Jack Smith has taken victory in the first race of the weekend, at Round Four of the BNT V8s Championship at Teretonga near Invercargill today.
The young Australian lead the race from the green light, having started from pole position and largely remained unchallenged and lead home countryman Brenton Grove, with Kiwi Nick Ross coming home in third.
With qualifying held in wet conditions earlier in the day, the clouds and rain cleared and competitors were greeted by hot and sunny conditions for the 16-lap encounter.
“The track was a lot dryer than we thought it was going to be. Before the race we were tossing up whether it was going to be slicks or wets, but it was definitely slicks, it was about as dry as you could get,” said Smith.
“The car felt amazing and we just pulled away from the start and won the race.”
Brenton Grove was quick off the line and stuck with Smith for the opening laps before Smith put his head down and got into clean air and bridged a gap.
“Brenton hung in there for a few laps, I thought he was quite quick at the start. We ran green tyres, and as they got up to temperature we found some pace and were able to pull away.”
Matt Podjursky in car #77 won over Class Two rival Just Ashwell.
Matt Podjursky won Class Two having chased rival Justin Ashwell for most of the weekend. Ashwell made a slight error on the final corner of the penultimate lap, allowing Podjursky through into the lead and onto the race win.
“Good tussle there with Justin, trading the lead, good close race. He just made a little mistake going into the last corner and I capitalised on it and took the win,” said Podjursky.
“It’s a massive feat for us and our small team to come all the way down to the South Island and to another circuit I haven’t been to before. To top it off with a win at our first time here is huge.”
The BNT V8s have two more races tomorrow.