Clara Bond stunned her male colleagues by qualifying for the first round of the Firestone South Island Super Six Saloons Series at Ruapuna’s Powerbuilt Tools International Raceway last weekend.
In perfect conditions Bond powered her distinctive purple Commodore around the circuit nearly 9/10's of a second faster than the next qualifier, Peter Hughes. Less than a second covered positions 2 through 8, showing just how dominant Bond's performance was.
Extremely wet conditions greeted the field for the first race of the season. Hughes led the field into Flexoplast for the first time with Bond settled into second and Blomquist on third. Coming out of the hairpin on lap three Blomquist slipped underneath Bond to take second while Todd Sutherland went straight ahead into the tyres at the hairpin, retiring with the front bumper missing. Thompson then overtook Bond on the fourth lap to take third while Hughes eased out to a small lead over Blomquist and held on to take a well deserved win ahead of Blomquist with Thompson third and Bond fourth.
In race two Bond made a smart start from position seven to snatch the lead at the first turn and then set about building up a gap on the field. Hughes, the race one winner, slipped into 3rd at the final turn of the first lap.then moved into 2nd and was catching Bond who in the end drove a fine race to take the win ahead of Hughes.
In the final race of the round Hughes had pole with Bond alongside. Thompson lined up 3rd on the grid and had Blomquist beside him. The front four all made good starts and headed into the first turn together, with Hughes emerging in front of Thompson, Blomquist and Bond. Hughes continued to slowly chip out a small lead as Blomquist was forced to defend heavily from the forceful Thompson. On the third lap Bond drove around the outside of Dixon at the end of the main straight to regain her 4th position. The field all maintained station over the next couple of laps. Behind Hughes the next four cars could have been covered with a large handkerchief. They were climbing all over each other at every opportunity. Hughes ran out the race winner with the biggest margin of the three races, Blomquist then leading home Thompson, Bond and Dixon.
With two race wins and a second Hughes was a deserved winner of this opening round to the season with 121 points. Bond also deserved her fine second overall on 108 points, and just one point further back was Blomquist. Gregory was awarded the Drive of the Day trophy with a stunning drive in race one, which included the fastest lap of the day by more than a second!
Round two is at Timaru at the end of October and should see additional cars on the grid, including the new Commodore of Lawrence Anthony, whose previous car had been destroyed at the final race meeting of last season.
