struggled for outright car speed to go and race those front guys,” said Vidau.
“In qualifying on Sunday we were close, and led the session for a while but at the end of the day when everyone bolted on the greens at the end they put another couple of tenths on us.
“There’s a fair bit of work to do in getting the car back up the pointy end, I know in myself we can go and run up the front at Bathurst. We’ll knuckle down behind the scenes and really go to work. At the moment we’re just running around bagging consistent points, but we want to be winning races and getting ourselves higher in the championship so we’ll work hard to try and make that happen,” concluded Vidau