Although unable to compete in the final race of the weekend at Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Cambridge driver Nick Ross was pleased with his results from the meeting and more importantly the overall speed of the Concept Motorsport Total Lubricants Commodore on the Manawatu circuit.

In race two on Sunday afternoon Ross was able to make his way through the field to well inside the top 10 sitting comfortably in seventh before an oil leak set him back a few places.

He was able to hold on and keep up the pace to cross the finish line in 10th place improving on his earlier good result where in race one he finished 11th moving up from a 13th place start.

"We started leaking oil two laps from the finish in that race and got oil all over my tyres and dropped back to 10th - we were having a good run until then. We are pretty happy with the way things are going, the car and the team are working really well - the chassis is quick, our engines are quick and we continue to work on making them reliable." said Ross.

With just the sixth and final round of her rookie season in the BNTV8s Championship remaining, Christina Orr reflects how she has learned the ropes the hard way mixing it up with the feild of aggressive Ford and Holden drivers.

At the weekend a field of hungry V8 drivers battled out round five on the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding before heading to Taupo Motorsport Park next month to wrap up the highly competitive series.

Where the touring car adage 'rubbing is racing' is more of a suggestion than an indication of the BNTV8s genre, 22 year old Orr realises she wil have to fight to hold her own against a feild of very aggressive male drivers.

"At Manfeild the track is quite slow and technical and being in the mid-pack means getting caught up in quite a few incidents - before Manfeild we had nothing much more than some scratches but this weekend we had quite a bit with dents in every door and other people's paint all over the car."

Andy Booth, in the #23 Big Ben Pies Holden Commodore came away from the latest round of the BNT V8’s Championship at Manfeild Park Raceway as once again the leading Holden competitor but still frustrated with not being able to seriously challenge the championship leaders.

The tight, banked Manuwatu circuit has proven to be a happy hunting ground for the rival Fords in recent years and round 5 of this year’s championship continued that as Booth qualified as the lead Holden in 6th place after Saturday afternoon’s official qualifying sessions.

For the first time this season a weather rule allowing the cancellation of the top ten shoot out was used as rain began to fall just prior to the final qualifying session. This meant that grid positions would be determined by the final placings from the second, top 20 session. Booth felt he could have qualified higher but had elected to park the car for the rest of the second session knowing that he was comfortably through to the top ten.

Hamilton driver Kayne Scott emerged from one of the most hard fought rounds of the BNT V8s Championship at Manfeild on Sunday in fourth place overall for the round after a strong performance in the Fujitsu Falcon.

The defending champion was right in the hunt at the 3.03 kilometre circuit in Feilding, signalling his speed in qualifying and then backing it up with three strong race performances.

Scott and the Fujitsu Falcon demonstrated their potential immediately as they set the fastest time in the first segment of qualifying with all twenty-four cars on the track. In the second part, as the top twenty vied for places in the top ten shootout, Scott recorded the third fastest time. However, the normal qualifying process was then abandoned as rain swept across the circuit. Officials cancelled the shootout that would have given each driver a single timed lap to determine their grid positions for Sundays first race.