By Jan McInnes

After a seven week break from the last meeting at Taupo in February for some and longer from December for the rest the first of the last three meetings finally arrived. Unfortunately, we only managed a small field of 14 cars for this meeting, but that didn't stop the excellent racing and battles within battles ensued.

Race 1 - scratch
Another nice day, but no wind, which made things more pleasant. As predicted the racing was a hard fought one, with Steve Ross getting off to a shaky start by stalling on the start line, but managed to claw his way back up to the leaders and managed to finish a healthy 3rd. The times were amazing with Jason being the fastest on 1:37.829, followed closely by Wayne Tuffley on 1:39.979 and Steve on 1:37.993. Manny Sim had gearbox issues, but managed to finish the race. Another battle in this race was between Tony Jeffs and Roy Macdonald, but Tony's mighty Galaxy had him easily in the lead down the long straight. Johno Michelle was managing to keep up with Roy and kept him honest. Good to see Greg Lyons and Rob Carpenter back out, but Greg had a few timing issues.

Race 2 - reverse top half
13 starters, with Jason, Wayne & Steve starting 6th, 5th & 4th respectively. They made short work of getting through the next three cars and a huge battle ensued between Jason & Steve. Unfortunately, it ended in grief and Steve crashed the Mustang very hard into flag point 2 and the race was red flagged. Thankfully, he emerged from the accident shaken and bruised but otherwise unhurt - not the same could be said for the car!
The results went back to the previous lap (lap 4) which meant Jason won, Steve 2nd & Wayne 3rd much to Wayne's disappointment as he was winning when the race was red flagged - but in saying that he did break the lap record which now stands at 1:37.511.

Race 3 -  handicap
Only 8 starters this race with Steve, Greg, Jason, Maurie and Rob out due to various issues and this in turn made the handicapping job a hard one. Still great racing and a very happy Tony Jeffs won, with Manny 2nd and Johno 3rd.

All the racing was over for us by 12.30 and we had a meeting afterwards and Manny presented our youngest member with a birthday cake as she had turned 16 earlier in the week.