Manfeild series largest of its type

Round two of the winter series at Manfeild on Sunday attracted 85 entries in six classes, making it the largest of its type in New Zealand.

The success story of the United Travel series has been the Diamond Homes-Danny's Auto Services RS Cup.

Designed around cars produced by the UCOL Motorsport course based in Feilding, the series has grown and 16 cars entered for this round, the largest to date.

The class is restricted to a maximum lap time of 1min 32sec and is promoted as a first-time motor-racing class.

Steve Rennie has been the class frontrunner and was looking to extend his series lead until a blown fuse put him out of race two.

A number of breakouts (exceeding 1.32) by other competitors meant the damage to his points lead was not as bad as it could have been. Colin Hoare now leads the series by 27 points from Rennie and Spencer.

The BC Racewear IB Cup had a field of 21 reduced by three cars from an accident in race one. A safety car was out in lap one and, entering the last turn of the next lap, Nigel Fleming (Triumph), Kerry Tong (Falcon) and Glen Martin (RX7) collided and ended their day.

The remaining races of the day were close.

A tight points battle between Paul Berkhan and Nick Stewart will ensure a battle to the final round of the series. Last year's champion, Adam Newell, has also fallen foul of the breakout rules and lies a distant fifth.

The ICS GT Cup is the fastest class on the programme and the field was small.

Series leader Ross Thurston carried on his first-round dominance in race one, but did not have it all his own way in the remaining races.

Race two saw a good battle, with Thurston and Wellington racer Tony Oliver scrapping hard – the two cars looked like they were held together by a rubber band.

Race three was won by Feilding's Kester Olivecrona in his Batman RX7, closely followed by Paul Tulloch's similar Mazda, Thurston and Oliver.

Formula First Speedsport scholarship winner Hayden Pederson was looking to expand his knowledge of this class, but learned quickly how competitive this class is.

Kyle George of Hamilton drove superbly in his new car. He will be a threat to Palmerston North champion Michael Shepherd in the upcoming race season.

Palmerston North's Oliver Gordon showed consistency always prevails and leads by 29 points from Pederson.

The NZRF Classics were down on numbers. Series co-ordinator Gordon Smith ran his Datsun 1200 coupe and was narrowly pipped in race two by Craig Horn in his Torana XU1.

Michael Eden was dominant in the three races and gained enough points to win the round.

The classic series is led by Palmerston North's Colin Bary. He has been plagued by reliability issues over the past three seasons that have cost him the title, but this year he is in a strong position after two rounds.

There's a trip for two to Bathurst up for grabs for a lucky official or spectator at Manfield for the next round on Sunday, August 8. To view the series results and championships, go to www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=559467

- © Fairfax NZ News