Rockingham Race Reports 2nd/3rd May 2009

This was the first race of the season for the Neil Garner run Hawthorns team and with three drivers all looking to race the two 90 min races with only one pit stop posed a problem. As usual a solution was found whereby all drivers had time in the car, on Saturday, race one, Jay drove with Jan and on Sunday, race two, Jay drove with Rod.

On Saturday we had a fine result taking our first podium of the season, a third in class, Jan started very well and maintained position against much quicker cars that arguably should not be in class 3 as they were certainly quicker then some or most class 2 cars and even a few class 1 machines. Jay took over at half time and did his very best to improve but against two cars that were between 2 and 4 seconds a lap quicker, albeit still classified as class 3 cars, we had little or no chance.

On Sunday, thanks to Jay’s great drive that maintained our 8 th position grid slot for the first 55 mins of the race thus allowing Rod to continue without too much pressure. However, two laps prior to the end of the race, Rod was given a slight hurry up call as we only had a 14 sec lead in order to take first in class and the second place car was gaining at the rate of 2 seconds a lap.

Rod responded despite having little or no useable clutch so by crunching gears and risking the demolition of the gear box, we put in two quicker laps in the 29’s and just as well as it turned out. On the last lap, and in the last corner, a class 2 car decided that a lunge up the inside in very limited space would be a clever thing to do albeit that he had nothing whatever to gain from overtaking Rod.

His action forced Rod to allow for his strange actions but more importantly the class 2 360 with whom it appeared to be racing had to take evasive action and in the process ran straight into the back of Rod’s car and spinning him into a 350. Rod was quick to react and got back on the track, the chasing class three car was now immediately behind him , Rod made the finish line with just half a car length to spare, First in class was ours, Spa next at the end of June.