After yet another rain off two weeks back we were lucky to have this weekend slotted in to give us the second round of our travelling series as well as the local king of the mountain championship
With it being one week before our national champs we were keen for a quiet night to get some points towards the tour
Rain threatened as we went out for heat one. The format was three heats with front middle and back grids randomly drawn for the local championship then fastest to the back for the 15 lap OST feature
Our first race was off the back. We were lucky to pick off four or more cars in the opening laps with the track very narrow around the bottom. Then I made the rookie error of pulling all my tear offs leaving only visor for the rest of the race. We battled through with limited vision losing two spots late for a mid pack finish
For race two we moved up the grid to sixth. Our car was much racier on the slick track but we still had work to do. We made a few spots to jump to third but had nothing to chase down the leaders and stayed third throughout.
Race three and the final for king of the mountain had us on grid three. We followed the pole sitter through on the first corner but couldn’t make any further inroads to run second.
This gave us accumulated points to finish second equal however we lost the tie break based off of fastest laps on the night.
We had a quick turnaround for the feature which put us deep in the pack again fastest to the back. But as soon as we kicked off it was clear we had finally sorted the setup and had a racy piece. We ripped through the field on the high side, moving through to sixth before a tangle in front of us elevated us to fourth.
After the restart we had to put the hammer down and blew past two of the drivers in the opening corner just leaving the leader to go.
It took maybe four laps of work trying inside and out but we finally wore him down to get side by side into turn one on the final lap and we could finish the pass on the outside.
We rolled through three and four untouched to take our first OST feature in two years. The result puts us up the pointy end of the points with most of the season remaining.
Our next race will be the nz title at Palmerston North this weekend coming. It was great to finish up a trying night like this with no damage and a good result to boot going into the biggest race of the year.
