The momentum continued for Audi of New Zealand's Production Racing championship team at Timaru over the weekend with defending series champion Simon Sceats finishing second overall in the Audi Dealer Network/Mondiale-backed S3 Sportback.
After claiming their first race win of the 2010/11 series in the rain at Invercargill's Teretonga Park the weekend before, Sceats was confident of another strong showing at the South Canterbury track - and that is exactly what he delivered
On Saturday morning, Sceats set the third quickest lap time in qualifying before leap-frogging the slow starting Ford Focus RS of Grant Aitken at the start of the first race to claim a confidence-boosting second place behind fastest qualifier Logan Childs. Then in Sunday's first race, he grabbed an early lead, ending up second, before making it from the fifth row back up to fourth place in the reverse-grid final.
The result was a second visit to the podium in two weeks, with Sceats and the Audi S3 Sportback separating the Mitsubishi Evos driven by both round winner and championship points leader Grant Liston, and Logan Childs.
It wasn't all plain sailing, though: after a fender and wheel-bending start to the race on Sunday morning, members of the International Motorsport team that runs the Audi fought a battle against time to get the car back into race-ready condition.
Through no fault of his own, Sceats was involved in two incidents, the first when he was hit from behind and sent spinning off the track by Subaru driver, Kevin Varney, heading into the first corner. The second occurred when MINI driver, Richard Bagnall, bounced off the S3 and into the trackside barrier after swerving to avoid the MG of Tim Fox.
These resulted in panel damage to the right hand rear door and sill, and a buckled and broken right rear wheel. The delay caused by the retrieval of the Bagnall MINI allowed the Audi team enough time to pit not once but twice, first to replace the wheel and then again to quickly re-align it, after which the grid was re-formed and the race re-started.
"It wasn't pretty but it got the job done," said Sceats. "The wheel took a fairly heavy whack. When I went out on the new one the car was still crabbing so I came back and got the guys to wrench it back into line. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough to get us back out on the track in the time we had."
Having now been on the second step of the podium twice in a row, Sceats says the plan now is to go one better.
"We've won a race so the challenge obviously is to win a round. We got close today - if I had beaten Grant [Liston] in the last race, then we would have won the round outright - but we're not quite there yet. There's still time in the car and there's still some time in me. What we're looking for now is tenths of a second rather than full seconds, and if we just keep chipping away, improving the car each time we go out, we'll find them."
With the annual South Island 'tour' now complete for another season the battle for the New Zealand Production Racing championship returns north to Feilding's Manfeild circuit for the penultimate round in February and the final at the Taupo Motorsport Park in March.
Race 1
1 Logan Childs
2 Simon Sceats
3 Grant Liston
4 Grant Aitken
5 Kevin Varney
6 Michael Ninkranz
7 Ben Dallas
8 Craig Innes
9 Dan Bagnall
10 Richard Bagnall
11 Matthew Gibson
12 Tim Fox
Not classified (75% = 7 Laps)
DNF Gavin Yortt
Race 2
1 Grant Liston
2 Simon Sceats
3 Grant Aitken
4 Michael Ninkranz
5 Craig Innes
6 Ben Dallas
7 Matthew Gibson
8 Dan Bagnall
9 Gavin Yortt
10 Kevin Varney
11 Logan Childs
12 Tim Fox
Not classified (75% = 7 Laps)
DNS Richard Bagnall
Race 3
1 Logan Childs
2 Kevin Varney
3 Grant Liston
4 Simon Sceats
5 Grant Aitken
6 Craig Innes
7 Matthew Gibson
8 Gavin Yortt
9 Dan Bagnall
10 Tim Fox
11 Ben Dallas
Not classified (75% = 9 Laps)
DNF Michael Ninkranz
