Theo and James Koudouris have been racing Porsches for many years and are two Australian Greeks right at the very competitive edge of sports car racing in this country.
Their two Porsche GT3 997 Cup cars were competing in the Australian GT Championship “three race” Australian Formula One meeting.
Up against sports cars such as Ferrari 430’s, Lamborghini Gallardo’s, Aston Martin DBRS9’s, Dodge Viper V10’s, Mosler MT900’s, Lotus, BMW’s ,Corvettes and a gaggle of other Porsche 997’s, the brothers held their own.
They are often found in top ten positions of the starting grid in a class with fields of 40 plus exotic sports cars.
In the support paddock enclosure, and right next to Eric Bana’s Porsche pit, were the two Kondouris Porsches.
They were changing into their driving suits in preparation for racing when I caught up with them in their huge transporter.
I asked Theo Koudouris to give me a back ground on their passion for motor sport.
“We were both born, bred and went to school in Canberra but we have always been car nuts and as we got older, we took our opportunity and love for cars a little further, and ended up here.”
“We started in an old 1973 Porsche 2. 4 litre with track days at Gouldburn and we went from there, we feel comfortable in Porsches and they last -They don’t break, but just wear out. After a brief stint in a borrowed Ferrari, we have been driving GT Cup cars for seven years now. We started off in the old Porsche Cup, then we moved onto the Nations Cup which was the old version of the current GT Cup series, then Carrera Cup, and back here in the GT3 series again.”
James explained that their Porsches with the eye-catching paintwork enjoyed healthy sponsorship through their family supermarket chain.
“Theo works on the Supabarn Supermarket side of the business and I work on property development which takes up most of our daily lives. We race when we can and we like to be competitive and race in every round of the series. Our head mechanic Michael Newton, and his first cousin, who are both half Kytherian (by the way) do a great job preparing the cars for each race meeting.”
James continued to say that the Melbourne Grand Prix track was very quick and certainly helped the Ferrari’s and Lamborghinis because of their superior downforce, unlike the Adelaide Clipsal track with its stop-start type layout that suited their cars better.
I also asked the brothers, what their plans were for the future of the Supabarn racing team and if they were going to move ahead into a more prolific class of racing.
“The next obvious move is to get into V8 Supercars. However both James and I are too old as most of the drivers in that category today are in their early 20’s. We are quite happy to compete with our current Porsches in GT for a while longer,” replied Theo.
With Theo and James now fully suited up for the race in 30 minutes, we ran out of time for a longer chat.
I watched the eight lap GT Championship race on Saturday afternoon. The Koundouris brothers did well, leading most of the Porsche entries and finishing in sixth and eighth position against the formidable Aston Martins and Ferraris.