Greg Murphy hopes his defence of his BNT V8 SuperTourers championship will be a difficult one.
The 2014 championship opens this weekend with the Fuchs 250 meeting at the new Highlands circuit near Cromwell in Central Otago.

“I think it was quite an exciting championship last year,” Murphy, who has recently moved back from Australia to his home region of Hawke’s Bay, said.

The 2013 championship battle went down to the last race.

Naturally Murphy is keen to retain his hard-won title, but he doesn’t want to have it easy.

“I want it to be a tough championship,” he said. “I want the series to grow, to have more competitors and to be more competitive. If you have one guy winning all the time it’s boring.”

The champion is looking forward to his return to the long Highlands track, built by Australian businessman-racer Tony Quinn. Murphy drove in the inaugural meeting there late last year, the final round of the Australian GT championship.

“It’s a challenging circuit, no question about it,” he said. “It’s got a lot of corners and if you make a mistake at one corner, in a lot of places that hurts you for the next corner.

“You’ve got to get it right for corner after corner, lap after lap. I enjoy driving it.”

Because of the way the corners flow into one another drivers will have to be at their best to pull off overtaking moves, Murphy reckons.

The Central Otago scenery surrounding the track gives it a special atmosphere, he says.

“It’s a stunning location, just spectacular,” he said. “It’s something else.

“Tony’s done such a beautiful job with the circuit and he’s always willing to look at ways to improve it.”

Murphy is also pleased with a change to the engines’ electronic control units, which will make the cars easier to drive. Till now the massive torque of the seven-litre engines has come in with a sudden bang, but now the torque will come in more gradually and it will be easier to control the cars by modulating the throttle pedal, he says.

The meeting also includes round three of the Toyota Racing Series with 19 internationals and four Kiwis driving the fast single-seaters. It was gratifying to see the improved cooperation between V8 SuperTourers and MotorSport New Zealand, Murphy said.

The meeting, the first of seven in the BNT V8 SuperTourers championship, includes a 12-lap race on Saturday, and then another 12-lapper and a 20-lapper on Sunday.