MANFEILD AUTOCOURSE , FIELDING Saturday 13th & Sunday 14th April 2002 Qualifying Times How the cars performed in qualifying Race Results Results directly from the track Race Timetable Find out when the cars are on the track Trackside Weather Updated Daily by Yahoo! The NZ 2.0 litre Touring Car Photo Gallery Selected pics from the meeting The Championship So Far All of the results to date Championship Points Who's leading the Championship Contact Us by Email We enjoy hearing from you! Search NZ Touring Cars Looking or Something Special - Search Our Web Site With Google! NZTC Ballot Box What Will Be the NZTC Championship Winning Car? BMW Nissan Toyota View Results Your opinion is important to us - and its fun! Qualifying -Fogg Makes Spectacular Exit From Championship by Tony Bunyan The weather for Saturday morning's 20 minute qualifying session was mild, overcast and still as the cars set to the track for the final qualifying session of the season. Eight minutes into the session the orderly progress of the teams was shattered when Team Kiwi's Angus Fogg rolled the Nissan Primera spectacularly down the Denni Hulme straight. Weaving to try and build some heat into his rear tyres, the rear end end of the car stepped out to the right. Sliding off onto the grass and gathering pace the rear tyres dug into the deep drain that runs parallel to the track. Fogg was then catapulted 3 metres into the air before coming to rest behind the tyre barrier at Higgins. Fogg's Nissan Primera looked decidedly second hand upon its return to the garage This brought out the safety car and the yellow flags, followed shortly afterwards by the red flag. Fogg was able to exit the car unassisted, but sustained serious bruising and whiplash. The car appeared too damaged to compete in Saturday afternoon's race The session was then effectively divided into two halves, the clock restarted with 12 minutes to go. Championship Points leader Barrie Thomlinson outpaced team mate Phil Hellebrekers by 5 hundredths of a second to secure pole, with John McIntyre in the second Team Kiwi car rounding out the top three places. New to the two litre scene and the only female competitor in the class, Julia Huzziff turned heads with an exciting excursion across the infield, producing a heap of adrenaline but no damage. The mechanical problems that have plagued Aaron Harris this season weren't apparent in the qualifying session, managing to position himself a row ahead of Toyota rival Tony Oliver. With Kevin Bell away driving a Porsche in the Nations Cup and Angus Fogg unlikely to compete over the weekend Harris has an opportunity to leapfrog over them for third place in the New Zealand Touring Car Championship. With two of the three races for the meeting scheduled to be contested with the V8 Class, the lap times posted by the Toyota Altezza place them on the second row of the grid outright. This has set the stage for some very close head to head racing, something that the V8s seem happy not to contend with in this years Drivesafe 500!       Thomlinson and Toyota Take Championship!! by Tony Bunyan Congradulations to Barrie Thomlinson and the Toyota Team on their dominating performance in the 2002 New Zealand Touring Car Championship. From their impressive debut at Pukekohe, to their dominance at the completion of the season at Manfield, the Toyota team have shown how exciting and refreshing an injection of new blood into the 2.0 litre format can produce. While other manufacturers have drifted away from the Championship in recent years, Toyota has lead a revival both in terms of performance and presentation. Enjoy your success! Barrie Thomlinson Won the 2002 New Zealand Touring Car Championship in Style Major changes were made to the format for the final round of the New Zealand Touring Car Championship held at the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding. The weekend saw the cars compete in a single ten lap race on Saturday before combining with the V8 class on Sunday for two 25 lap races. Race One Saturday's race was held in bright sunny conditions. Phil Hellebrekers got the jump on team mate and Championship leader Barrie Thomlinson to lead into the first corner. The Nissan Primera is very quick off the line and John McIntyre used it to full advantage, blasting past Thomlinson and into a Toyota sandwich. Thomlinson wasn't content to hang back for long. Showing the outright straight speed of the Altezza, Thomlinson blasted past McIntyre down the Hulme straight to pressure Hellebrekers. Further back Tony Oliver had overhauled Aaron Harris's E36 BMW. By the third lap Thomlinson had regained the lead. With only Hellebrekers having a mathematical chance of beating Thomlinson for the Championship the pair dueled for lap after lap. Their dicing didn't slow progress and they opened a gap on third placed McIntyre who held a lonely vigil well ahead of Oliver and Harris. Aaron Harris had not conceded to Oliver as his tyre smoke through Castrol indicated. For lap after desperate lap he probed looking for a way around the beautifully prepared Toyota Corona. Click on the Image for an Enlarged Version of the Circuit Map Hellebrekers too was on a mission and on lap seven his persistence paid off, flashing past Thomlinson and back into the lead. Harris too was putting tremendous pressure on Oliver and on the next lap nailed home his advantage at Pepsi to move into fourth place. If there had been any team orders, they had certainly gone out the window at Toyota Motorsport. The inevitable finally came at Castrol on lap nine. The corner is just not wide enough for two race cars and the contact sent Thomlinson off the track and onto the grass. His race had turned from a battle for the lead to one of salvaging as many points as he could. The incident paid dividends for McIntyre and Harris, who suddenly found himself in a podium position. Thomlinson did well to fight his way back to fourth in a very short time. But time was not on his side has the cars crossed the line, Harris beating him to the flag by barely a bonnet. Hellebrekers achieved his goal of gaining maximum points and keeping himself in the game. Thomlinson will have to wait for Sunday's races to score enough points to take out the championship. "Anything can happen in racing", commented Thomlinson. "Look what happened to Brett Riley's points lead last season. And the outcome of racing with the V8s is something no one is prepared to predict". Race 2 Combining with the V8s for a gruelling 25 laps, the leading 2.0 litre car of   All text and photographs are copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 & 2002 TR Bunyan

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