Bob McMurray writes from the Toyota Racing Series, NZ Grand Prix weekend.....
Manfeild, Sat 11th February 2012
It’s a bit cool to be honest.
Rain threatening and it has rained overnight so fingers crossed the promised ‘getting better’ will actually come true.
In early this morning to join Barrie Thomlinson, Sam MacNeil and the drivers Michela Cerruti, Jordan King and Nick Cassidy on the Newstalk ZB morning sports show with Russel.
Barrie, Sam and me didn’t actually get on the radio show as the time didn’t permit but the drivers were great. It constantly surprises me, and pleases me, to hear our young sportsmen and women being so lucid, erudite and natural when faced with a camera or radio microphone. It does our sport no harm at all to hear and see that they are all intelligent sportspeople with views and opinions that they can express to others without sounding as if they have just come out of nappies. Confident young people.
While all this was going on the Giles team were all lined up in the pit lane with cars, mechanics, engineers and drivers for the annual team photo with resident TRS photographer Bruce Jenkins calling (and taking) the shots.
A bit of a surprise in the TRS hospitality unit as well with two goldfish in bowls on each of the tables, All nicely fed with clean water and looking very happy.
Although I am not entirely sure how to tell if a goldfish is happy or not to be honest.
TRS driver Jordan King had another interested person in the little group watching the radio show as his father, Justin, had just arrived from England. Here for the weekend only!!!
Qualifying session 1 got underway and finished with no incidents, no red flags no nothing..except Lucas Auer having a small spin and getting back on track almost immediately.
Evans, Cassidy, van Asseldonk, Bonifacio, Serralles, Auer, Hill made up the top seven with the top eleven drivers in the same 1 second bracket.
Q2 and Q3 went by in a bit of a blur really with Jordan King causing a red flag in the second session by ending up in the tyre barrier at the last turn, damaging only the nose of the car and then Tanart Sathienthirakul causing one by having a fairly large shunt and wrecking the left rear corner and rear wing in Q3.
So the grid for race one ended up with, in order, Evans, Cassidy, van Asseldonk, Bonifacio, Leitch, Auer, Hill, Serralles, Berthon, Marciello, Lester and Vlok on the first six rows.
(Kenny Smith was one car off the back of the grid in 19th place).
A bit of frantic work on the car of Tanart with the entire left rear corner having to be replaced including the upright, drive shaft, suspension and a good deal of bodywork as well as the rear wing, but as usual the car was ready for race 1 and looked in showroom condition.
The race was a bit processional to be honest with Mitch Evans getting away to a great start then Hannes van Asseldonk getting past Nick Cassidy with a beautiful overtaking move around the outside of ‘the splash’ corner on turn 1 and that is how it stayed for the rest of the race.
Bernie Higgins presented the ‘Dan Higgins Trophy’ to Mitch who also collected the Tissot Watch from Peter Buckleigh and the voucher from Bernie Higgins. All the drivers down to 10th position also got a Higgins voucher.
I think maybe Nick had the championship on his mind as he never really made any serious moves on Hannes.
So, on to tomorrow and the ‘BIG race’.
More later........
Bob
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