Cambridge driver Nick Ross has bounced back to claim three podium finishes and to finish second overall at the fourth round of the BNT NZ Touring Car Championship held at Teretonga near Invercargill over the weekend.
The result comes off the back of a trying round the previous weekend at Ruapuna where the Concept Motorsport team suffered numerous mechanical gremlins with their Total Lubricants Nissan Altima.
“The team did an amazing job to get the car back to where it should be following Ruapuna,” said Ross.
“We missed out on pole position this weekend by 0.017 of a second, which is incredibly close and goes to show how tight it is up the front.”
In the weekend’s opening race, Ross finished second behind Auckland driver Simon Evans in his Holden Commodore, before a post race 10-second penalty was handed down to Evans for jumping the start.
The penalty pushed Evans down the order and elevated Ross into first place.
From there, Ross went on to claim a second place finish in the following race, and third in the final encounter of the weekend.
“The conditions got progressively worse over the weekend. Saturday’s race was dry, the first on Sunday was damp then the last one was very very wet.”
“I probably didn’t pick the conditions correctly and to tell the team to give the car the right set-up in that last race. It was ok, but we didn’t have the pace of Simon Evans and Jason Bargwanna ahead of us.”
“But to finish where we did for the weekend, we’re quite happy.”
Ross feels that he and his Total Lubricants Nissan Altima are now back on the right path for continued good results.
“I feel we’re back on track performance wise for the rest of the season. I think if we can hit the ground running at the next round at Manfeild like we did here, then we should go ok.”
“We know we have the pace and when we get the set up right, we can do it. It’s just a matter of keeping the car reliable and staying up the front with the other fast guys.”
The BNT NZ Touring Car Championship now heads to Manfeild near Feilding for round five the weekend of February 11-12.
Nick Ross, the TOTAL Lubricants Nissan Altima and Concept Motorsport will again be supported this season by TOTAL Lubricants, Jim Wright Nissan, RYCO 24•7, C&R Developments, Team Wino, Auto Trail Ltd, 82C, Cambridge Hire Centre and Tyre Traders.