This season is our 30th birthday!!!!

Ruapuna - North/South Challenge 6+7 January 2007: By Jan McInnes

With the weather being up and down - cold & hot etc, etc, etc it was a pleasant change to arrive at Ruapuna to a lovely day on Saturday. The 11 strong north island contingent had arrived and were nicely set up in their hired tent and at a couple of other places around. As far as our 18 guys went - most had arrived and set up with one exception being Ben & Les who apparently had started erecting their tent at 11am on Friday morning and was still in the same state at 6pm that night! Apparently it pays to bring the instructions with you!!

Our pit area was situated outside the pits but it suited us just fine as we were relatively close to everything and we weren�t in the way so we had a great time and were left pretty much alone by the pit boss. It also enabled us to crank up the bbq & beers after our racing had finished whereas if we were in the pits we would have had to wait until all the racing was finished.

Saturday was a lovely fine day - almost too hot! Qualifying went well but we had a couple of �casualties� - Mitch Cobham had a DNS due to continuing engine problems, Jason Galbraith blew a gearbox and Paul Pickerill�s mini decided it wasn�t going to behave.

Race 1 - scratch:

Race one is always an interesting one as it is a scratch race, but it being a north/south challenge the grid is set up on the qualifying times but staggered as follows:

1. South 2. North

(depending on who had the fastest qualifying time)

3. North 4. South

5. South 6. North

7. North 8. South

Etc for all the challenge cars and the remaining cars go on their best qualifying time. Jason didn�t make it back to the track in time for this race and Paul�s mini wasn�t playing ball, but it was a great race with 8 out of the top 10 being south islanders and Steve Ross won the race followed closely by Wayne Patrick and Jim Little third. Battles within battles occurred during the race and it was difficult to know where to look next.

After this race the points were as follows:

Overall - South = 138 North = 69

A Class - South = 41 North = 14

B Class - South = 0 North = 3

C Class - South = 18 North = 3

D Class - South = 0 North = 2

Sunday - rained through the night, but had stopped and the pits and the track were dry all day. It wasn�t warm but this proved really great for all the racing and lap records were being broken sometimes 2 or 3 times during a race - including the Pre 65�s.

Race 2 - handicap:

This race is always a difficult one to set up the grid and goes on the best times from qualifying and race 1. The south/north north/south grid isn�t used for the handicap races so the cars are all grouped in their closest time and handicapped accordingly. The fast guys of Steve Ross (Mustang), Wayne Patrick (XP Falcon) and Jason Galbraith (Plymouth Belvedere) started off the back - 55 seconds back from the front car so they really had their work cut out for them and if they had another lap they would have made it through. The winner of this race was Shane Hobman (EJ Holden) with Wayne Davies (Falcon) - both from the north island and Ben Hitchcock (Anglia) third who was racing for the north island �on behalf�.

After this race the points were as follows:

Overall - South = 249 North = 167

A Class - South = 73 North = 37

B Class - South = 0 North = 3

C Class - South = 35 North = 14

D Class - South = 0 North = 4

Race 3 - handicap:

This race was similar to the 2nd race with only a couple of minor changes.

There were a couple of non starters - Slim, Wayne Patrick and a couple of non finishers - Maurie Bone and Shane Hobman (north island), but Paul�s mini decided to behave for once and he managed to finish the race.

The racing was so close and very, very exciting, so much so that I forgot my timing job for a short time. The winner of this race was Wayne Davies (north island) with Roy Macdonald (Fairlane - south island) 2nd and Tony Jeffs (Galaxy - south island) third.

This was the end of the meeting, so after this race the points were as follows:

Overall - South = 367 North = 256

A Class - South = 102 North = 63

B Class - South = 0 North = 3

C Class - South = 52 North = 24

D Class - South = 0 North = 7

And all these points get carried forward to the next north/south challenge at Taupo in February.