LG Falcon : Southern 200 Timaru Race Report

The LG Motorsport team had a strong weekend at round four of the 2008-2009 New Zealand V8s Championship at Timaru International Raceway. After a positive start in testing on Friday (placed first in session one and third in session two), Angus set the second fastest time in qualifying, and was second in both races one and two, finished 15th in the final reverse grid race, and ended up fourth overall for the round. What’s more, we posted the fastest lap time of the weekend – resulting in a new lap record for the Championship.

The team are now based in Invercargill preparing the LG Falcon for this coming weekend’s race meeting at Teretonga Park in Invercargill.

QUALIFYING – 2nd
Another exciting qualifying session in cool windy conditions, with the weather changing through the hour long session. After topping the charts in the second qualifying session, Angus and the LG Falcon were off for the 'top 10' session, where we swapped places with Kayne Scott for the quickest qualifying times throughout the session, each shaving hundredths of a second off their lap times as the session progressed. Angus posted his ‘hot lap’ time of 1:06:547, good enough for second place on the grid – only 0.094s behind Kayne Scott’s fastest time of 1:06.453 which he posted around three minutes before the session ended.

RACE 1 - Saturday (12 laps) – 2nd
After jostling for the first corner with Kayne Scott we settled into second place and throughout the race were able to pressure Kayne but he used his old trick of slowing me up just enough for Johnny Mac to tag on to my rear, this provided a real challenge as John was faster in some parts of the circuit and Kayne in others so I really needed eyes in the back of my head! Finishing second and managing to hold off John was a great start to the weekend especially as we set a new lap record (1.06:573) in the process. As usual second isn’t good enough for us so some overnight changes were in order to the setup as we felt there was a little more speed to be had.

RACE 2 - Sunday (16 laps) – 2nd
In the BNTV8s we start where we finished for race one so were once again in the front row outside position. Much the same at the start but this time Kayne was even more aggressive, giving me a good bunt in the side sending me sideways through the first corner, after settling I was able to pressure Kayne even further and in turn John was pressuring me more, a few looks on the inside and outside, but due to the nature of the Timaru circuit being quite narrow and twisty I couldn’t really have an honest attempt, and the penalties in place for tapping another competitor around definitely tame the beast in these situations, so we were once again pleased to finish second.

RACE 3 - Sunday (20 laps full reverse grid) – 15th
This race saw us starting in grid position 21, side-by-side with Kayne Scott and behind John McIntyre. The race was won by Luke Youlden. We managed to make great strides through the field, missing all the carnage and getting up to 5th place overall after 16 laps. While hunting down Baird, Manuel and Pedersen who were dicing for second I got right on their tail on the last lap and was waiting for one to make a mistake. Unfortunately it was me who made one, sliding wide onto the grass and ending up sliding into the wall only 50 metres from the finish line. The car was reluctant to restart but once she fired we limped across the line 15th and a very grumpy driver kicked himself after such a stellar performance to that point. The car was only lightly damaged and we will be back up to speed at the world’s most southern race track this weekend.

OVERALL PLACINGS
We were pleased to finish in fourth position overall for the round, and race up the championship points ladder into 5th position overall. Doing the math that means we are only 59 points away from fourth and 69 away from third. And we are confident of moving even closer to third and fourth place-getters (Andy Booth and Craig Baird) at Invercargill. And with nine races still to go in the championship, of course anything can happen.