Rain Levels Playing Field As Nazcar Group’s Latest Pro Series Kicks Off At Hampton Downs

The rain fell relentlessly for all but the last hour of the first of three of the Auckland-based NaZCAR group’s combined 3 & 6\Hr. endurance races set to make up this year’s’ NaZCAR NZ Pro Endurance Championship Series at Hampton Downs on Saturday July 8.

Grey, moisture-laden clouds rolled-in from the north-west from just after the start of the race, the rain that they contained drenching the track surface, and proving so fickle that at one stage the amount of standing water on the start/finish straight was so deep that the Clerk of the Course dispatched the Safety Car under Red Flag conditions to lead the 24-strong field still, ‘in the fight,’ back into the pits where they remained for approximately 20-25 minutes until the surface was deemed suitable enough to race on in relative safety again.

Though the two races were scored separately, they were run concurrently, with the vast number of competitors (27 out of 30) choosing to cross-enter the 3 as well as the 6-Hr race.

As such only three cars pulled into the pits, their races run, after the chequered flags were unfurled for the first of two times during Saturday’s race, for the overall, first-past-the-post winner of both the 3 AND the 6 Hr. races, the innocuous-looking but always hard-driven, plain white E36 BMW 325i four-door of Allan and Colin Letcher.and Tony Rutz who together are Team Get in Behind.

The trio who entered and qualified for both races in the middle GT-Pro time bracket, were a picture of speed and consistency in the most difficult of track conditions across both distances.

In the 3-Hr ‘race-within-a-race’ the pair covered 97 laps, the same number as the dedicated 3-Hr-only entry of Bruce Simmonds and Donovan Neill in their Team Grass Grub Racing Toyota Celica which ended up in second place overall just 13 seconds behind, and the 24 Red Racing squad’s #124 Honda Integra DC5 driven by South Island pair, Paul Booth from Dunedin and Matt Ryan from Timaru, which crossed the finish line a further 12 seconds behind in third place.

The pukka two-door E36 BMW 325i coupe of Super-Pro class front-runners Karl Gaines and Lance Gerlach (Team Stickman) was the only other car to cover 97 laps in the first half of the race, however it was more than a minute behind it’s winning four-door cousin meaning it was only good enough for 4th place in the overall 3-Hr points standings.

Which, really should have come as no surprise, given that the combination of constant rain showers, and an ultra slippery track surface prompted any number of off-track excursions, and effectively nullified any obvious power advantage a Super-Pro car might otherwise have had.

This became obvious when event organizer Dr. Jacob Simonsen first published his ‘final results’ the day after the event, the big winners coming from the GT-Pro and Sport-Pro classes, rather than the usual fastest-to-the-front Super-Pro one.

Having completed 73.19 percent (or 93) of its projected number of ‘ideal world’ laps (127) it was the diminutive Mazda 3 of Team Assassin Racing’s Mal Chamberlain and co-drivers David Cox and Phill Dravitski which not only won it’s (Sport-Pro) class, but it also won the 3-Hr race’s Index of Efficiency award.

In fact, Chamberlain and his co-drivers also came tantalizingly close to doing the 3-6-Hr double, only to be literally ‘pipped at the post’ by the appropriately named ‘Taking the P..s’ squad of Rodger and Marcus Smith.in their multi-coloured Nissan Primera in the closing stages of the (6-Hr) race.

Though both cars were from the same Sport Pro time band, and though they completed the same number of laps, and finished the day on exactly the same Index of Efficiency percentage (69.65%) the Rodger & Marcus Smith Nissan Primera got to the finish line first at the end of the 6-Hr, so it was awarded the class and IoE win, with Team Assassin Racing second, an agonizing 5 seconds behind at the flag.

In terms of laps completed, the 6-Hour event also proved to be a happy hunting ground for drivers Allan and Colin Letcher and Tony Rutz and their Team Get In Behind BMW E36 325i which completed 184 laps, to also claim first-past-the-post honours for a second time in the same wet, humid day in the 6-Hr race.

In second place overall and second in the GT-Pro class in the main 6-Hr event, having managed to clock up 182 laps by the time the chequered flag came out for a second and final time were Paul Booth and Matt Ryan in the 24 Red Racing team’s Honda Integra DC5.

For a couple of drivers who had to learn the track as they went, they did particularly well, as evidenced by the fact that not only did they end up finishing just two laps shy of the overall (and fellow GT-Pro class-winning) BMW E36 325i of Team Get In Behind’s Allan and Colin Letcher & Tony Rutz, they also ended up finishing the race with substantial margins on the third and fourth placed finishers in the GT-Pro time band, with a 7 lap advantage over Team ‘Shake ‘n Bake’ who finished third in class having completed 175 laps and 13 laps up on the fourth-placed ‘Flying Flamingoes’ squad which completed 169 laps.

Last year’s second annual series broke new ground, by including bona fide AASA New Zealand Endurance Race Championship titles in the mix. This year that focus will continue, with a second round at Taupo International Motorsport Park next Saturday (Sat, July 29), and a third and final back at Hampton Downs on Sat, Aug 19…

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