Jack Perkins and Nick Cassidy have finished the 5th round of the V8 SuperTourer Championship at Taupo yesterday equal first on points after first and second place finishes in the Mike Pero Racing Commodore.
Jack started the first 200km race on the outside of the front row of the grid and was pushed back a spot into 3rd exiting the first corner. After pressuring Andy Booth for a number of laps he was able to make a pass on the Woodstock Commodore and pulled away. The Mike Pero Racing 51 Commodore then began to reduce the gap on race leader Scott McLaughlin and the two cars pitted together for their mandatory driver change pitstop. Cassidy was able to get the change done a couple of seconds faster than Jonathan Webb and the Mike Pero Racing car exited the pits in the lead. Nick Cassidy in his first race in a Touring Car in New Zealand drove faultlessly for the remainder of the race to cross the line comfortably in front of Webb.
In race Two Cassidy started the race from the same position on the outside of the front row and did a great job to avoid being spun around at turn one after being shunted by another car. Unfortunately the exhaust was badly damaged in the contact which hurt engine performance and made the job of passing Daniel Gaunt, who had grabbed 2nd at the start, a difficult task. Gaunt began to struggle with rear tyre grip in his Tasman Motorsports Falcon and Cassidy was able to get by him. Cassidy was then able to lower the gap on Webb before the pitstop but this time around Perkins was unable to get the advantage gained in the first race and exited the pits behind McLaughlin. With the horsepower disadvantage, Perkins was unable to launch a concerted attack on the Auto Trade Direct Holden, coming home right on the tail of the race winning Commodore.
Both Cassidy and Perkins were sure they would have had the speed to repeat the Race One performance if the first corner incident hadn’t damaged engine exhaust. “We definitely had the best car out there in race one and both Nick and I were just pacing ourselves against Scotty and Jono, but in Race Two we had to drive the car harder to try and make up the difference because of the lack of horsepower” commented Perkins. ” The team did an awesome job this weekend and I would really like to thank them and the sponsors for giving me the chance to be aboard the MPR Commodore for the enduros.”
Nick Cassidy definitely cemented himself as a star of the future with his faultless performances. “I really enjoyed the whole weekend and learnt a lot from working with Jack and Murph this weekend. The team provided us with a great car and Paul Forgie, our engineer tuned it as close to perfect as it could have been. I want to thank Mark Cromie, our car owner, all the sponsors and Murph for giving me the chance to do the job this weekend.”
The V8SuperTourers endurance series continues at Pukekohe Raceway on the 27-28th October where Murph will take back his place in the Mike Pero Commodore partnering with Jack Perkins for the second V8SuperTourers endure round. Murphy has experienced sustained success at Pukekohe, winning four of the six V8 Supercar rounds at the track.
