McIntyre back on top after Manfeild

Defending champion John McIntyre won all three races at Manfeild to re-take the lead with just one round of the 2008-09 BNT V8s Championship left to run.
With the maximum 225 points for three race wins, McIntyre’s total is now 1022, moving him from a 32 point deficit to Kayne Scott to a 38 point advantage over Scott who led the hard-fought series for the last two rounds.

McIntyre was naturally delighted with three wins in one round – a feat not often achieved in this series – and was also delighted to rack up his 40th race win in this class in Sunday’s 16-lap race. Having married long-time partner Lisa just a week ago, McIntyre laughingly concurred that married life must be agreeing with him.

“At Manfeild it’s all about getting drive out of the corners and in that last race, I was able to get passed a few ‘freight trains’ of other competitors,” said the Nelson-based McIntyre, who had some luck to add to his driving skills, particularly in the final reverse grid race. Having started on the back of the grid in a race with varying levels of rainfall, McIntyre worked his way up into third place. Then race leader Angus Fogg was passed by second-placed Andrew Anderson, then Anderson spun right in front of McIntyre. “I saw Andrew spin, but he did the right thing and stopped his car spinning out of control so I was able to take a clean line around him.

With just three races to run at Pukekohe to wrap up this year’s championship, McIntyre said the next two weeks will be all about setting the John McIntyre Racing Ford up for pole position on the fast 2.9km Pukekohe circuit.

“Paul Manuell had pole at Pukekohe when we raced there in November and we’ll have six or seven cars within a few tenths of a second there – along with Kayne [Scott] and Bairdo [Craig Baird], guys like Tim Edgell will be in the mix for qualifying. Having pole position will be important, but there are also good opportunities for passing at Pukekohe, so we’ll be fighting for the championship right down to the wire.”

The other side to McIntyre’s success is disappointment for Kayne Scott who was exasperated with a weekend’s worth of bad luck in the Fujitsu Ford.

“When the luck’s not running your way, it just makes it so hard,” said the Hamilton-based former V8 champion. “We got only 20 minutes of testing on Friday after a brand-new clutch failed, which was a disaster. In the first rain-affected race, the windscreen fogged and a relay on the demister blew, which meant the visibility was atrocious. We did manage to finish second in the second race, but we got tagged in the third race – also wet – when I was being so cautious so we came in to change the tyre as a precaution. Then on the last lap the exhaust fell off. It was just one of those weekends.”

Going into the Hydraulink grand finale at Pukekohe, Scott says he expects to have a similar pace to McIntyre “… so it’s going to be tight.”

Like Scott, Aucklander Andy Booth was in the wars with the two-time former champion dropping off the circuit in the third race after another competitor caused a broken steering arm in the Big Ben Pies Holden. “It was a huge disappointment,” said Booth. “The car had been running so well until then and I was up from the back of the starting grid to eleventh – we could have won the race from there.”

The rare non-finish meant Booth lost third place overall to Craig Baird in the United Video Ford. “It’s not good for the championship,” said Booth. “We’ll just have to go for broke at Pukekohe.”

Baird was another who had a tough weekend. “We had good car speed and thought we might win some races after getting pole on Saturday. But it was our first really wet weekend in the car so I’m still learning a little. We’ve moved into third in the championship which is good, but winning championships is largely about not having DNFs. We had our problems earlier in the season and John and Kayne haven’t had any DNFs.”

Paul Manuell finished third for the weekend with two fourths and a fifth, which allowed the Orix Holden driver to gain slightly on AV8 Motorsport team-mate Booth in the championship points’ table, but still in the fifth place he held coming into this Manfeild round. “We didn’t qualify that well, but we made the most of what we had. During those wet races, visibility was awful – you can hardly see the side of the circuit or the lights of the car in front of you.”

Sixth-placed Angus Fogg started on pole for the final reverse grid race and held the lead for virtually the entire race until a hard-charging Andrew Anderson took the lead at the hairpin in wet conditions. Fogg appeared to slow slightly, but was able to follow McIntyre past Anderson when the ITM Holden driver spun. This left Fogg in second for the race and sixth overall in the LG Ford.

Eddie Bell, Paul Pedersen, Adam Brook and Andrew Anderson round out the championship’s top ten heading in the final at Pukekohe on 7 and 8 March.