Levels - 28 October 2007

By Jan McInnes

Much more relaxed and organised at preparing for this meeting and the weather took a turn for the better, so it was all good. Only unofficial practice on Saturday and we “lost” our newest member - Barry Morgan from Wanaka (ex Albie Collier’s XP Falcon) who was testing and broke the crankshaft, which was unfortunate for both him and the club who were all looking forward to seeing the car out on the track. We were also minus a “grumpy” Bob Denson, who had put a special order in for some pistons to be made in a hurry only to have them held up at Customs on the way into the country. He assures me that he will be ready in plenty of time for the next meeting.

Sunday dawned fine and sunny and everyone was breathing a sigh of relief - especially after what it was like two weeks ago! And out at the track, everyone was busy setting up and getting ready for the day.

Official Practice:
Good to see Greg Lyons back out again and his aim was to finish qualifying and all three races, which he did. Also good to see Bill Evans back out after his problems at Ruapuna and having not raced at Levels before it was a nice challenge for him. Official practice brought to the fore the usual pole sitters with Steve Ross achieving the best time of 1:12.023 followed closely by Wayne Patrick on 1:12.884, Jim Little, Cliff and Manny. The best of the 4 cylinders were Maurie and Johno.

Race 1:
This was an extremely closely fought race with the top four finisher’s times being within .03 of a second apart.
Cliff had engine issues and didn’t manage to finish, but the rest of the field did and the winner was Steve with Wayne Patrick a close second with the best time of the race at 1:12.519.

Race 2:
Was reverse top half with Greg Stewart and Roy Macdonald on the front row, Manny & Jim Little were back on the 2nd row and Steve & Wayne behind them. Manny had another great run and ended up battling with Steve to take the win. Greg Stewart managed to shave two seconds off his time and came in a healthy 4th. Cliff showed us all that it doesn’t need to be raining for him to turn the car around and soon worked out that going backwards wasn’t as quick. Bill Evans had another issue with his car, but got it fixed for the last race.

Race 3 - handicap:
We had a bit of a scary moment on the start line with Greg Stewart stalling on the start. He managed to get going but was unable to make any impression on the field due to being so far back. Roy soon took the lead, but was overtaken by Manny who had another demon run to take his second win for the weekend. Steve was 3rd, Wayne Patrick 4th followed by Greg Lyons, Maruie, Bill, Cliff, Gareth, Johno, Greg Stewart and Ray.

The points make interesting reading with Manny taking the lead for A Class (145) and Overall (144), Roy is 2nd with 134 points for both and Steve in 3rd place with 128 for Overall and 129 for A Class.
C Class points are similar with Maurie out front on 156, Johno in 2nd place on 151 and Ray in 3rd on 132.
Reverse grid changes every meeting and currently Roy is leading with 39 points, Manny is on 2nd with 36 points and Maurie is 3rd with 34 points

The next meeting is back at Levels - on 28 October and the next 3 weeks later at Teretonga on 18 November. Hope everyone can make it.