Knight Wins But Stops Short Of Overall Victory

Andy Knight was well on track to winning Round 5 of the Toyota Racing Series at Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding today until a minor electrical problem brought his Karcher Tatuus to a halt.

Earlier in the day Knight had motored to a dominant win in a 12 lap race to complement his 2nd place in the opening race of the round on Saturday afternoon.

This morning Knight won the start when the lights were extinguished and simply drove away, handing in a dominant drive in which he was never headed.

He crossed the line 1.986 seconds in front of Lower Hutt driver Ben Harford who trailed him throughout the race with defending champion and current championship leader Daniel Gaunt third.

This morning’s effort put Knight on pole position for the prestigious Dan Higgins Memorial Trophy Race, a race that featured plenty of drama. At the first attempt to start the race an incident involving several cars further down the field brought out the red flag to stop the race. After much confusion over the restart procedure the cars were eventually sent on a rolling lap in single file with Knight at the front. However as they accelerated away Harford hit the back of the Karcher Tatuus hindering Knight’s progress and allowing Gaunt and Van Gisbergen to head him off into the first corner. Harford was forced into the pits while Knight was faced with having to catch the NZL.Team Junior Development pair. He began to pile on the pressure as he chased Van Gisbergen and at the first corner of lap 5 he was through and off in pursuit of Gaunt.

However soon after, the race was stopped again after another incident. Once underway again Knight continued the pressure on Gaunt as the race ran towards it’s conclusion.

However with the chequered flag just a handful of laps away the Karcher Tatuus faltered as it exited Higgins Corner at the entrance to the back straight. Knight tried to continue but the car was struggling and a few corners later it stopped completely. The cause was traced to a grommet that had melted in the starter plug - a small problem with major consequences.

Had he maintained second place to the finish, the Christchurch driver would have won the round and moved into second place in the championship.

A disappointed Knight said later, “the car had a bit of pace here and it’s good to have that back.” Referring to the restart where he was hit from behind in the final race he said, “I just stayed at speed. When I was hit I lost out to the other guys. I then had to work over Shane (Van Gisbergen) pretty hard and I was figuring out where to get Daniel. If we had held position we would have won the weekend easily and it would have put us second in the championship. However we still managed 4th for the weekend.”

Knight was right on the pace at Manfeild, qualifying third fastest on the 3.03 kilometre circuit and then racing to second place in Saturday afternoon’s race, challenging leader Van Gisbergen until the safety car appeared on the circuit at the beginning of lap four. At the restart, Gaunt made a challenge around the outside but the Cantabrian held him out. Knight was again pushing leader Van Gisbergen hard, making several
challenges throughout the second part of the race. The pair pulled away from Gaunt and crossed the line just half a second apart at the end of 12 laps.

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