{"id":296019,"date":"2023-05-12T22:17:02","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T22:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=296019"},"modified":"2023-05-13T00:59:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-13T00:59:45","slug":"underdog-snagged-by-disappointing-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=296019","title":{"rendered":"Underdog snagged by 'disappointing' oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zac Soutar says he's disappointed his TCR Australia Series<\/a> season was needlessly curtailed by an issue that was known about by Audi.<\/p>\n

The privateer was in red hot form at the Symmons Plains season opener only for his RS 3 LMS TCR car to suffer a driveshaft failure.<\/p>\n

Will Brown, who also pilots one of the German-built cars, suffered an identical failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stan Sport is the only place to watch the 2023 SpeedSeries.<\/strong><\/em> All the action streaming ad free, live and on demand<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Attempts were made to get the driveshafts fixed<\/a> but were ultimately unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

\"Zac<\/p>\n

Soutar said Audi knew the driveshaft was a weak point of the second-generation car, although the privateer team was unaware until theirs let go.<\/p>\n

That left the team frustrated, having not been able to prepare the necessary spares inventory to accommodate for failures. \ufeff<\/p>\n

It means Soutar comes into the second round of the season at Phillip Island without any points while Brown has just 10 from scoring pole position.<\/p>\n

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Soutar said Melbourne Performance Centre, the official Audi customer support team, has stocked up on the parts since.<\/p>\n

While he's optimistic the cars won't have the same issues at Phillip Island where loads are lower, he admitted he was a little bit nervous it could happen again.<\/p>\n

"Obviously it's a known problem," Soutar told Wide World of Sports.<\/p>\n

\"Zac<\/p>\n

"We have heaps of spares but yeah, a little bit frustrating that maybe it was a known problem that Audi knew about before round one and it would have been good if they had given us the heads up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"But anyway, I guess that's water under the bridge and now we've got plenty of parts in case it does pop up again.<\/p>\n

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"Phillip Island, it's not a very heartbreaking circuit and we're not doing anywhere near the amount of laps," he added.<\/p>\n

"It should definitely hold for the weekend and hopefully if it does, we'll get it crack tested afterwards, but I don't think it's gonna be a problem."<\/p>\n

\"Zac<\/p>\n

Soutar is yet to fully show his hand in the series, although is expected to be up the front in one of the series' newest cars.<\/p>\n

The Audi was a formidable car on one-lap pace in 2022 and in the hands of Jay Hanson won at Phillip Island.<\/p>\n

The Honda Civic Type R remains the car to beat, however.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fabian Coulthard took two race wins at the circuit last year and Tony D'Alberto was quickest in Friday's practice sessions.<\/p>\n

In any case, Soutar expects to be up the front come race time.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/StanSportAU\/status\/1656818975731339267<\/a><\/p>\n

"We want to be in the mix of podiums, that's why we're here," said Soutar.<\/p>\n

"I know we're privateers but been here long enough to be the pointy end.<\/p>\n

"You never know who's gonna be quick and who's not gonna be, so we'll just see what happens. We'll roll with the punches.<\/p>\n

"We've sort of punched above our weight but in saying that, I do have very clever team of people with me by my side that help make it happen."<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/SpeedSeriesAU\/status\/1656543879443910656<\/a><\/p>\n

Round two of the TCR Australia Series takes place this weekend at Phillip Island.<\/p>\n

Qualifying gets underway at 11:35am on Saturday morning with the opening race of the weekend at 4:15pm, which will last 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

Sunday will see two 30-minute races, the first at 11:30am and second at 4:15pm.<\/p>\n

Stan Sport will carry live, ad-free coverage of the weekend's racing with 9Gem broadcasting three hours of free-to-air coverage from 2pm on Saturday.<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here<\/strong><\/em><\/a>!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zac Soutar says he's disappointed his TCR Australia Series season was needlessly curtailed by an issue that was known about by Audi. The privateer was […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":296024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296019"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296028,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296019\/revisions\/296028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/296024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}