Locals join traffic jam in popular series

A strong contingent of Whangarei drivers are involved in keeping the Castrol BMW Race Driver Series going from strength to strength.
Craig Suester is one of four Whangarei drivers who compete regularly in the series and he said they had picked a winner that just keeps growing every season.
"We're the fastest growing motorsport class in New Zealand history - quite possibly in world history - and there is more than one reason why it's so popular," Suester said.
Chief among them was the low cost of a driver getting established in the competition that had moved from a fledgling class just four years ago, into a two-grid monster, with more than 65 cars entering Sunday's race day at Hampton Downs.
"You can get into a built car for under $20,000 and go racing, it might cost you a bit more to be really competitive but that's pretty good when you look at the costs involved in other classes," he said.
The series is a controlled class - meaning the car races as it came out of the factory - with tyres, suspension and manifolds all factory standard. There are some parts that aren't stipulated by the rulebook - like the exhaust system - but there is little gain to be made. The car must be able to be warranted and registered and driven on the road.
"The idea is that you can drive this racecar to the track, race all weekend and then drive home - which some drivers do," he said.
The cars range in age from 1986 models to 1989. There are two models involved, the 320, which is a six cylinder 2 litre or the 318, which is the 4-cylinder 1800cc car. The cars are then levelled out in their relative performance by weight, with the smaller car giving away about 100kg.
"The class is supposed to be as even as it can be but that means nothing in motor racing - you hear a V8 Supercar driver being interviewed after a race and saying his car wasn't as good as last week and now I know what he means because I just experienced it," Suester said.
"I had a great weekend a month ago at the last meeting at Manfeild but I had a frustrating time of it this weekend - my car just wouldn't corner ... and I got snotted in my driver's door yesterday and a couple of bumps in the rear end, so the car's in the panelbeaters as we speak, but that's motor racing," he said.
Bruce Miller, Harvey Gray and Keith Mitchell are the other Whangarei drivers involved and Suester said the social aspect of the series is another reason it is so popular. The series attracts drivers from all walks of life and more women compete in the series than in any other similar class of racing series in New Zealand.
Starting positions are determined by practise times, with the two grids separated with odd numbers going into one grid and even numbers for the other. The first race sees the fastest driver on pole position but the same driver starts the second race in last on a reverse grid start.
The final race sees the drivers with the most points from the first two races combined on one grid, with the second grid featuring the meeting's slower drivers.
"The beauty of the racing is that it is reasonably close and at times pretty torrid - especially on the reverse grid. There were four cars abreast around the hairpin in one of the races I was in yesterday," he said.
The weekend's meeting at Hampton Downs was the third of the summer series with four more race meetings to be held in the new year.
The meeting at Hampton Downs is a tier 1 event - meaning a feather in the cap of the BMW Race Series - because they have been invited to race alongside the big guns of motor racing in New Zealand.