The 2-day Icebreaker Meeting at Pukekohe Park Raceway, situated 45 minutes south of Auckland, is traditionally the first major race meeting of the season. Our preparation for this meeting did not go well! Testing at the 2.82km circuit one week before the event was wet, windy & cold. The heavy rain, combined with an oil spill on one of the faster corners, resulted in a 180 degree spin (check out the incar video in our Media Gallery). The Sabre hit the Armco hard, resulting in...

• one seriously bent front rim - repaired by friend, sponsor, and Targa co-driver Lance Bell from Arrow Wheels
• bent steering, broken front splitter, and damage to the fibreglass front guard, bonnet & spoiler - repaired by friend and racecar builder Andy Culpin from Race FX

Our Almac Sabre was repaired in time for the Icebreaker Meeting, and we raced in the 'NZ Sports Car Series/Clubmans' class. Unfortunately, because of the large number of races scheduled (11 classes and 33 races in total) we were only allocated 3 races over the 2-day meeting. Also unfortunate was the lack of other road-going sports cars in the field, with most of our competitors being light-weight, 450-550kg, track-only sports prototypes running small-capacity hi-performance engines, wings, and slick racing tyres (our road-legal Almac Sabre S2 weighs 1175kg, and runs on road tyres with no wings). It was a bit like "taking a knife to a gun fight", and the performance gap meant some fairly lonely racing.

However, our best lap time of 1min 13 sec was OK considering our totally standard 1990 Toyota V8 engine! Thanks to Lance Bell (Sponsor), and Blake Seath (Team Manager) for their efforts over the weekend.

Check out our Media Gallery for incar video of each race, or click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.