Pitstop: Baird heading home for Porsche GT-3

Craig Baird will return home to defend his Porsche GT-3 title over the New Zealand summer season.

Baird, who lives on the Gold Coast and is a regular in the Australian V8 Supercar championship, won the title last season in a car prepared by International Motorsport.

He had several stirring battles with Matt Halliday, who also drove for International Motorsport.

This season Halliday has commitments with the A1 Grand Prix team and he will share the Porsche drive with Kiwis Jim Richards and Fabian Coulthard, the frontrunners in the Australian Carrera Cup Porsche series.

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Sumner stars

Rotorua driver Dean Sumner showed the potency of modern Group N rally cars when he won last weekend's Tokoroa Rally in his Mitsubishi Evo 8. He believes this may be the first time a Group N Evo 8 has won a multiple-stage gravel rally in this country.

Up against cars of all types, classes and power, the restricted Group N car outclassed all the opposition and led from the start to the finish on the open forestry roads.

A complete rebuild is in store for the Mitsubishi over the off-season ready to contest the national championship next year.

Meanwhile, further down the North Island, another national championship contender, Sam Murray, has been racing to finish rebuilding the engine of his Subaru in time for the Daybreaker Rally in the Manawatu, for which he is the top seed.

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Cunningham third

Young New Zealand racing driver Wade Cunningham has pushed his lead in the Infiniti Pro series in the United States back out to 33 points with a third-place finish in the 13th round at Watkins Glen. There is one round to go.

The 21-year-old former world karting champion started the race from pole position but was passed on the first lap by series veteran Jeff Simmons and 17-year-old Marco Andretti, the grandson of racing legend Mario.

Simmons won the 29-lap race despite an off-course excursion on the second lap which forced him to work his way back through the field to the front.

Andretti led until the second last lap when Simmons, who had regained second place by lap 15, got a better run past a lapped car. Cunningham finished 0.2374s behind Andretti and 0.8092s behind Simmons.

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Rock on the road

Greg Murphy and Marcos Ambrose are definitely not doing the vocals, but an album of rock hits in the name of the Australian V8 Supercar championship series is climbing up the charts across the Tasman.

A Full Tank of Rock has reached platinum sales levels with 70,000 speeding off the shelves by the end of last week.

Designed as a singalong collection for drivers, it features classic rock from bands such as the Hoodoo Gurus, Australian Crawl, Meatloaf, Hunters and Collectors and Cheap Trick.