Well what a great weekend for those that turned up to the Manfield Non-Championship round this weekend.

The weather was great, the crowds were better than expected, and the racing was awesome.

We had a total of 21 cars on the mixed grid, which included two faster cars from the Allcomers that joined us as well (without them we would not have fulfilled our minimum 20 grid!)

Our class, along with others, attracted a lot of enquiry and attention, and we had five membership forms taken away from people who say they want to join our fun (one of these was one of the Allcomer cars).

A good friendly internal battle between Mark Burgess and Cameron Jones (driving Tony Stewarts Intergen car until he broke it) meant some fast-paced GT1 style racing saw them charge through the fields from the back in the races, along with other hard charging driving by Max Pennington, Jon Telford and Stephen Brown-Thomas.

But the overall champion for the day was Conal Dempsey in his Porsche 964 Turbo – congratulations Conal and a great start to your 2010-racing season.

In qualifying session, Ross Thurston and his Evo were the pair to beat, but unfortunately a bearing turned and damaged the crankshaft, which was the end of his weekend.

Race 1 saw Graham Barnes and Mark Burgess lower their qualifying lap times buy 2.5secs and 4.5secs  respectively. This gave Mark the quickest lap. Despite a very wide Intergen car (Cameron) out front, Graham was 2^nd, and Mark 3rd. Graham broke his own personal best lap time – maybe the man to beat in the GT2!

Race 2, was an exciting split reverse grid with Max Pennington (NZGT?) taking honours, a rapid Brendon Neiman 2^nd (GT2)  and Cameron Jones 3^rd (GT1).

Race 3 a full handicap, where Conal Dempsey (GT1) led them home with 4.5secs to Jon Telford (GT2), and another 1.1 seconds to Jarred Bird (Allcomer) in 3^rd, and three of the fastest cars were classified as DNF!

This 3 race format looks like it will give the cars that aren't the quickest a good chance at the championship honours. 

Full results on www.mylaps.com  

Not too many of our people came to the after-racing get together, but the ones that did had a great time chatting, eating pizzas and drinking (of course). There were small spot prizes, as well as the draw for a free round – which was won by one of our new Porsche drivers Mark Whyman – congratulations Mark who now has his next round paid for.

One of Mark Burgess’s crew was awarded the pink helmet for mis-matching race tyre sizes from Thailand – so now Mark has a set of 1x 17” tyre and 1x 18” tyre.

It seems that plenty of people already have excelled in their efforts this weekend at Manfield and obviously are wanting the thrill of having to wear the pink helmet for an hour – so make sure you stay after racing Saturday night at Taupo and see who wins the thrill of it!

There will be some more spot prizes drawn from Extreme Automotive – but you have to be there to collect your prize.

Some hard luck stories for the weekend though, with engine or mechanical problems for Tony Satherly and Ross Thurston and Stuart Bovey meaning that they didn’t get any points on the charts – our sympathy and lets hope they can find a fix and make it back soon.

Other things to mention:

WINDOW BANNERS.

The window banners have turned out a disaster, and have been sent back to the printers – so we will have some more ready in a week or two – but most of you will be able to get yours at Taupo.

TAUPO ENTRIES.

Don’t forget that the entries are due to our club before Friday 8^th October 2010, and anyone that wants to enter after that will have to send their entry and late entry penalty to the Taupo Club.

Remember our postal address is PO Box 43, Waitara 4346.

Our numbers are down at this stage for entries, so we will not be able to make our 40 car grids, so if you intend to enter get those entries in NOW.

TIER 1 OPEN CLASS.

There has been much chatter about a Tier 1 Open Class, and I know some people are worried that this means bad things for our classes.

Some of us may be more than a little biased, but we definitely have an awesome bunch of people, with close but relatively safe racing at minimal cost.

As we understand it so far, the Tier 1 Open class has all sorts of cars from space frames right down to Suzuki Swifts and Minis – yet we have worked so hard to take those risks away with the 2 separate grids and three classes.

Although it is probably a natural progression for some to want to move up to Tier 1 status, the cold hard facts is that most of us can’t afford it, and we race with the GTRNZ and IRC because we don’t get bogged down with rules and restrictions.

Everyone is going to make their own decision on this, but the GTRNZ is definitely here to stay.