We headed to Palmerston North for our second week running for the first round of our travelling series the Oval Superstars Tour. Last week we used the first round as a bit of a shakedown for our newly refreshed engine in the #1 car and it performed well, we top qualified and won the shortened feature on a rough and bumpy Palmy track.
This week the surface was much different however, a dryer and dustier surface which made passing in the heats much more challenging. We drew grid 6 for the opener and had a good run through the opening corner, going to the top and clearing the row in front of us. We then got one more spot before the groove moved to the bottom and we held station for third.
The second heat was a similar dry surface but we tuned the car to be much better and made good progress forwards. In the initial race start we got tangled in a snarl up in the first corner that resulted in us spinning across the infield but no harm was done and we re-joined the race for the restart in our original grid. On the second start we worked our way up the middle and with a bunch more drive forward on the slick track just picked them off one by one. We jumped up from grid 13 to fifth which would put us on top of the qualification order.
We drew marble one to not invert any grids and rolled off inside pole for the feature. We didn’t get quite the run we needed off the start and fell to second on the first corner. However our car was running well and as the laps wound down we started to make some ground on the leader and got to the stage to try and make a move. However the next lap we began developing a misfire at the end of the straight which killed our momentum around the top groove. With this happening and pressure from behind we had no choice but to hold station on the bottom and defend second.
It was a good start to our series with a good points haul from the heats combined with a strong feature finish putting us up the pointy end of the ladder. The next round of the OST will be at Huntly in January, however we will be competing for the Taranaki Champs at Stratford next weekend the 16th of December. Hopefully we can fix the misfire and be back on the pace in two weeks for our first run there this season.
