LIAM DURKIN
MOTORSPORT
By LIAM DURKIN
TRARALGON motorsport ace Jordan Caruso has taken an early lead in the National Sport Sedan racing season.
Caruso sits first on the championship table with 133 points following a dominant display of racing on Phillip Island recently.
The 21-year-old took to the island for three races in as many hours, and returned with two wins and a second from the event.
The Phillip Island circuit was the first of five events on the 2022 National Sports Sedan calendar.
Caruso now turns his attention to the north-east Victorian town of Winton for the next round of qualifying.
Speaking of his success at Phillip Island, Caruso said he was rapt with how things went.
“Couldn’t have really gone much better in the first round,” he said.
“The car feels good and hopefully we don’t have any issues going forward.
“Auto Union Motorsport are the team running the car, they do a lot of work preparing the car in the workshop and on race weekends.”
The car in question is a 750 horsepower, 1200 kilogram Audi that Caruso flew around the Phillip Island track at speeds touching 300 kilometres an hour.
As Caruso explained, the Sport Sedan cars are the fastest race cars with a roof in Australia, meaning there was no time to relax behind the wheel.
“In our category the cars and tyres are really pushed to the limit,” he said.
“You have to readjust yourself. The speed it gets after exiting a slow corner really pushes you back. It has a lot of aerodynamics, you have a lot of grip and a lot of G-force so it is quite physical.
“At high speeds it is about being smooth. It is quite easy to make mistakes in a car with so much power but the main thing is to just be smooth.”
Caruso said part of the challenge of racing sedans also lay in trying to win the race at hand while not compromising the cars longevity.
“A lot of it is trying to get to the lead and managing it from there,” he said.
“You don’t want to be pushing the car as hard as possible, you want to be leading by the smallest margin you can and just being easy on the car.
“Similar in qualifying, you want to do the fastest lap possible but you want the tyres in the best condition moving forward.”
Caruso will enter next month’s event in Winton as favourite, heading in with a five-point lead on the championship table.
“I’m hoping to keep consistent. I think the car is fast enough to win so as long as I cannot really make any mistakes we should be looking good,” he said.
“That will probably be the biggest event I have ever been a part of so that is exciting.”
Caruso grew up in Traralgon and got his start in motorsport through the Gippsland Go-Kart Club in Morwell.
He first raced in 2008, making the move from go-karts to bigger vehicles.
