Second to last meeting of the season and we were all hoping the weather would continue on the recent good spell of fine weather, but someone must have killed a lot of spiders because we woke to a dull and drizzly day on the Saturday.

Needless to say the track was declared wet and the pits were a boggy mess, but we had a good field of 18 cars and three new drivers - Brian Scott who had very recently purchased the XP Falcon off Roy, Mark Macdonald who was driving the number 12 for the Hurst team and Angus Fog (from the north island) in his mighty "land-crab" (Morris 1100).

We welcomed the return of Barry Morgan and Ian Perry and thanked Cliff for entering Pete Fitzgibbon's Farina due to Pete being unable to make it due to work commitments.

Qualifying:

Very thick drizzle, but no wind so it wasn't totally unpleasant.

As expected the 4 cylinders loved this weather but weren't quick enough to beat Manny who seems to thrive in the wet conditions as well. Wayne Patrick was the next fastest (three seconds back) followed by Steve. The best of the 4 cylinders was Ian Perry (4^th) then Bill Evans (5^th). Greg Stewart was next, then Bertha (sorry, Roy), Johno, Greg, Bob, Mark, Angus, Wayne Tuffley, Maurie, Barry Morgan, Brian Scott, Ray and last, but not least Cliff.

Amazingly enough there were very few incidents, apart from Maurie, who gave himself a bit of a scare on the front straight and parked his car on the infield facing the oncoming cars - hence the qualifying was red flagged.

Race 1:

We thought that the weather was going to clear, but it didn't manage it for our rounds anyway and the drivers and the spectators had to endure the same as in qualifying. Manny loved it though and started and finished first, Wayne Patrick did the same with 2^nd and 3^rd was Greg Stewart. Angus Fogg very quickly got to grips with the track and the wet weather and came in 4th, followed by Tuff, Johno, Scorch, Greg Lyons, Mark Macdonald who only just piped Roy at the finish line, back to Bill, Brian, Ian, Maurie, Barry & Bob. The only people not to finish were Ray and Cliff, who managed to fix their issues in time for the next race.

Sunday dawned fine and sunny, which was a pleasant surprise from the day before. Manny wasn't very happy with this as he was the only one to like driving in the rain.

Race 2:

Much better times and it showed with the top 6 of the 7 cars to finish were V8's. Apart from Brian Scott having mechanical issues when the clutch slave cylinder piston came out and Maurie got black flagged (a 50 second time penalty) for passing under a yellow flag and not serving the drive through, the race was incident free.

Steve won followed VERY closely by the two Waynes (Tuff then Wayne P) only a matter of .005 seconds between them. Next was Greg Stewart, Roy, Angus, Manny, Greg Lyons, Johno, Bill, Bob, Barry, Ian, Cliff, Mark, Maurie and Ray.

Race 3:

Tuff generously lent Gareth his car so that he could keep up the reverse grid points. Angus & Roy's times were very close and they had a good battle during the race. Unfortunately, the land-crab got a bit too close to Bertha and he gave her a bit of a rub, but the might of the V8 won through on the straight and Roy won. It was a very exciting race with battles within battles, but we had 3 non-finishers - Barry, Bob & Johno.

Another successful weekend and only one more to go - next weekend at Teretonga.