Bit of Bish Bash But All Good Says Richards

An agressive two rounds of the BNT V8s held back to back in the South Island brought some challenges to the Ballistic Motorsport team over the last two weekends but Simon Richards enjoyed his racing at Timaru International Motor Raceway followed by Teretonga Park and looks forward to round six at Manfeild Autocourse next month.

At Timaru two weekends ago a high speed accident left Richards a bit sore and the race team with a mammoth task of rebuilding the SEW Eurodrive Ford in time for Invercargill giving them just four days.

"The team put in a huge effort after Timaru putting the car back together - the whole team worked around the clock to turn the car around in four days - we got huge support from the Southland business community where nothing was a problem when it came to workshop space, painting, crack testing etc... there was fantastic support from everybody and we can't thank them enough." said Richards.

The accident happened while Richards was travelling at speed down the start finish straight luckily with no serious injury thanks to modern safety equipment.

"I was doing over 160kph when I was clipped by another car and went into the wall, I wasn't hurt but was a bit sore."

"There's good safety gear in the cars nowadays and you feel pretty safe." he claims.

Moving onto the next round at Invercargill's Teretonga Park Richards had a minor incident in the first race of the weekend on Saturday which forced him to visit the pitlane for a tyre change before continuing therefore losing many places finishing in 17th place.

"A couple of guys had gone off in front of me and I had nowhere to go - it pushed the guard up onto the tyre so I had to go straight into pitlane and that was pretty much the end of race one."

Sunday came and the weather caused mayhem on the BNT V8 field as the teams were challenged to determine a tyre choice for race two held under extremely unpredictable conditions.

A rain storm which hit just before the cars lined up for the start had the majority of teams bring their drivers in off the circuit for wet tyres at the last minute leaving just nine cars to start on the grid with the remainder forced to start the race from pitlane.

"We started from the pitlane but finished in 13th - it was quite a good race - I was stuck in a big bunch of cars and I was very happy with that race." said Simon Richards

The rain stopped however with those drivers on slick tyres starting to make their way up to the front.

"The wet tyres we were on dried out towards the end of the race and were quite greasy and sliding about all over the place."

The last race of the weekend was the reverse grid start and Richards lined up on the third row getting away well.

In the last race I started grid five and was up into second which was pretty good but then there was an incident and a red flag." he said.

"At the restart one driver got past me, I was in third place for about six laps and Bristow couldn't get me - eventually he passed when I hit a patch of oil and slid wide."

"A couple of laps later Edgell hit me from behind as we entered turn two which caused the car to slide off into the track run off."

Being knocked off the circuit Richards car lunged into a shallow ditch hitting the ground at speed and filling the front splitter with dirt which left him limping around and finishing in 18th place.

"Edgell later received a drive through but that didn't help us at all." said Richards.

A whirlwind series of events in the South Island at rounds four and five in the BNT V8 Championship has Simon Richards and the Ballistic Motorsport team looking forward to a break and then the penultimate round six held at Manfeild Autocourse over the weekend of 27th February to 1st March.

The final round of the 2008-2009 season will take place at Pukekohe Park Raceway over the weekend of 20-22nd March.