Caine Lobb's weekend at the third round of the Formula Ford Winter Series in Feilding was looking good after he claimed the second best qualifying time on Sunday morning. Unfortunately some stiff opposition from regular foe Russell Hartley and Lobb's team-mate John Whelan left him out in the cold for thefirst two races at Manfeild Autocourse, where he placed third in both. "It was really hard qualifying, the track was wet and starting to dry out in places but I managed to get second. "In the first race there were only two corners where it wasn't wet and although we had a mean dry set-up on the car, it wasn't much good in the wet and I struggled a bit. Then in the second race I came third again," said Lobb. That afternoon in the third and final race of the day Lobb had another setback when he ended up falling to fifth position. With conditions improving and the Hydraulink Ford finding some pace, Lobb made his way up through the pack into second. Seeing an opportunity to take the lead he dived at the slim chance but sadly the manoeuvre didn't come off. "The car came on in the last race and I managed to get the fastest lap by about half a second. I got up into second place and tried to pass at Splash (corner), hit a dirty part of the track, out-braked myself and went flying off," he said. "I came back onto the track but only after going through a huge puddle." Luckily for the Northland driver there was no damage to his car and he was able to recover and return to the track, crossing the finish in fifth place. Hartley appears to be Lobb's biggest threat for the Winter Series Championship title and someone to watch out for in the upcoming nationals. Hartley now sits on 554 points (to Lobb's 603) after closing the gap significantly at the weekend before the final round next month. This throws the championship wide open before that round _ with 75 points awarded for a race win _ and certainly will make for an exciting finale at Manfeild Autocourse on September 16.
