News

Kody Garland has put his brand-new Triple Eight Engineering built Aussie Racing Cars chassis through its paces with a scintillating weekend at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Held as part of the opening Trophy Tour round at SMP, Garland navigated challenging and changeable conditions across the first round of the 2025 Battery World Aussie Racing Cars Series presented by TFH.

Garland took delivery of his new Motor Traders’ Association of New South Wales Mustang prior to the opening round of the season, with a robust test day setting up a resoundingly successful weekend.

A wet opening practice paved the way for a torrential downpour ending the weekend on Sunday, while drier conditions in Practice 2 allowed Garland and his team to hone in on a setup for Saturday’s dry running. Garland excelled in both conditions, finishing the day with the third fastest time in both sessions.

Saturday morning’s qualifying led Garland to deliver a hammer blow in his Mustang, taking out pole position with what is unofficially the fastest lap time for the category at SMP. The first two races of the weekend played out in similar fashion, with Garland engaged in a battle for the race lead across the two 25-minute races.

After finishing second in Race 1, Garland held on in a controlling drive to claim the victory in the second event of the round on Saturday afternoon, after a penalty was handed out for a move, which sent Garland off the road while in the lead on the final lap.

Sunday’s running was punctuated by fluctuating conditions as Race 3 was classed as a non-event following a start-line incident.

With inclement conditions coming and going in the lead up to Race 4, Garland hit the track with a car set-up to handle whatever conditions thrown his way. The race was held amid a deluge of rain, favouring those to have gambled on a full wet set-up, but Garland kept his car on the road despite extremely tough track conditions to pick up another second place finish.

With three podiums from as many races, Garland finished second for the round and just one-point off the round win to sit second in the series standings heading to Symmons Plains in May.

‍Quotes:
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Kody Garland
#41 Motor Traders’ Association of New South Wales Ford Mustang

‍“It was a pretty tough day on Sunday, the conditions were ever changing, but no matter what was thrown at us we had plenty of pace in our MTA Mustang," said Garland.

“The biggest thing for me is that on the new tyres our new chassis feels like it’s on rails, and allowed us to find a big gain going in to qualifying. Ultimately the Triple Eight chassis just gives us that extra one percent we need in a sport of such fine margins.“It’s a very positive start to our year to show the speed we did across the entire weekend, with how much the track changed, it gives us lots of confidence moving forward. We finished every race in the top two and you can’t ask for much more than that.”