CHE Racing Team remain in title fight after solid Winton points haul

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CHE Racing Team’s Zak Lobko remains in the fight for the 2023 Australian Formula Ford Series after finishing second for Round 4 at Winton.

Although he may have lost his lead in the standings, Lobko continued to demonstrate his superb consistency by finishing each of the three races in the top five.

It proved a tough weekend for Lachlan Strickland, who has been a highlight this year placing fifth in the series in his maiden season, while Imogen Radburn continued to make strides at a circuit she knows well.

A wrong direction in set up led to Lobko qualifying sixth, but the CHE Racing Team quickly got to work and the race car proved fast. Lobko put it to good use and rose to fifth, setting up a run at the podium to close out the weekend.

Race 2 further progress was made as Lobko completed a superb pass at Turn 1 to move onto the podium in third and the final event was marred by a slow start, but he recovered to finish second.

Strickland’s luck took a turn at the start of Race 1 when he was involved innocently in a Turn 1 incident as he finished 14th, the same position as qualifying.

At a venue notoriously hard to pass at, Strickland finished 18th and 15th in the final two races as the set-up direction evolved to his liking in the last event.

Radburn was also caught out in the same opening corner incident in race 1 as Strickland to finish 15th a position progression of one compared to qualifying.

She made up a further two spots in Race 2 to be 14th and completed the weekend in 13th as she continued to display vast improvement compared to her previous visits.

It’s a two month wait until the next round of the Australian Formula Ford Series at Sandown on August 11-13, with Lobko 17-points off the lead in the title.

QUOTES

Zak Lobko
#7 CHE Racing Team

“We finished second here at Winton for the fourth round of the Australian Formula Ford Series where we joined the SpeedSeries for the first time this year,” said Lobko.

“A special thanks to the team after helping me a lot this weekend and I’m hoping we can bounce back stronger to finally get the round win down at Sandown.

“Unfortunately, we lost the series lead, but there are still three rounds left or 183 points still available and still plenty of opportunities to gain it back. I’m sure the team at CHE will be able to do that in the rounds to come.”

Imogen Radburn
#29 CHE Racing Team

“It was a pretty good weekend for me at Winton,” Radburn summarised.

“In qualifying we found a lot of pace we didn’t have in practice. Unfortunately, I went swimming in Turn 1 trying to avoid an incident in the opening race, but we came out the better and had to pit stop as well.

“In the last one I had a tight battle for the whole race and this proved an enjoyable challenge. We’ll now focus on Sandown and look at how we can improve our performance.”

Lachlan Strickland
#47 CHE Racing Team

“It was an up and down weekend, definitely character building,” said Strickland.

“Big thanks to my engineer Chris, he’s had to deal with a pretty angry race driver all weekend.

“Race 1, I was caught up in an opening corner incident and had some damage on the car of which I couldn’t recover. Race 2, I was unfortunately missing pace, so the team did some work overnight and the car felt better. I made a good start and grabbed a couple of positions, but settled into a rhythm.

“I’m looking forward to Sandown, I took my first ever race win there and hopefully we’ll be back up the front there.

“There’s a lot more positives than negatives, but a lot of learning. A massive thanks to CHE, my dad and Rightway Insurance Services.”