Evans and Schutte win entertaining night race in Sydney

Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte capped off a dominant day with a commanding 15-second victory in the opening race of GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS at GT Festival Sydney.

In what was a highly memorable race under the lights of Sydney Motorsport Park, both drivers produced impressive stints behind the wheel of the Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 GT3 to help secure the team’s second win of the 2025 season having started from pole position.

Behind the Ferrari in second and third were Tigani Motorsport’s two Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVOs, with Tom Randle and Marcel Zalloua leading Jayden Ojeda and Paul Lucchitti across the line by just eight tenths of a second.

Renee Gracie claimed top Am Cup honours in the Melbourne Performance Centre (MPC) Audi R8 LMS EVO II, following a career-best second place outright in qualifying earlier in the day.

With Schutte and Gracie starting alongside each other for the highly anticipated night race, a thrilling start off the line saw both drivers lose their position to a fast-charging Brad Schumacher and drop to second and third respectively.

While Gracie was unable to regain her starting position and settled into third, Schutte wrestled his way back into the lead with some entertaining racing against the Audi R8 of Schumacher.

From that point onwards, Schutte never looked in doubt of giving up his lead, eventually building a decent gap over Schumacher and handing the car over to Evans with a healthy buffer.

Following the team’s clean pit stop, Evans extended the gap even further and found himself in a league of his own for the rest of the race as he brought the car home in comfortable fashion.

Although the victory proved trouble-free, the battle for the minor podium positions was far more entertaining as several drivers had the opportunity to finish inside the top three. In the end though, a highly consistent run from Randle and Zalloua and a exciting charge from Lucchitti and Ojeda earned the two Tigani entries their highly deserving podiums

Ojeda especially was the standout performer of the race as he posted consecutive record-breaking laps and picked off rival drivers one-by-one to complete a remarkable run up the field after he and Lucchitti started off in P9.

Finishing in fourth place a further two and a half seconds behind were Schumacher and co-driver Broc Feeney, while George King and Sergio Pires rounded out the top five having occupied second place at one point during the race.

As for Gracie, although she eventually finished the race in 10th overall after starting from the front row, she comfortably took out the Am Cup victory having finished a lap ahead of the next-best driver crew in Ben Schoots and Shane Woodman in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO 5200. Finishing the race third in Am Class were Theo and James Koundouris. 

The race endured its fair share of drama, with the most notable being that of the Tim Miles and Brendon Leitch Audi R8 that was involved in an early incident, forcing Miles to the pits on three wheels relegating the duo to the rear of the field where they remained for the rest of the race.

Results are HERE