Qualifying
-Richards Dominates Session
by Tony Bunyan
The fourth
round in the 2000/01 New Zealand Touring Car Championship
Meeting today saw the return of 2.0 litre Touring Cars to
the Levels Raceway in Timaru anrd the start of the second
half of the season.
The weather
had deteriorated from Friday's hot dry practice session, with
rain falling early in the morning, dampening the track and
run off areas. A high of 16ūC had been forecast. The rain
stopped two hour before the qualifying session and the track
dried as other classes completed their qualifying sessions.
Both the
BMWs and Nissan Primeras were on the pace during the practice
sessions and neither Championship leader Brett Riley or defending
Champion Jason Richards were prepared to predict the outcome.
In the end Richards made it look easy. His time of 1m 09.467
seconds was 0.455 seconds ahead of Riley.
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Richards
Once Again Proved How Quick Team Kiwi Can Be
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In the
first half of the session it was the Toyota Corona of Peter
Scharmach that held pole with a time of 1:11.925. In the early
part of the session the engine of Jody Vincent's Nissan Sentra
SSS let go spectacularly, creating a cloud of thick white
smoke and necessitating the use of a yellow flag, interrupting
qualifying for 5 minutes.
Angus
Fogg and Kevin Bell were the first of the Team Kiwi/International
Motorsport cars to put in some hot laps. Riley and Richards
preferring to do an installation lap and pull into the pits.
Fogg replaced
Scharmach on pole, the first to drop the times into the 1:10
second range.
Both Kevin
Bell and Peter Scharmach had their moments. Bell at the hairpin
and Scharmach on the high speed left had sweeper.
After
sustaining some serious damage late in Thursday's practice
session, Barrie Thomlinson in the Short Motorsport Lexus 200IS
recorded a great time
to
put him in contention for the front row of the grid.
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Richards
and Fogg Put Team Kiwi on the Front Row of the Grid
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With less
than ten minutes of the session remaining, Richards and Riley
returned to the track.
Richards
slashed the pole setting time to 1:09.586 on his third lap.
Riley responded, falling into second with a time of 1:09.922.
Richards returned to the track to extend his lead to 0.455
seconds.
In the
early part of the session, Angus Fogg had suffered from a
slow leak in the front right tyre. This had unsettled the
car, so that having fixed the problem in the pits, Fogg stormed
past Riley's time the final minute of the session to secure
second place on the grid.
As the
checkered flag fell the order for Race One was set, with Richards
on pole, with his teammate Fogg joining him on the front row
of the grid. Riley secured third and Barrie Thomlinson's time
was good enough to put him next to Riley on the second row
of the grid.
Bell and
Scharmach completed the top six places.
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