Vidau bemused by Adelaide struggles

Max Vidau has been left to rue a troublesome end to his maiden Dunlop Series campaign that saw the Super2 Rookie of the Year title slip through his fingers.

Having had a solid rookie season that included three podium finishes and round podiums at Townsville and Bathurst, Vidau entered the final round fourth in points, and an outside chance at the title 150 points behind Zach Bates.

More importantly for the Anderson Motorsport driver, he was 60 points clear of fellow first year driver Jarrod Hughes, as the fight for the rookie crown also went down to the wire, with Jobe Stewart also in the mix.

However, the final round was a tough one for Vidau, who could only manage qualifying efforts of 17th and 10th in Boost Mobile Qualifying, before a disastrous Race 11 on Saturday.

Vidau became an innocent victim in a tangle between Matt Chahda and Mason Kelly, diving into the tyre wall to avoid ploughing into Chahda's stricken Commodore.

Worse was to come a few laps later, when Vidau smacked the wall at Turn 8 to record his only DNF of the season, allowing Hughes to jump to a 60 point advantage with a race to spare.

A ninth-placed finish wasn't enough for Vidau to snatch the rookie honours back from the Image Racing driver, whose Erebus Academy stablemate Stewart also jumped Vidau to claim second in the rookie standings.

Reflecting on his season after the event, Vidau's frustrations at the way his Adelaide weekend panned out were evident.

“It’s disappointing not to come away with the rookie title, given we were in that spot for almost the whole year,” said Vidau. “We’re scratching our heads a little bit, because we’ve just picked up some bizarre handling problems across the season for which we can’t pinpoint a cause. It was pretty eye opening, comparing our lap in qualifying to the pole time and seeing how far off we were. “There were areas where it just wasn’t possible to achieve the same speed in our car, and yet we were still understeering towards the fence. Honestly it felt like we brought a knife to a gunfight."

Despite the tough weekend at his home event, Vidau has still taken plenty of positives out of rookie season with Anderson Motorsport, where he replaced three-time Super2 runner-up Zak Best in the previous off-season.

Vidau's own future at Anderson Motorsport is uncertain in this off-season, despite the team expanding to two Ford Mustangs next year with teenager Ryan Tomsett already signed. “I’m still proud of what we achieved this season, we showed when we did have the car what we could do and picked up some podiums at some of the toughest rounds on the calendar," he said.

"For Perth I’d never been there before, and we almost won it. Townsville and Bathurst were big adjustments from racing a Porsche there to now a Supercar, and to pick up podiums at those two rounds was really cool. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in the off season to try and put 2025 together, but this is what I want to do and we’ll do anything to make it happen."