Production Car Series Round 2 Report

Hi everyone,
Well what a weekend! This had to be the toughest weekend of motorsport I have experienced with damage, penalties and setup issues all in one.
We struggled during testing on Friday to get to car to handle at all, and when one of the test sessions got red flagged early after a mistake by an official, I missed out on 7 minutes of testing that was crucial to how the rest of the weekend went.
After several phone calls and coversations with some of Dad’s friends we made some last minute changes before the qualifying session on Saturday. We finally found a setup that worked. It still wasn’t as good as Pukekohe, but we left it because we didn’t want to make any changes in the wrong direction. So I qualified in 15th for Race 1.
I made a great start to Race 1 getting into 13th before the first corner only to be taken out by one of the Suzuki’s. I continued racing but all that hard work on setup the day before had been lost beause of being hit. I then managed to finish the race 14th but only after tangling with another Suzuki going into the hairpin.
Unfortunately the officials decided to penalise me 50 seconds for the second contact with the Suzuki but believed the first contact to be a racing incident. Unbelievable!!!!
We then fixed the damage from this race and went home to sleep. Race 2 went well, finishing 15th particularly considering the car was not in the most drivable condition.
But in the revese grid race I was battling with a Honda Integra and Mazda RX8, when on the exit of the hairpin the two hit and spun into me. I was too close to slow down and I hit the Honda with the front right of the car damaging the bumper, bonnet, headlight, guard and front chassis rail. I finished the race but had to pit to stop the guard rub from cutting the tire to pieces.
After the race I had a little kid come up and see the car and asked what we hit, Stacey, part of the pit crew, told him that the Honda spun in front of us. The kid says cool!, have you got a piece of the car that I can have. So we gave him a corner of the bumper that broke off. Then he wanted me to sign it and his Ford shirt next to the likes of Craig Lowndes. He thought I was a superstar, at least I made somebody happy.
We learnt a lot this weekend, about how unfair the judicial system can be, how important testing is at top level motorsport and how expensive motorsport can be (not that I didn’t allready know that). We had so many people come up to us over the weekend and say how great it was to see a Fiat out there racing. They all told us about what Fiat they used to have and what a great car it was, and then they told us about how they were all sick of seeing the same Japanese cars at these meetings.
Next Round is the support for the A1GP at Taupo. We will only be racing on the Saturday. I hope to see heaps of Fiat Club members there.
Thank you all for your support and see you at the track.
Blair Thomson
Fiat Punto HGT Abarth
Car # 30