Production Car Series Round 3 Report

Hi Everyone,

After a six week break it was back to bussiness with round 3 of the Production Racing Championship at Taupo running as a support class for the A1GP cars.

All of the class B cars became a part of tent city this weekend all parked next to each other which was a great atmosphere between competitors and good for the spectators seeing all the cars parked in one place.

Testing started on Thursday for the Production class and with the new turn 12 at the end of the main straight it was interesting to test the limits on this new turn. It has now changed from a 4th gear turn at extremly high speeds to a slow 2nd gear corner, which then slows you down through turns 13 and 14 and onto the start finish straight. This felt Ok during testing but some changes needed to be made to get the best out the car. We managed a time of 1.54.5s.

We only got one test session here which made it hard to get a good car for qualifying. But you can only do the best with what you have available to you. So we made some changes to shocks and went out for qualifying. Pushing hard we got a time of 1.53.5 yes it was faster than testing but a little disapointing when 3 of the suzuki’s were faster. 21st out of 31 cars was our starting position.

Friday was going to be a quiet day if things all went to plan, with only 1 race in the morning. So were starting of 21st on the grid so I was going to have to push hard in the early laps if I wanted to finish well. After the warm up laps and we lined up on the grid it became apparent to all competitors that were not on the first two rows that it was allmost impossible to see the lights. I managed to see them by looking throught the windscreen of the car in front. I got a great start and passed 4 cars before the first corner and 1 more on the infield. I was battleing for 16th with 1 of the Honda but was unable to hang onto him down the straights so I finished 17th which we were very happy with.

We had two races lined up for Saturday and was starting 17th for the first race. Still very hard to see the lights I got to 16th into turn 1 and then 15th latter on in the lap but again was caught out with the cars driving past me in a straight line. I hung on to finish 17th when latter turned out to be 14th when 3 cars got 50 second penitlys.

Race 3 was a reverse grid we started behind all of the Suzuki’s and 4th in class B. With the Class A cars having a 50 second head start on the rest of the field it was always going to be a difficult race. The start was a nightmare with the car infront of me not moving anywhere. I had to drive around him on the grass gaining 1 spot but lossing about 4 in the process. So we made it round turn 1 with cars going off the track in all directions and only getting worse in turn 2 with about 4 cars taking each other out. Somehow we managed to get through the first lap with no damage, but we were only 1 of the 2 in a 31 car field. I pushed the car to its absolute limits and managed to finish in 20th place beating 4 of the cars in my class.

We finished 4th out of 9 in our class, a very good weekend for me, and I cant wait for the next round at Manfield on the 15th – 17th Febuary.

Thank you all for your support and see you at the track.
Blair Thomson
Fiat Punto HGT Abath
Car # 30