Schutte and Evans enjoy Super Saturday with victory in Race 1

Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte lead the 2025 GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS season after an entertaining opening race at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit on Saturday afternoon.

Both Schutte and Evans produced solid stints behind the wheel of their Ferrari 296 GT3 in the 34-lap affair, beating Realta’s Jayden Ojeda and Paul Lucchitti and New Zealand duo Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles, while Black Wolf Motorsport’s Ben Schoots and Shane Woodman took out top honours in the Am Class.

With plenty of anticipation awaiting the best GT cars in the country to kick off the season, there was no shortage of drama to occur in the one-hour race – however, very little affected Schutte and Evans as they put in an almost faultless performance together.

Having started from pole position, the Arise Racing GT duo led the 16-strong field from start to finish and overcame multiple safety car restarts, as Schutte beat a fast-starting Sergio Pires and Evans held onto victory after a late challenge from Ojeda.

Both Ojeda and Lucchitti also delivered a good race themselves behind the wheel of the Tigani Motorsport-prepared Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO as they climbed five spots during the race to secure the runner-up finish ahead of the Melbourne Performance Centre Audi R8 LMS EVO II of Leitch and Miles.

With EMA Motorsport’s Dorian Boccolacci and Shane Smollen guiding their Porsche 911 GT3R to fourth place and the Volante Rosso Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 of  Declan Fraser and Liam Talbot in fifth, it marked a highly diverse line-up of five different manufacturers in the top five.

Earlier in the day, Talbot had  secured pole position in Qualifying but received a grid-place penalty for an unsafe release before the car was eventually disqualified and sent the Aston Martin to the back of the field.

Talbot wasn’t the only driver to be penalised for an unsafe release on Saturday, with Friday’s pacesetter Alex Peroni also causing an incident in the lane during a flurry of stops midway to get a time penalty, while the Wall Racing Lamborghini Huracan of Tony D’Alberto also received a 15-second penalty for pit lane speeding.

Adding to the drama was the retirement of Claymark/Mach 1’s Anthony and Peter Pedersen on lap 23 before Supabarn Supermarkets’ James Koundouris and Theo Koundouris followed suit in their Audi R8 LMS EVO II six laps later.

Bringing out the second and final safety car was Steve Brooks after he found himself and the Wolfbrook/Team MPC Audi R8 LMS EVO II in the gravel with just three laps to go.