LG Falcon : Teretonga Park 'Southern 200' Race Report

The LG Motorsport team had a win at a very eventful round five of the 2008-2009 New Zealand V8s Championship at Timaru International Raceway. After a positive start in testing on Friday and Saturday (placed first in session one, sixth in session two and the Saturday warmup, and posting the fastest overall test lap time), Angus and the LG Falcon set the third fastest time in qualifying, won the feature reverse-grid race and was 10th in race two, however was unable to complete race one due to an alternator failure. What’s more, we once again posted the fastest lap time of the weekend.

QUALIFYING – 3rd
Normally this is where we bolt on the new “green” tyres and try to capture those last tenths of a second while the gain is there, however when we come to Teretonga this strategy changes somewhat because of the surface of the bitumen and the sand which blows across the track from nearby Oreti beach (the favourite haunt of Burt Munro, Southland’s own “Fastest Indian”).

After setting times in the top three of the first two sessions we headed into the top ten session needing to find a little more, a couple of tenths of a second isn’t much when you think about it, and we had to settle for third, which is actually probably a better position than second, but missed out on the pole by .072 of a second, and set the exact same time as Andy Booth to the nearest thousandth of a second, but because I set my time first I was third and he was fourth.

RACE 1 - Saturday (12 laps) – DNF
After a reasonable start we were plagued by a slowly discharging battery due to the alternator failing on the warm up lap, there was nothing I could do but soldier on with the car misfiring more and more as the race went on. By the time the safety car came out mid race I was back to sixth, but a demon restart saw us back to third. However it was not to last as the misfire became worse until, on the last lap the car ground to a halt about 200m from the finish…. Bugger !!!

RACE 2 - Sunday (16 laps) – 10th
As we were a non-finisher in race one we had to start from the rear of the grid. The weather was extremely changeable and it was somewhat of a gamble as to whether we should race on wet tyres or dry “slicks”. After completing the observation laps we were still undecided but in the end went with slicks as the drizzle had stopped and the track usually dries quite quickly. This caught quite a few teams out and about half the field were trapped in pit lane changing to wets. In the end the race started with the rest of the cars joining
after the field had passed the start. Our plan of the track drying quickly didn’t really pay off and we had to slither and slide around until about three laps from the end when the track dried sufficiently to get some gain from the decision to run the dry weather tyres. However, 10th was still a good result given our starting position.

RACE 3 - Sunday (20 laps full reverse grid) – 1st
This race saw us starting in grid position 3, behind Mack Peach and John Hepburn. We got off to an excellent start, slipping in between these two cars and were well in the lead by turn one. Unfortunately Mack Peach came off the track on turn one, and hit the wall, resulting in a safety car for several laps as marshals struggled to extract his car. The race was then officially stopped for some time allowing for his car to be removed. Then we were off on a warm-up lap prior to the race start, with the LG Falcon leading the field. With race restarts the lead car sets the pace, so we shot away to another handy lead, gapping the entire field again. I pressed on for about 6 laps and then eased off to a relatively easy win. The whiff of champagne is still fresh from the usual podium spraying ceremony!

OVERALL PLACINGS
We were pleased to bag a full 75 points for the final race, however our DNF in race one has meant that we are now in 6th place overall in championship standings. Doing the math that means we are 11 points away from fifth overall and 136 away from third. We are looking forward to a strong turnout at Manfeild Park in February, this is our favourite track and we have been very successful there in previous years. We plan to freshen the engine and add a few new demon tweaks for the final two rounds and Hamilton street race to
keep at the pointy end of the field and keep getting more than our fair share of media coverage!

Angus and the LG Motorsport Team