North Shore’s Grant Liston has taken his second round win in as many starts after topping the Production Racing Series over the weekend, opening up a substantial points lead in the championship.
Liston, who had never before raced at Ruapuna, came up against strong opposition from the likes of John Rongen in his late model Evo 10 and current track lap record holder Logan Childs.
In the Friday practice sessions, Liston was consistently third fastest although struggling to get his Avis Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 near the two cars in front of him, over a second a lap off the pace. However, saving his better tyres for Saturday’s qualifying session meant Liston slipped into second on the grid, 0.02 seconds ahead of Rongen.
Starting on the outside of the front row, Liston made a strong start and jumped into an early lead through turn one. After opening up a small gap, Liston’s lead was cut to nothing when the safety car was deployed on lap four. When the race restarted a lap later, Liston regained his small lead until the red flag came out for an incident on lap 6, meaning the race was temporarily halted.
With yet another restart to contend with, Liston’s lead came under threat again and was only saved by Childs having to defend a challenge from Rongen down the front straight. A lap later, a relieved Liston took the chequered flag.
Having set the third fastest lap time in race one, Liston sat third on the grid for race two and moved up to second after sitting on the back of pole-sitter Childs to get past Rongen up the inside at turn one. After an early challenge on Childs, Liston had to settle for second place.
The third and final race was a ten-lap reverse grid start, meaning Liston started 18th on the grid. With some wise advice from car-owner Grant Aitken, Liston stormed forward in the ultra-hot conditions and by the time he had negotiated turn one had made his way into fourth place. After a short battle with the Audi S3 of Simon Sceats, Liston took the lead before the end of lap one. Behind Liston, drama unfolded when second placed Rongen suffered a spectacular engine failure, bringing out the safety car which destroyed Liston’s six second lead. After one lap behind the safety car, drivers were again let loose despite a large amount of oil on the track left by Rongen’s engine blow-up.
Putting his rallying experience to good use, Liston struggled the least with the slick surface on the infield corners and this gave him the advantage he needed to take race win number two for the weekend and his second consecutive round win for the series.
With Childs not having contested the opening round and Rongen’s unfortunate race three DNF, Liston has opened up a commanding 101 point lead over the spectacular Ford Focus RS of Grant Aitken. Liston will look to increase his lead when the series resumes at Teretonga on January 14-16.
Liston would like to extend a special thanks to Cameron Taylor for crewing over the weekend as well as sponsor Avis North Shore.
