Max Vidau had entered the final round of the Dunlop Super2 Series 60 points clear in the battle for Rookie of the Year Honours, but handling issues handicapped the South Australian driver all weekend.
The 23-year-old had held fourth in the standings along with the top spot in the rookie race ever since the Perth round in May and, despite battling increasingly apparent handling woes across the season, entered the season finale at Adelaide just 150 points off the overall series lead.
A pair of challenging qualifying sessions left Vidau 17th and 10th on the grid for the final two races of the season. A lack of turn was identified as a major source of concern, with Vidau notably tracking up to 10km/h slower than the pole time in turn eight, yet still finding severe levels of understeer at corner apex.
After finding some early positions in Race 1 Vidau found the fence at turn eight and, despite attempting to limp back to the pits, was forced into his only retirement of the 2024 season.
Vidau displayed his supreme race craft in Race 2, putting on a race long defensive drive to hold on for a top ten finish in what was a somewhat wounded car.
Overall, Vidau finishes his maiden Dunlop Super2 season sixth in the points and third of the rookie class. It was a year that showcased Vidau’s perseverance, as he battled a myriad of uncontrollable circumstances to produce a top three result at 50% of the rounds across 2024.
“It’s disappointing not to come away with the rookie title, given we were in that spot for almost the whole year,” said Vidau.
“We’re scratching our heads a little bit, because we’ve just picked up some bizarre handling problems across the season for which we can’t pinpoint a cause. It was pretty eye opening, comparing our lap in qualifying to the pole time and seeing how far off we were.
“There were areas where it just wasn’t possible to achieve the same speed in our car, and yet we were still understeering towards the fence. Honestly it felt like we brought a knife to a gunfight.
“I’m still proud of what we achieved this season, we showed when we did have the car what we could do and picked up some podiums at some of the toughest rounds on the calendar. For Perth I’d never been there before, and we almost won it. Townsville and Bathurst were big adjustments from racing a Porsche there to now a Supercar, and to pick up podiums at those two rounds was really cool.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do in the off season to try and put 2025 together, but this (Supercars) is what I want to do and we’ll do anything to make it happen,” concluded Vidau.