What began as a promising weekend turned near tragedy for Suzuki Swift Sport Cup driver Shaun Lawrence in the penultimate round of the 2009/10 Championship.

After a solid practice session, the team made a few final changes to the cars set up before heading into Saturday mornings qualifying session. The changes, in effect, made the car extremely difficult to drive and Lawrence ended up with one of his worst results of the season so far.

With extremely changeable weather conditions, the team made a (literally) last minute decision on the set up for the first race of the weekend, and it couldn’t have panned out better.

“We were watching the weather and took a huge punt on a set up change just before the start of the race. We were starting eleventh on the grid and figured that we had nothing to lose anyway!” explained Lawrence.

In a one-make class renound for its extremely close racing, Lawrence found himself climb from the back of the field all the way up to fourth outright, before contact with another car saw him have a high speed excursion into the tyre wall on the final lap.

“I was gutted, and, it must be said, pretty angry too” said Lawrence. “We easily had the fastest car, were consistently lapping quicker than anyone else, and then to get punted off was just ridiculous. We lodged a protest but that was dismissed and had to start Sunday off the back again” he went on to add.

The Shaun Lawrence Racing team worked hard through Saturday night to repair the ensuing damage, and could only hope their luck improved for Sundays two races. It didn’t.

Race Two was really little more than a procession, while Race Three saw the reverse grid start and had Lawrence starting from fourth on the grid. An excellent start saw the Kea Trailers Suzuki take the lead on the first corner, only to run wide and onto the grass, again dropping Lawrence to the rear of the field.

With Championship points at stake, Lawrence pushed hard for the remainder of the race setting the fastest lap in the process. The net result from the weekends racing saw Lawrence drop from sixth overall to seventh, but the prospect of finishing the series in the top five is still very much alive.

The final round of the Suzuki Swift Sport Cup takes place at the Taupo International raceway on March 19-21.

Media: JPS Media  Photo: Geoff Ridder