KEY POINTS:
Sleeting rain and a greasy track could not prevent Christchurch driver Andy Knight from taking a perfect clean sweep of the first round of the 2008 Toyota Racing Series this week at Pukekohe.
Knight headed both qualifying sessions on Saturday, then won the first race on Saturday before returning to the track on the rainy Sunday to scoop up the second 16-lap race and the 20 lap NZ Motorcup event, which was shortened by two laps due to time delays and weather.
Knight is the latest in a distinguished line of New Zealand racers to add his name to the prestigious New Zealand MotorCup and now holds a 225 points tally for the 2008 Toyota Racing Series. He took all three wins from pole, with rising star Nic Jordan mounting strong challenges in each race.
"I had a great tussle with Nic on Saturday in the dry, and again in the wet in the second race, but it wasn't in the bag when we went out for the MotorCup, the rain made it really difficult."
Though the lack of grip meant it was often difficult to keep the car straight through the faster corners, Knight said his car had run perfectly throughout qualifying and all three races, and he was pleased to have made such a strong start to the series. He is aiming to build on his 24-point lead when the series arrives at Ruapuna in January for the Lady Wigram Trophy, the second round and first of the three-race International series within a series for the New Zealand Grand Prix cars.
Jordan, who had been a last-minute signing to the new Motorsport Solutions team to run alongside series rookie Michael Burdett, said he'd tried repeatedly to get past Knight in the feature, setting up passing moves at the end of the front straight lap after lap.
"I just wasn't quite able to edge past and that's not a place to try anything silly. The conditions were incredible, two or three times coming over the hill on to the front straight I was watching Andy get very sideways from about four feet behind him."
Jordan took three second places and is now second in the Championship on 201 points.
"It was great to challenge Andy for the lead throughout the weekend, and there's more speed to come as we get into a groove."
Palmerston North driver Sam MacNeill showed the benefits of consistency with solid drives to fourth and fifth in the 16 lap races and seventh in the longer event to take third in the championship points.
Just one point behind, and tipped by many to be worth watching in coming rounds, was Lower Hutt driver Ben Harford. He put in a faultless drive in the first race to finish third but broke his rear shock absorber mount in the second, recovering to take another third overall in the NZ MotorCup.
The qualifying and race lap records set by 2007 Series winner Daniel Gaunt were not broken.
The weekend marked a first for Aucklander Mitch Cunningham, who has returned fro the US to contest the series with the International Motorsport team and was making his first standing start in race conditions on the Saturday. He spun his car on the seventh lap while in third place, recovering to finish well down the order, then took a third in the second race. A strong qualifying aggregate saw him on the second row of the grid for the feature race but he was not able to hold on, finishing 11th.
Australian racer Nathan Antunes, fresh from a GP2 test in Europe, had a difficult weekend, struggling to get to grips with an unfamiliar car and the bumpy Pukekohe circuit. He crashed out of the first race, tearing a wheel off the car, finished ninth in the second race on Sunday and then crashed out of the feature race.
The sole female driver in the series, Christina Orr, struggled all weekend with suspension set-up issues and finished twelfth.
The Toyota Racing Series, which has attracted 14 of New Zealand's top single-seater drivers is the first series in the world to use E85 ethanol-based biofuel, part of Toyota's ongoing commitment to carbon neutrality and to testing new technologies in the extreme conditions found only in motorsport. The cars use production-based Toyota four-cylinder engines which have been prepared and tuned for the new fuel blend.
The series includes all of the most prestigious titles in the sport, including the New Zealand Grand Prix, which moves back to Manfeild this year.
