Hey hey everyone!
The 2022 Pro Series has been and gone, apologies for not posting about it as it happened but things have been real busy and it hasn't left much time for blog-keeping. Anyways! It was a long, hard fought competition. Ultimately, we ended up runners up in Class 4, here's how that came about!
Round 1 - Hampton Downs
Starting off at the ever-familiar Hampton Downs, it was business as usual for us. Start at the back, get through the field carefully and gradually, and just keep a good fast pace.
...That was, until I climbed in the car!!
Not ten minutes after I got behind the wheel (About 3 hours into the race), the rains came down and they came down hard. In fact, so much water dropped so quickly that almost everyone was struggling to keep on the track, while that early layer of oils and rubber washed off. Even when things had settled down, it was incredibly sketchy with several cars looping around or plunging into the boggy infield. Eventually the weather cleared up but the rest of the race was that cross between slightly greasy and dry.
We came home 3rd in class, a good start for any championship season.
Round 2 - Taupo
The action headed south to the chilly heights of Lake Taupo, a track notorious for being super abrasive on tyres. The day started off very promising, with good qualifying pace and a strong first stint. Though things quickly turned sour when the Levin lost its brakes going into a corner.
Because Taupo is much more technical and also has a much longer straight, we guessed we needed to take a page out of Supercars' book and tap the brakes before a corner to realign the pads ahead of a heavy brake zone. This bought us some laps, but it became apparent the problem was more sinister, the entire wheel bearing and hub had broke, and that was what was knocking the pads out of place.
We ended up retiring from the round, being a Toyota not a Nissan we were left with no spares and no plan B to feasably continue. We crunched the numbers and worked out that a strong class result was still on the cards but it banked on a cracking result at the final race.
This was the race leader, right up until they weren't.
Round 3 - Pukekohe Park
With the news that Pukekohe Park will be closing down soon, this ended up being quite the popular round with a fair few additional standalone entries arriving to compete in the last ever 6hr race at the track.
This time, we ran a tag team between the Levin and the Pulsar, pulled out of retirement for one comeback race at the venue where it all started for me.
In between qualifying and the race it rained, and not six laps into things it got red flagged after another Nissan got wrecked hard at the fastest point in the track! The track did dry up around the half way point, and I whacked my phone into the Pulsar for my stint which can be watched
right here!
The driver was okay, but that's one way to turn a sedan into a hatchback!
What I didn't realize (due to our comms failing) was the red Mazda3 was actually for position, and we missed out winning the 3 hour race by
that much!! The entire rest of the race was still close, however! Once I tagged out and the Levin went to finish things, there were four cars in the running for class honors, and we came home 12th place, 2nd in class!
That was enough to take 2nd in class overall for the championship, a fantastic result and our second time being class runners up! Again, apologies for the brief whistle-stop summary of our season. huge things are happening behind the scenes but I promise you the 24hr will be more documented as it happens! That's in a couple of weeks now, so we're all prepping for that!
