Well, the weather was supposed to be pretty marginal all weekend, and so it turned out – on the day that was supposed to be fine (ish).
Eight likely lads and their cars entered the Icebreaker to kick the 2014/15 season off, and with the weatherman getting the Saturday forecast almost 100% face about arse, practise/qually and the afternoons races went off without a hitch. Most of the field also did the double in qually, and tagged along with the Formula Libre class for an additional seven laps or so.
The first race saw Tony Cross in pole, closely followed by Peter Boel in his Lotus 51B, and Martin Lucas in his new (old?) Van Diemen taking third. During the race, Tony managed to pull away from Peter to finish 2.3secs up, with Don Hopkins rounding out the podium a close 0.6secs behind Peter.
Overnight the weather worsened with a swing to a front coming up from the South West. This meant some heavy rain, and continual showers for the first half of the day, resulting in many of the Historic Muscle Cars packing it in for the day and heading home. Formula Libre also threw in the towel (something about them only having slicks…when will they learn??) so it was down to the Formula Fords to fly the open wheeler flag.
“A river runs through it” would have been an apt description of the course when race two rolled around. Coupled with a strong headwind along the pit straight, the race was going to be a challenge from the outset. After a two lap warmup, the race got underway with all cars safely off the grid. However it was not to remain as Craig Munro aqua-planed into the Armco barrier 350m from the sweeper resulting in a three legged Lola. This brought out the red flag, and the race was restarted, albeit missing half the grid as several then took the safe option and headed for the pits to retire. Tony Cross, Peter Boel, Martin Lucas and Dave Silverton took the restart, but Dave decided discretion was the better part of valour and soon called it quits on the race.
This left Tony, Peter and Martin to safely circulate and make it to the chequered flag.
The final race was run in better conditions, but with one car out with damage, and two off home for a pre-planned beer or three, only five cars took starters orders. Tony Cross made it a brace of victories, and Peter Boel a brace of seconds. Don Hopkins registered another third for the weekend.
The racing now moves on to the first TACCOC race meeting at Pukekohe on October 4th.
