NZ
Festival of Motor Racing, celebrating Bruce McLaren
29-31
January 2010 - Pukekohe Raceway
Sunday
Formula Junior & Formula 5000 action
Sunday
31 January 2010 commenced with a delayed start of the meeting by one-hour
due to repairs being carried out on the track from the Saturday deluge
of rain. The rain that swept across the track on Saturday afternoon
left cars wet, 2-inches of water across the entire pit lane &
through the town of Pukekohe minor flood conditions.
The
race track itself suffered damage with the down pour lifting a small
section of the ashphalt, which prior to racing commencing had to be
re-sealed and deemed safe for competition to start.
Formula
Junior & invited F3 Sunday feature race
First
event for the day was for Formula Junior and invited Formula 3 cars.An
overcast morning presented itself with minor drops of water as the
34 car strong grid waited patiently for the green light. This was
given near 10am when the track was then wet again and some drivers
chose discretion and retired from the race.
On
to the final races for the weekend, and indeed the festival the Formula
Juniors hit the track in much better conditions. On the dummy grid
Peter Strauss had trouble re-starting the Brabham after warming it
up moments before and had to be push started by his crew once the
entire grid had let the pits.
This
no doubt eventually played in Peter’s favour as he had his best
race of the weekend, finishing in third place behind the UK pair of
Robin Longdon and Sir John Chisholm. The starting positions for each
event were derived from the individual best lap time of each competitor
across the weekend. Bill Hemming qualified extremely well in his Elfin
Catalina out-pacing Kim Shearn by half a second to post a 1.13:8 on
Friday (a time, which he didn’t match over the weekend).
In
this battle of the Victorians Shearn won three from four races, but
Hemming managed to keep him at bay in the Sunday afternoon feature
race (see photo here) – they finished in sixth and seventh respectively.
Formula
5000 feature race
The
feature event for the weekend was held under differing conditions
as the cold, overcast day continued with fine conditions at the commencement
of the race, and then began to rain with a light shower toward the
latter part of the race.
Ken Smith again dominated proceedings,
including conquering challenges laid out by Ian Clements after the
re-start of racing from a 2-lap yellow flag period. His car owner
David Abbott put in his best performance for the weekend with a 4th
place finish. Aaron Lewis was again top placed Australian in seventh.
Paul Trevethan retired once the rain came out in his Elfin M6L and
Bill Hemming completed a weekend without lifting the engine cover
on either car in 17th place.
The Australian consignment
then commenced the pack up, including putting all 60 cars in containers.
Some of the containers are bound for Taupo for the weekend of 6-7
February where the Formula Juniors have a race. The Formula 5000s
will shortly commence their journey across the Tasman sea for the
upcoming Phillip Island Classic where more than 40 Formula 5000s will
take to the grid.
