Hamilton racing driver Martin Short has won the ZOAGN New Zealand Formula Ford Championship at the final round at Taupo Motorsport Park today. Short amassed enough points to clinch the series ahead of Auckland’s Nick Cassidy who drove superbly to win the overall round with a hat trick of race victories after qualifying on pole position. Christchurch’s Matt Williams finished 2nd overall for the round and 3rd overall for the series.

Despite his seemingly comfortable points lead, Short made it abundantly clear that a champion is still only as good as his last race and was therefore determined to finish the season battling for race wins. Qualifying fully justified his claim when he set the second fastest time just 0.415 secs behind a flying Cassidy who signaled his intention to fight all the way by claiming pole position. The duo were followed by Williams just 0.230 secs back ahead of Matthew Penrose (Rangiora), Kim Crocker (Tauranga), a disappointed Damon Leitch (Invercargil) and Brent Sullivan (Nelson).

Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong but young Southland racing driver Damon Leitch still manged to emerge from the final round of the Zoagn NZ Formula Ford Championship at Taupo Motorsport Park with third place overall this weekend.

Sixteen-year-old Leitch blew an engine during testing on Thursday and suffered ongoing problems from then on with an engine miss, a distributor problem, plus brake and other issues hampering him in an extremely difficult weekend. He still managed to set the sixth fastest time in Saturdays qualifying session and then lined up in readiness for the first race on Saturday afternoon. As the field left the grid a clutch problem caused the Zero Fees Stealth to stall on the line. Once underway the Invercargill driver only managed a couple of laps before he lost second and third gear. Leitch still brought the car home in seventh position and in doing so set a lap time good enough to promote himself to third place on the grid for Sunday mornings second race of the round.

This weekend sees the final round of the ZOAGN New Zealand Formula Ford Championship and what a contest it has been. With the world wide junior formula of motor racing having provided some of motor racing’s closest and most daring moments for 40 years, it was so good to see this season provide some of the best races we have seen and a trio of deserving race winners.

As drivers and teams arrive at Taupo Motorsport Park for the Hydraulink Grand Finals, most acknowledge that Championship leader Martin Short will be hard to beat owing to his 128 point lead. However, that is not to say that some of the chasing pack will not be giving it a go all the same. Hamilton’s Short has driven a well calculated and consistent campaign to build a good lead but still cannot relax or take unnecessary risks.

The men most will be watching will be the next two drivers on the points ladder who have not only won several races but are engaged in their own personal battle for 2nd overall or perhaps the outright Championship. Aucklander Nick Cassidy had a dream start to the Championship with a hat trick of wins in the opening round but is hotly pursued by Christchurch’s Matt Williams who is only 10 points adrift.

Christchurch racing driver Matt Williams has won Round 5 of the ZOAGN New Zealand Formula Ford Championship at Manfeild Park in Fielding today after a weekend of close and tight racing. Williams took out two wins and a 4th placing to top the podium ahead of Auckland’s Nick Cassidy who notched up 1st, 2nd and 3rd placings with championship points leader Martin Short (Hamilton) 3rd overall with a 2nd and two 3rd places.

Desperation was evident for the Championship contenders in Saturday morning qualifying as shown by Short claiming the pole position by just 0.068 secs ahead of Williams with Cassidy 0.003 further back – that is just three thousandths of a second! Leitch qualified 4th only 0.286 behind Cassidy and was closely followed by Andre Heimgartner and veteran Formula Ford racer Kim Crocker who was making a one off reappearance. Brett Sullivan, Henry Thomas-Kircher, Richard and Tim Vickers followed with a devastated Matthew Penrose suffering from recurring oil feed system problems.

The opening 10 lap race of the weekend was a Formula Ford cracker as Short, Williams, Cassidy and Heimgartner diced throughout with three different race leaders swapping the lead five times. As Williams set the initial pace, he soon found himself swamped by Cassidy while Short was content to remain behind the dicing duo until he was overtaken by Heimgartner.