We’re just under 5 weeks away from the 2024 running of the Pitcher Partners #Sydney300.
As the countdown continues, here’s a look at how our own Zak Caban saw the 2023 edition, when asked to supply a race report for another publication.

RETROSPECTIVE: 2023 Race Report – BYP Racing Victorious in Sydney.
It was another record field, and another instant classic, for the signature event of the Motor Racing Australia series calendar, the Pitcher Partners Sydney 300.

This year, there were 59 entries lodged, but withdrawals prior to the event, and mechanical attrition throughout, saw 48 cars greet the starter, which still surpassed the previous record of 43, set only last year, in what was the biggest field for a AASA sanctioned 300km enduro since 2015.

The fourth running of the event, which was first staged in 2019, was contested under lights on July 15, and after a frantic and frenetic 77 laps of the Sydney Motorsport Park Gardner Circuit, it was the Division A BYP Racing Honda Integra of Benny Tran taking outright honours.

In traditional fashion, the race had no shortage of attrition or drama, including early troubles for the eventual race winner, with an unscheduled pit-stop to replace a delaminated tyre.

A lengthy safety car period, to retrieve the stranded Peugeot of Parry Anastakis and Angus Lithgow, which came to a stop on the inside of turns 10 and 11, enabled Tran to strategically work his way back into the contest.

Tran was able to complete BOTH of his compulsory five-minute pit stops during that Safety Car period, stopping first at the end of Lap 28, then again at the end of Lap 30. Other entries in the field adopted similar tactics, but not all teams were so lucky, as the strategy of many, or their critical lap, was dictated by fuel tank capacity, and fuel burn numbers – another great element of variety that we often associate with these contests.

The pairing at the centre of controversy in 2022 was also in the thick of the action in 2023. During a compulsory pit-stop, there was a fuel spill in the pit bay of the BMW M4 of Adam Burgess and Anthony Soole, and such incidents are heavily punished in these races, but they got away with it, as the fuel spill occurred AFTER they had completed refuelling the car, not during the process.

The second Safety Car intervention, for the parked car of Jett Herring, bought about another flurry of pit activity, with multiple cars ticking the compulsory pit-stop box, but the Soole/Burgess entry wasn’t one of them.

Instead, they played the long game, hoping for another safety car deployment closer to the end of the pit-stop window (Lap 70), but their wish wasn’t granted, which ruled them out of outright contention for the second year in a row, as Benny Tran became the eighth different race leader of the night, on Lap 69. The BMW entry rejoined the race in third outright, second in Division B, and stayed there, to finish second in division for the second year in a row, but third outright – one place better than they did in 2022.

Tran would go on to claim outright (and Division A) honours, by a Sydney 300 record winning margin, of 50.6067 seconds, ahead of the success story of the 2023 race, the Volkswagen Golf of Cem Yucel and Iain Salteri.

The #222 entry claimed Division B honours, but more than that, the Yucel/Salteri pairing made history for Volkswagen, as it was the first time in ‘300’ history that the manufacturer had scored an outright podium finish… the sixteenth manufacturer to do so.

Behind them, late drama for two entries. Firstly, Charlie Viola, from Pitcher Partners – the naming rights sponsor, who suffered a suspension failure on the final lap, which saw him nursing the car to the finish line, but in the process of doing so, he lost the lead in Division C, to the Mazda MX5 pairing of Brad and Will Harris.

Earlier, two-time outright winner Todd Herring struck mechanical trouble during the second-half of the race, which inevitably ended his run for outright honours. The three-time Division A winner still came home third in class, albeit 16 laps down, and 33rd outright.

Tran’s victory saw him join Terry Denovan (2020 Wakefield 300) and Todd Herring (2021 Wakefield & Sydney 300’s) as the only other solo drivers to win a 300 outright, since the regulations were changed in 2019, permitting drivers to contest these races without a co-driver, is they so wish.

The win marked consecutive 300 triumphs for Benny Tran, his team, and Honda as a manufacturer, after Tran and Ben Connell also won November’s Winton 300.

A post-race penalty for the polesitters, Adrian Wilson, Lloyd Godfrey and Josh Buchan docked FIVE laps, which saw them relegated from fourth to 23rd outright, but with the mechanical problems for Todd Herring, they were still classified as second home in Division A.
It was the second time in three years that Buchan and Godfrey had been slapped with a five-lap penalty.

In the other class battles, a solid, quiet achiever run for Jaxon and Matthew Fraser saw them take Division D honours. The #88 came home eleventh outright, after starting 35th on the grid, equalling the best result for a Division D entry in Sydney 300 history, set back in 2019, by the Honda Integra of Charlie Viola and Ben Hanrahan. It was also back-to-back division podium finishes for the pair, who finished third in Division D here last year.

In Division E, back-to-back Division wins for Michael Ricketts and Josh Haynes, who won Division D in 2022, but dropped down to Division E in 2023, as a result of the drier weather conditions we were greeted with on race day. It capped off quite the week for Haynes, who was a winner in the latest TA2 round at Morgan Park Raceway just six days prior.

The 2023 Pitcher Partners Sydney 300 doubled as the 20th ‘300’ to be held in NSW, since the concept debuted at Wakefield Park in November, 2008, and now the countdown is on for the 2024 edition.

2023 Pitcher Partners Sydney 300 | Outright Podium

Pos	#	Div	Drivers	Manufacturer	Grid	Laps	Time/Gap
1	81	A	Benny Tran	Honda	3rd	77	2:26:14.1931
2	222	B	Cem Yucel/Iain Salteri	Volkswagen	8th	77	+50.6067
3	4	B	Anthony Soole/Adam Burgess	BMW	6th	77	+1:18.6741

Division A

Pos	Outright	#	Drivers	Manufacturer	Grid	Laps
1	1st	81	Benny Tran	Honda	3rd	77
2	23rd	82	Adrian Wilson/Lloyd Godfrey/Josh Buchan	BMW	1st	71
3	33rd	77	Todd Herring	Mazda	2nd	61

Division B

Pos	Outright	#	Drivers	Manufacturer	Grid	Laps
1	2nd	222	Cem Yucel/Iain Salteri	Volkswagen	8th	77
2	3rd	4	Anthony Soole/Adam Burgess	BMW	6th	77
3	4th	818	Drew Hall/Matthew McLellan	Honda	11th	76

Division C

Pos	Outright	#	Drivers	Manufacturer	Grid	Laps
1	5th	74	Brad Harris/Will Harris	Mazda	28th	76
2	6th	7	Charlie Viola	Honda	17th	76
3	8th	33	Leigh Burges/Gerry Burges	Mitsubishi	22nd	75

Division D

Pos	Outright	#	Drivers	Manufacturer	Grid	Laps
1	11th	88	Matthew Fraser/Jaxon Fraser	Mazda	35th	74
2	15th	11	Jonathon Hovey	Nissan	38th	73
3	19th	86	Christoph Heiniger/Daniel Flanagan	Toyota	34th	72

Division E

Pos	Outright	#	Drivers	Manufacturer	Grid	Laps
1	22nd	41	Michael Ricketts/Josh Haynes	Nissan	43rd	71
2	24th	39	David Bailey/Matt Thewlis	BMW E36	45th	71
3	28th	61	Martin Lyall/David Grice	Mazda RX8	44th	69