Well, Christmas and New Years have been and gone, we hope everyone made it through the silly season safe and well. This update we will catch up on a few meetings we have missed and look ahead at what we have planned for the rest of the 09/10 season, which is disappearing pretty fast.
It seems like a long time ago that the Tigers made the trip up to Palmy to take on the Panthers for the Challenge Cup. The Tigers were confident of a good result with the Panthers missing 3 key members from the team that has been so dominant over the past few years, in saying that they still had Pete Rees and Wayne Hemi who both have records that speak for themselves. Blair was given a chance to show what he could do and he did that, sticking to the race plan, as did the rest of the team. The guys were happy to come away with the Challenge Cup after it being held by the Panthers for the last couple of years.
A week later and we were in Blenheim for the South Island Champs, the 2NZ car was going well, picking up good points with a second and a third in the first two heats to be first equal on points with Brett heading into the final race. Other people had different ideas in heat three though, off the start we took a shot to the left front that damaged the shock and wheel, from there on we decided to help the other Nelson cars and started blocking. Late in the race we took a heavy blow into the wall which resulted in a 22 day medical stand down.
Since then it's been pretty quiet, Fatty had the 14N car in Nelson for the Club Champs the following weekend, there wasn't a very big field but he still picked up third overall.
The 2nd of January saw the return leg of The McCall Trophy. The Tigers for the race were Hig, Shane, Fatty, Blair and Ian. After the win in Christchurch in December our guys were keen to hold on to the Trophy over the winter. The rain threatened to put a stop on proceedings but the Nelson Club delayed the meeting long enough to let the showers pass. The race was reasonably un-eventful. Hig was spun on lap one, turn two but didn't suffer any damage and rejoined the race. Fatty did his job and delayed their runners, Blair had taken off into the lead with Shane and Hig following. After a few laps Blair pulled up and went on to keep the Christchurch cars busy as Hig and Shane came home first and second, Shane Anderton was third, Fatty and Blair rounded out the top five. It was a good convincing win for the guys and to win three out of three teams races for the season so far is great but we aren't getting to far ahead of ourselves, the season can only really be judged on the result and performance at Palmy so that is the next challenge, to go one better than last year and claim the Teams Champs title.
Looking ahead and it's a pretty full on schedule for the Superstocks to say the least, the 15th and 16th of Jan is the World 240's which is always a great event, the following weekend the Global Challenge is in Palmy, the week after that is the New Zealand Champs in Kihikihi and then we move onto the big one, the Palmerston North Teams Champs. While the idea of having all these meetings close together is good for the visiting overseas drivers, allowing them to attend them all within a four week time frame, it does make it hard on the local guys. For the South Islanders it's a big ask to commit to the meetings and for anyone, if there is extensive damage or even injury in one of the earlier meetings it doesn't allow any time to fix damage and/or recover from any setbacks.
Our plan of attack is to have the 2NZ car run in Nelson this weekend, then travel to the 240's. At this stage we won't be doing the Global Challenge, then we head to the NZ's and Teams after that, all things going well. We look forward to getting a bit of travelling done and catching up with people around the country. The plan for Fatty and the 14N car is to run the King of the Clay meeting at home this weekend and then to focus on teams racing for the remainder of the season, until next time...
DERT
