Grant Aitken was always confident that the NZNEW Focus RS would perform well at Manfield Park, and sure enough, it was quick right from the start, running in the first few places during practice.
Qualifying on the Saturday morning saw Grant come up trumps with the cars first ever pole position.
“It was very rewarding, having finally overcome some braking issues over the last few meetings, to have the RS finally perform as it should”, said Grant.
The NZNEW Focus RS was at its best on the faster flowing Manfield circuit. “The track is particularly well suited to the front wheel drive Focus, with the faster corners not giving the four wheel drive cars the advantage they are used to on the tighter tracks”.
The first race saw Grant swamped by the four wheel drive Evos, Audi and Subaru off the line, however Aitken stuck to his game plan, and ran his own race using his favoured racing lines to attack the 4WDs. By the 4th lap Aitken was running second to Logan Childs in the very quick Evo 9RS, but on the 5th lap disaster struck when the Turbo on the Focus unexpectedly expired.
“The power drop was dramatic, but having a clear understanding of what the problem was, I continued to circulate to gather 20 points from 16th place”. “Only after the last race of the season will I know if those points were important”, Grant said.
This problem resulted in a frantic effort to transport a new Focus RS from Auckland to Palmerston North (it arrived at 4.30am), remove the damaged turbo from the Race Focus, and fit the new turbo just in time to arrive at the circuit 15 minutes before the first Sunday morning race.
“The effort put in by Karly and Dave Taylor of Motorsport Services, Gareth at Courtesy Ford, and Nathan Graham who spannered the car, was nothing short of fantastic, and greatly appreciated”.
The team was then rewarded with a second place overall in the first Sunday race on the program.
An extremely long day until the last race of the day at 5.40pm, saw the 17 cars finally line up for the reverse grid race. Having still held the fastest lap time for the weekend, Aitken was very last car on the reverse grid.
“At the start, everyone was just gone! Then as I finally caught the remaining cars, they resembled a moving block travelling round the track, sometimes four wide, so I resolved to even drop back a little, and get a slingshot out of the hairpin”.
“It worked, and I nailed three or four straight out of the hairpin”.
“Then Rongen spun the Evo X, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and drove round him to pass most of the field. Eventually I hauled in all but Childs, and finished 2nd.”
All in all a weekend of lows and highs, but nevertheless the team are happy to have overcome the component failure, and finish with a result which already means the Ford Focus RS has won the Class C Production class, and is still running 2nd overall in the championship.
The series moves on to Taupo Motorsport Park for the next round on 11th, 12th, and 13th March.
