Photo: Hannes van AsseldonkBob McMurray writes from the Toyota Racing Series....
Sunday 29th January 2012, Taupo
Windy, bright but cloudy, possible, but unlikely showers.
That’s the deal for today apparently.
Last night ex TRS competitor Alistair Wootten was racing his midget at the Bay Park Speedway track and after a couple of very good drives in the heats he had a huge accident in the feature race.
I hear the car was extremely second hand and the impact in the crash even cracked Ali’s new carbon fibre helmet.
He was taken to hospital suffering from concussion and for observation but was released later in the night and is now recovering at home.
All of us in the TRS wish him a good and speedy recovery.
Overnight in the media, especially the New Zealand Herald, the TRS had some very good exposure with articles by Jacqui Madelin and especially Eric Thompson who talks with some of the high profile members of the TRS paddock family.
Here at Taupo we have a number of other classes running at the event.
Not the normal Tier 1 classes you understand and one of the classes running is the motorcycle sidecars.
They are bloody mad!
No other word for it. Not much would persuade me to ever hang on to the side of one of those things. The do look fun but from the outside looking in not on the thing looking out.
Race 3 of the weekend approaches and one of the teams (no names here) will be keeping a closer eye on one of their drivers today.
In the words of Team leader Stephen Giles (ooops...it leaked out!) they ‘lost contact’ of one of their drivers just before the start of race 1 and he nearly missed the pit lane open time.
He was in the loo and lost track of time himself.
As I flagged yesterday, race 2 grid is now the finishing order of race 1 with the top six cars starting in reverse finishing order.
Problems at the start for Melvin Moh whose car refused to start and after the crew trying slave battery and bump starting he was unable to get out of the pit lane and didn’t get to join the race at all.
Dmitry Suranovich had a problem with a loose gear lever and came into the pits after the warm up lap to have that fixed and he started from the pit lane.
Victor Sendin was given the black and orange flag after a few laps so that he had to come in to the pits to have his broken front wing attended to and there, apart from a few, minor, offs from Lucas Auer, Sheban Siddiqi having a throttle problem and pulling off track and Felix Serralles parking his car due to the electronics going into ‘safe’ mode after the oil pressure dropped, is the sum total of the real problems.
But, the race amongst all the rest of them and the battles going on all the way down the field were mesmerising.
At the front the three way battle between eventual race winner Nick Cassidy, second placed Damon Leitch and third placed Raffaele Marciello was close and exciting with Marciello getting away to a great start when Cassidy bogged down on the line.
Expecting a battle for overtaking at the end of the straight the team had set Marciello’s car up with minimal down force so that he could be very quick on the straights, so when he got away in the lead and Cassidy and then Leitch caught up with him with their higher down force levels they swept past him under braking and he had no answers to give them.
A good race from all three of them though.
Race 3 for the ‘Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy’ didn’t turn out to be the overtaking fest that we all expected. Lots of overtaking and close battles all the way down the field but once van Asseldonk had muscled pole sitter Josh Hill out of the way through turns 1.2 and 3, he was never headed and although Hill came back at him and was also harried himself by Jordan King, that was the finishing order.
Hannes van Asseldonk took the Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy (although he will never get out of the country with the actual trophy which is actually a large plaque won by Denny in his F1 days) and with it the Tissot watch presented by Peter Buckleigh.
The round win was taken by the improving Jordan King with van Asseldonk second and Nick Cassidy third.
After all that Cassidy still leads the series championship standings with 546 points and Damon Leitch after a frankly disappointing weekend is still second with 517 points.
The kiwis will have to watch out though because the Hampton Downs circuit is next up and the track configuration may well suit the European drivers.
Josh Hill is only 93 points behind Leitch and van Asseldonk is just 1 point further back again with a raft of visiting drivers just a little further back again.
With 75 points for a win those gaps at the top can close rapidly.
So, a good weekend, or should I say ANOTHER good weekend of racing when the weather was not the ugly sister for once but a benign friend.
More from Hampton Downs later in the week.
Bob
See also
- Bob's Blog: Great weather, great racing! (Saturday)
- Bob's Blog: Taupo testing (Thurs/Fri)
