Hitting the wall on the front straight in the opening lap, the damage to Cox's car was too serious to effect repairs before the afternoon's final 12-lap race. The points' deficit drops the 19-year-old from second in the standings to third.
That left Taupo's Mark Gibson in a prime spot to challenge Lauder for the round win, helped by starting from pole position for the afternoon race. Contrasted by clear skies and warmer conditions the side-by-side run from the start line went against Gibson when he ran wide on the outside of the third turn to have to tuck-in behind Lauder.
However that all ended shortly after as Gibson left the track and hit the embankment side-on. With the remainder of the 10-car field restarting behind the safety car, Lauder slowly increased his lead with each lap, finishing over two seconds ahead of second placed Andrew Vincent.
"Gibson got a tap which put him offline," explained series co-ordinator Paul Burborough. "He'd gathered it up but ran out of track, touched the grass, which shot him toward the wall.
"Jamie Gaskin was later penalised for the incident and excluded from the race results. Which was a real shame as Mark didn't feel it was that serious a matter.
"But they are the risks when you're exposed to when everyone is trying to win and further illustrates the class shown by AJ Lauder. He survived the atrocious wet this morning in the reverse-grid race that saw the greatest damage to the field.
"While it wasn't the weekend we might have expected from Chris Cox it was great to see Hamilton's Shaun Lawrence take another win and to see him second on the points' table."
With two rounds remaining to decide the 2011/2012 Suzuki Swift Sport Cup champion the next round will be contested at Manfeild in the Manawatu township of Feilding 11-12 February 2012.
