Seven of NEW ZEALANDS best F5000 cars arrived at Sandown on Friday morning including Clark Proctor (March) and Steve Ross (McRae) both who are front running Kiwi cars and were mixed with Tom and Australia's best F5000 cars for a showdown of driver skills, horsepower, speed and wonderful noise and the only front running Oz car missing was Richard Davison who had engine drama's at the last minute the day before the meeting.
It all began in qualifying when Tom won pole position by over 2 x seconds and only just over a second slower than his own Sandown outright lap record followed by Proctor, Zazryn, Sala who was to lose his engine in R1 plus Ross next and further back than expected and the rest.
Race 1 was won by Tom by over 4 x seconds although all were seemingly nursing their warm engines thanks to extremely hot weather and was not helped by following a safety car for a couple of laps while they cleared up Lewis after he had collided with the NZ's Greer Lola … noted however was Ross who had overshot turn 1 from the start had dropped to 7th place did a demon drive back to 2nd outright in the last lap so it was all hotting up for R2.
Race 2. Lap 1 Zazryn overshot the back straight and belted the tyre wall badly damaging the car but he was OK so most of the race was again under safety car until the last two laps where Ross won the restart and cleverly kept Tom behind him to the flag winning by a tiny margin of 0.02 of a second but it was obvious his advantage came not only from good driving but he had more horsepower than Tom's car which also is not shabby in a straight line and Proctor 3rd who also enjoys lots of NZ ''neddies'' was right up Tom's tailpipes …. good racing!
Race 3. Sunday afternoon Tom won the start and was never headed winning by over 15 seconds with Proctor and Ross in a brilliant duel for second the former coming 2nd by a whisker and Alfie Costanzo (star of F5000 in the late 1970's) in Hamilton's McLaren with a brilliant 4th.
However all the weekends goodwill was undone to a degree when someone in the Kiwi contingent lodged a protest against Tom's car sighting 2 x minor (non performance) items they claimed did not conform with their version of the rules. Of course both items of course were judged entirely OK so nobody including the scrutineer in charge were impressed with the protest and there were many comments how ''bad taste'' this blemish to F5000 was and some even suggested it was sour grapes from the Kiwi's after having been towelled off by Tom so thoroughly … Tom as usual said nothing.
These sorts of instances do not help the F5000 movement and only create bad feeling amongst all and it will be interesting to test the climate at Eastern Creek where everyone again is racing at the big Tasman Trophy meeting November 28 - 30 but hopefully lessons have been learned and the racing should be cracker without too many incidents or bad feeling we hope.
Cheers
TEAM TOM
For more information about Tom head to www.tomtweedie.com or search for 'Team Tom - Tom Tweedie Motorsport' on Facebook.
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