KEY POINTS:
Defending champion Craig Baird heads to the penultimate GT3 round at Timaru with a healthy points lead - but the battle is far from over.
Gunning for the two-time Battery Town title holder are Toyota Racing Series graduate Daniel Gaunt who is second overall in the points standings, young gun Jono Lester who is third, and Baird's nemesis in the Carrera Cup Australia series last year, David Reynolds.
While Reynolds, who got the call to cross the Tasman when Matt Halliday returned to the United States after the Taupo round of the series in January, is no threat points-wise, the 23-year-old from Albury on the New South Wales/Victoria border proved immediately competitive on his Battery Town series debut at Manfeild last month.
He can be expected to push Baird - who he pipped at the post for the 2007 Carrera Cup Australia title last year - for the top spot in qualifying on Saturday morning and race wins thereafter.
It was at the Manfeild round where Daniel Gaunt, in his rookie year in a tin-tops after a career start in single-seaters, showed his hand, joining pole sitter Jono Lester on the front row of the grid after an impressive showing in qualifying then claiming two seconds and a third in the races.
Lester hasn't been as consistent as Gaunt but there's no doubting his speed, the 18-year-old having already won a race and the round at Taupo, and claimed that breakthrough pole at Manfeild.
Like Baird - who won the round - he will also be supremely race-fit, having made his trans-Tasman debut at the first round of the 2008 Carrera Cup Australia championship at Adelaide last weekend.
Like Baird however, Lester will have to keep one eye in the mirror as points-wise fellow young gun Anthony Pedersen and 2006/07 series runner-up Jody Vincent remain within striking distance.
With Australian Rodney Forbes, Triple X Motorsport team boss Shane McKillen and recent NZV8s convert Darryn Henderson, Vincent and Pedersen also provide much of the interest in the top 10, constantly swapping placing and trying to keep the best of the older 996 model GT3 Cup Cars behind them.
A dozen of the newer, more powerful and now sequential gearbox-equipped 997 models imported were snapped up for this season's series, though there has been proof shown at recent rounds that there's plenty of life left in the original model.
- NZ HERALD STAFF
