The Tasman Motorsports Group (TMG) Valvoline Ford has banked three top ten results at round 6 of the V8 SuperTourers held at Hampton Downs over the weekend.
The TMG Valvoline team returned to the North Waikato circuit three weeks after a big accident caused severe damage to the car at the event prior.
Two 6th place finishes and a 10th place finish in the final race of the weekend saw the duo of Daniel Gaunt and Andrew Waite claw back valuable points lost at Round 5.
“The pace out there was fast all weekend, particularly in qualifying where we saw the top 11 qualifiers covered by less than one second,” said Gaunt.
“Our pace was good, and good enough to match that of the top 5, but we lost some time in the pit stops in two of the races which made things harder.”
“Still, we banked some good points which is always good, every point counts towards the tail end of the championship.”
During Race 1, Gaunt pitted to hand over to co-driver Andrew Waite. During the driver change a piece of elastic attached to the seatbelt designed to streamline the driver change process broke, causing Waite to battle to get his belts buckled in a fast time.
“I couldn’t find the belt when I got in, turns out I was sitting on it! So we lost about 5 seconds there, but managed to salvage 6th,” said Waite.
Race three saw Gaunt start and hand over to Waite at the half way mark, however on entry to the pit box the car was stuck in gear, unable to select neutral it caused the car to stall and again costing valuable seconds.
“When I came into the box I couldn’t find neutral, which of course stalled the car as soon as I got out. It meant Andrew had bit of a battle to get it started and get away cleanly. We reckon it that cost us 15 seconds and when you look at the final finishing results would have had us in position 5 or 6 at the end.”
“One positive thing after this round is that the car isn’t a wreck like last time. We’ll go away and prepare for the final round at Pukekohe, and see if we can bridge the gap to the guys at the front.”
The Tasman Motorsports Group Valvoline Ford is supported by IVECO Trucks, Autotrader.co.nz, Midas, BOC and Colin Waite Panel Beaters.
Round 7 of the 2013 BNT V8 SuperTourers Championship will be held at Pukekohe, November 29 – Dec 1.
