Round 4 Taupo Sunday 27th February 2022
Although it is listed as round 4 it was really Round 1 for NMC, the other 3 races being cancelled due to COVID. A small but dedicated number turned on a very pleasant weekend in Taupo, unusually not too hot and not too cold.
We had new member Rhys Gould running his South Island Muscle car. Unsurprising, this car will forever be known as the Dean Perkins Falcon, having 20 odd years of Dean’s ownership. By the end of the meeting Rhys was really getting on top of it. Craig Horn’s red LJ GTR Torana was being driven this weekend by Paul Ives.

Because of low numbers in most classes, we were combined with the Racing Saloons and NZ6’s.This made qualifying a little tricky with 17 cars circulating but everyone survived ok. New man Rhys was fastest overall with a 1:39.382 and Paul’s Torana was the second fastest NMC car with a 1:41.465 and 4th place overall.

Race 1, our usual scratch race, turned out to be a 1st on the grid for your start position as the qualifying times had not come through by the time we needed to grid up for the first race. Everyone seemed to cope ok - well done guys.
The race got underway well for most people but Rhys who had a bit of a traction problem, and as the race was 9 laps the random starting order sorted itself out. Rhys and Tony Galbraith both had little off-track excursions with Rhys managing to dance his way through the sand at turn one and Tony having a bit of a spin where the track turns right to go down to the big sweeper. This left Allan Pearce in the red Commodore to be first NMC car home, closely followed by Paul and then Tony.

All races for the day were 9 laps. Once we finally had the qualifying positions, we always started in the same order. Race 2 got away again in a cloud of Falcon tyre smoke with Tony G being the eventual winner, followed by Allan, with Paul B stopping at the beginning of the back straight after miscalculating the fuel levels in his new fuel cell. Colin Schischka’s mighty Corvette also did not quite make it to the finish due to a gearbox tail shaft issue. Paul Ives was having a couple of issues in Craig’s Torana and only managed to complete 3 laps.

Race 3 saw the expected finishing order as Rhys was now getting on top of the starts in the Falcon and he led Tony home, followed by Paul B and Allan.
Due to the small number of entries for the meeting as a whole, 4 races were given to each group (but only the first 3 counted for points for NMC) and it was Rhys again who led the field home, followed by Tony and Paul B.