The weekend began as the last one ended, in the shed working on the car, it was certainly a massive job, but we’re nothing short of stoked to see the car together for the weekend, and especially to see it going as well as it was!

We only finished the car after lunch on Friday, to head up the very same day. We were greeted with an unpleasant surprise, we went through scrutineering and we were found to have damage to the harnesses and were told that if we went out the gate we would be fined and excluded from the event, in the little time we had, we called a favour from our friends at Kyan Davie Racing, where they lent us a pair harnesses out of their car as they weren’t racing that weekend.

This caused me to miss the practice session in the morning and go into qualifying fresh. I was semi-worried going into quali, as I hadn’t had any experience on the long back straight before, I eventually found my braking point and managed a lap good enough for P2!

I came into the pits not realizing I did anywhere near as well as I did, I saw dad walking towards the car and I was rearing to know where I ended up in the freshly rebuilt car, he said I was in P2, I didn’t exactly question it, but I did ask to see race monitor… I was pleased to see I had quite the gap to the people behind me, but at a track with the amount of drafting that Pukekohe has, that didn’t seem to matter…

Entering the first race I was filled with confidence after my qualifying performance, putting it on the front row, off the line I smoked the bags a little bit as we changed our first gear for this track, Liam got the jump on me off the line but the tow down the back straight helped me move up into the lead of the race early on as I made a move around the outside to lead going into the second lap of the race. I engaged in an awesome battle that went on for most of the race, Liam made an error going into the final corner mid-way through our battle, and I thought that was the end of it and I had the race to myself out the front, it turns out that at Puke, it’s never the end of the race until the flag has dropped, as he came back through the field really quick to keep the battle going. I dropped a place to Leo near the end of the race, as I was on his gearbox going into the last lap, we were split due to lap traffic coming from the historics. This caused me to have to defend from Dylan behind me, not allowing me to challenge for the lead across the stripe, where I was 3rd.

In race 2 I was starting on the third row of the grid in 5th, as some drivers had improved their time, ahead of mine, I got off the line and round the first 4 corners cleanly, then I got a massive tow down the back straight to take 4th, there was a lot of close racing, however, I never made it into the lead, as a lot of moves were really close and 3 - wide so I generally decided it would be best to finish and pick up championship points rather than take a risk at a DNF for an extra few.

In race 3 I was again in 5th off the start, this time a competitor had electrical issues with his car, making him go backwards very quickly, going into turn 2 I followed another car through to make it p3, due to my compromised line around the double right I couldn’t keep the theme of overtaking down the back straight this race. This race, again, got dicey up the front, but I decided for a second time it would be smart not to make any dumb moves that could result in me not finishing the race, especially considering I was already 3rd!

I finished the round in 3rd while sitting 2nd in the championship points, it was awesome to race at Pukekohe on the long back straight for the first and last time, it was awesome racing Puke how Puke was meant to be raced and to hit a top speed of 225kph.

Some of you may have noticed my new sponsor Civiltrain, accompanying me on my helmet visor for the season! I am super grateful to have these guys on board as they have given support to many successful racing drivers over the years!