Champions opening weekend kicked off with a test and tune session on the Saturday which gave the opportunity for teams, new and established to test their hard work over the winter.
Among the regular's a few new cars and bikes appeared such as Dave Amstrongs FE rail now powered by a rather large blown arias and 2 speed lenco. In the bike division the brand new nitro Harley of Ross Buchanan ran effortless mid 8's of the trailer.
Sunday dawned rather wet which looked to threaten Champion's opening meeting for the second consecutive year. Luckily the clouds and rain went elsewhere and before too long the action got underway with the introduction of several new nationals series brackets such as "Modified", "Super Sedan" and "Top Street". With a number of new classifications and index's in these brackets, a lot of "sand bagging" was evident in the early rounds until the racing got serious by finals time!
Aside from this, there were many individuals running their best times including the previously mentioned, Ross Buchanan who posted NZ's first kiwi 7 second run aboard a bike, posting a 7.901 before going on to win the Super Bike final in 7.905 at 148.22 mph! In fact it would have been the quickest and fastest NZ field seen with 2 other bikes running eight seconds.
Chris Cully's, ex Pac Performance Mazda RX3 with Chris Tynan driving qualified No1 in Pro Import at 9.712 seconds and went on to take runner up behind Bryce Mcewen running a naturally aspirated 4 rotor, Mazda RX7 which ran very quick also, getting down to 10.815 seconds in qualifying.
The highlight of the Import class came from Saturday's testing session when Dean Hargreaves pulled a huge wheelstand in his turbo powered mazda RX3 before coming down in a shower of sparks as the suspension bottomed out before springing the front end back up in the air several feet again!
The Top Comp bracket final was contested between two blown dragsters driven by Harry Taylor and Mark Vincent respectively. Harry ran the teams first 6 second time with their rear engined rail using a blown BB Chev for motivation, posting a 6.883 at 196.47 mph to defeat Mark's slowing 7.573 at 128.77 mph aboard the twin engined "Freight Train". |
