Behind the wheel with a Kiwi

Hi all, a slightly longer one today.

There aren’t many events that I could put on a similar pedestal to my horror weekend at Timaru earlier this year, but Ruapuna came pretty close.

There was no damage, no broken bones; no looks of scorn or resentment aimed in my direction – but we felt well and truly robbed. After such an awesome start at Pukekohe a few weeks before, to see round two pan out the way it did was a real shock to the system.

The weekend was always going to be an uphill sprint after troubles in testing, but we soldiered on nonetheless. What we lacked on Friday we found in qualifying as I put the car on the second row alongside Daniel Gaunt, but even then there was something not quite right; a mysterious fuel surge issue that would pop up at random intervals and cause me to second guess whether it was all in my head. At this stage, it wasn’t that noticeable, but it would only get worse as we rolled into racing.

My biggest handicap in race one was not the car but a drive through penalty I was slapped with at the mid way point. Up until then I had been in a battle with the front pack of cars, tucked in behind Jody Vincent, who I got past before having to serve my penalty and rejoin to finish eighth.

I was deemed to be using more road than any other car on the circuit (taking a “shortcut”) yet, looking at the footage, every other driver out there was running in the wheel tracks of those around them. Our questioning of the penalty wasn?t an excuse to whinge – more a question of why one driver should be singled out or made an example of.

This issue aside, we still had two more races to get through, and in the second I didn’t fare much better, running in the front pack of cars before the car began coughing and dying far more severely than it had in qualifying. As the cars in front edged away, I was left to pick up the pieces in seventh spot, where I would start for the feature race finale.

It started well. I made a superb start and jumped into the top five by turn one, and after the banging and crashing and jostling had subsided found myself in second, chasing down David Reynolds in the lead.

The car felt sweet; no hiccups, no lack of power – nothing. I began closing in lap by lap and maintaining the gap to Craig Baird in behind until the ghost appeared for another spooking.

For five to six laps the problem got progressively worse with the sensation of turning off the key, then turning it back on again as I exited medium-speed corners. The gap to Reynolds grew to over five seconds, and by that stage Bairdo had passed me also. Settled into third I was instructed to “bring her home”, which I did, but when the fuel pressure zeroed itself on nearly every corner on the final lap, I was just worried about getting to the finish line!

Low and behold I managed to bag enough points to finish just off the podium in fourth for the round, which was a nice consolation for a weekend of frustration.

The underlying issue with the car – whatever it is – will, as always, turn out to be something simple and straightforward. This is a Porsche we are talking about after all!

There’s six weeks to regroup and ensure the car is right for Timaru, so on a more positive note, I was able to take time out to hang with a few of the Project KPH kids at Ruapuna, as I did at Pukekohe, showing them through the car and making sure the brave little battlers had a great day out. Leah Evans does a great job with the organisation and is deserved of any support that can be offered. Check out Project KPH here.

Also, we won the Hyper Stimulator Enduro! It was a long race, (24 hours in fact) around Bathurst in the Audi R8 Prototypes, but Alastair Wootten, Gene Rollinson and I took it out, albeit by less than a lap! We had stiff competition from the Hyper Stimulator League car throughout and it was a fun event – one that I’d certainly consider doing again if more drivers were involved for added competition.

Before I sign off for, if you’ve missed any of the action from the Pukekohe round of the GT3s, or the early races at Ruapuna, you can check them out at TVNZ On Demand here right throughout the championship.

Remember to visit jonolester.com.

Keep safe and see you at the track,

Jono