Norris to push for place in superstock team

Wayne Norris believes he now has the form to challenge the regulars for a spot in the Palmerston North Panthers superstock team.

In his third season driving the former Rodney Wood flyer, Norris had a strong performance to take out the opening round of the Placemakers series at Arena Manawatu.

The superstocks may play second fiddle to the stockcars, which race for the prestigious Robin Pratt Memorial Trophy, but for drivers like Norris, Brett Hyslop, Craig Humphries and others, it's the chance to push for a place in the Panthers, who race the Nelson Tigers at the Robertson Holden Speedway on December 5.

"The drivers in the Panthers now have all been around for a long time, but I'm only in my third season in superstocks," Norris said. "I think I'm now getting the consistency I need to really push for a place in the Panthers.

"I know there's five top drivers in the team, but we've got the car to team race and that's still our goal."

Norris admits that though he's often been fast in the previous two seasons, little mistakes have dropped him off the pace of top Panthers team drivers Shane Penn, Wayne Hemi, Peter Rees, Peter Bengton and others.

"There is so much power in the car that I've sometimes made mistakes in the corners and gone wide," he said.

"Once you do that you lose a lot of pace and you can't make up the gaps you lose to the fastest drivers.

"I think I proved to myself last Saturday that I'm now fast and consistently able to get to the front and stay there."

Norris said his team had also learnt that buying a fast car meant they had to work at setting it up for the track conditions.

"We bought the car and have basically hopped in it and driven it as it was set up," he said. "That doesn't work and we've spent a lot of time looking at what the track is each night and how it might change for every race. Then set it [the car] up to the conditions."

Meanwhile, one of the more pleasant surprises this season has been the large number of competitors who have been ready to go at the start of the season.

Track manager Bryan Puklowski said having 167 competitors turning up last week was unheard of, especially at such an early part of the season.

Often at the early part of the season fields are made up with out-of-town drivers, but this weekend almost 40 will race for the Robin Pratt Memorial – and they'll all be locally contracted drivers.

Multiple winner of the trophy Peter Rees will start favourite in his new tank, but he'll have to dodge the bevy of stockcar drivers out to become tank-slayers.

With Rees driving a tank it has added a lot of spice to the class, with the likes of George Frear suddenly becoming keen on attacking other drivers.

Any of a dozen drivers could take out the Robin Pratt, with favourites Brett Lloyd, Darrel Wallace, Gary Davis, Craig Healey, Kerry Humphrey, Alec Wilson, Rob Mason and Rob Miers all needing to work their way through the massive field over three heats.

Other classes include sidecars and sprintcars and another huge field of the 12 to 16-year-old youth ministock drivers.

- © Fairfax NZ News