POWERBOATING: Shores, Carson do it again

Carpet Court 100 racer DMZ Global sweeps off the Hardinge Road stretch, tracked by a TV crew capturing the race for a Sky Sport motorsport programme. The Wellington-based boat, driven by Wayne Gardiner, who was co-driver when it won the race three years ago, was fifth this time. The race was won by national champions Richard Shores and Wayne Carson in Placemakers. PICTURE: WARREN BUCKLAND
Aucklanders Richard Shores and Wayne Carson took another step toward a record fifth national offshore powerboat drivers' championship by winning Napier's Carpet Court 100 on Saturday.
Racing the 32ft catamaran Placemakers, they finished with a 50-second margin over second-placed Jesse James, raced by brothers Grant and Wayne Valder, also of Auckland.
But the champions, making it four-from-four at half-way through this year's series, didn't have it all their own way, figuring in a close battle with Jesse James and former four-time's champion Peter Turner's Sleepyhead.
Racing at times almost side by side, the three each had periods in front in the first half of the 12-lap race on a course which started off Westshore and ran anti-clockwise parallel to the shore past Hardinge Road, before clipping north and then heading back towards Westshore and again heading north to a turn near the Beacons and returning south along the Westshore coast.
The deadlock, the closest racing in the history of the race since it was revived in 1989, was broken only after Sleepyhead went up on a wave off northern Westshore and damaged its trimming-gear hitting the water again.
It forced Turner and co-driver Craig Archer to ease off, and slowly drop off the pace to the point of being lapped by both Placemakers and Jesse James with two laps to go.
Placemakers was never headed after the seventh lap and steadily widened the margin in conditions which, according to Carson, were perfect, despite the huge swells less than two days earlier which had raised the possibility of the race being called off.
Wellington driver Grant Smith, who won the race in DMZ Global in 2002, was third in Sytec, the only other boat to complete the 12 laps, and rounding-off a repeat of the top placings of the Wellington Harbour race of a fortnight earlier.
The race was notable for the survival of all 17 boats - nine in the 100-miler and the others in the shorter 60 and 35 mile classes. But it was also notable for the number of boats which missed the marks, with small boats at one stage running head-on at the big-bangers.
But even Carson said it was difficult, with the buoys disappearing behind the waves.
"You really did have to line them up from a long way out," he said, after the team repeated the win it scored in the race last year.
Hawke's Bay driver Bill Thomson had a successful day in the battle of the monohulls, as his boat Total Oils, the 1993 champion boat, took National Sports class honours over Thames combatant Greg Crawford in Chindit, the indestructible veteran of offshore racing which first competed in 1978 and which was overall champion three years later.
Carson's brother, Napier panelbeater Tony Carson, the 1993 and 1999 champion, was a late-starter, taking the wheel in the Auckland-based 60-mile race and Sports C class entry Broomstick.
The drive was offered only on Friday night, when regular driver Joanne Cox decided she wanted someone more experienced to show her how to handle the heavier seas.