Hooray 🙂 We are back at the old Turbo’s favourite track and on our ‘normal’ size tyres… 🙂 and the old girl feels as good as it ever did. :o)
I only managed to qualify 2nd to Bruce Manon’s Escort, but that was OK. We were both lapping in the 1.05’s which is the ‘break out’ time for the Arrows Class at Pukekohe, so we were both pretty much on the ball.
I won the drag start to the first corner and managed to hold Bruce off for the first half of the race, but he was all over my back bumper for the last couple of laps. Luckily the back markers worked to my advantage for the last lap, as the old Turbo developed a misfire… I managed to win by half a car length.. whew… then discovered that the fuel gauge has gone on the blink… and I finished almost out of gas…!! Luck was with me to notch up win number 152 for the ‘Ivory Beast’
Sunday’s races were both handicap events, and I was well off the back of the grid… 5 seconds behind Bruce’s Escort!! But as we have shown, the Porsche gets off the mark so well that I think we could have made up a lot of time on the first lap BUT that was not to be.. I took off so quickly that the newly fitted fan belt spun, then disintegrated!! So that was that, for race one.. a DNF. (lucky I saw the ignition light come on so I slowed before the engine melted).
After a couple of hours hard and hot work refitting the old (Hampton Downs) fan belt, I was able to take my place for the last Arrows handicap race, at the back of the field, this time along side Bruce Manon’s Escort. I took off more gently to save the fan belt, but still managed to lead Bruce’s Escort as we fought our way through all the traffic for 8 laps. The traffic was kind to me and I took the lead towards the end of the last lap to notch up win number 153. WoW… another great day for the ‘Ivory Beast from Bahrain’.
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