The penultimate round of the Mountshop/GVI Formula Open NZ (FONZ) series was held at Thunder at the Downs meeting at Hampton Downs 15-16 March 2025. This round was supported by Aegis Oils and saw a field of cars, somewhat depleted following on from the Historic GP in January and the very wet Legends meeting in February.
With six cars out due to either engine failures or accident damage we saw eight cars line up for race one. Of particular interest was the debut of Paul McCormack driving the Tatuus FT40 which his son Toby drove last season. Of course, this season Toby is campaigning the Stuart Lush owned ex-Marcus Armstrong Tatuus FT50. Sadly, for Toby he had no competition in the Graeme Lawrence Cup for FT50’s as all the others in this group were out with mechanical issues. However, he did make hay under the sunny skies by claiming all three races to not only take out the Graeme Lawrence Cup round for FT50’s but also the overall highest score for the weekend in the Howden Ganley Cup.
The Jim Palmer Cup FT40 series was looking really good with four cars turning out with the aforementioned Paul Mc Cormack joining season regulars Paul Couper, James Corban and Reagan Edwards.
The Formula Atlantic brigade were missing Kaleb Ngatoa and Ethan Sillay which left it to Kenny Smith, Ollie Sentch and Fraser Windleburn to fly the flag for the senior cars of the series in the David Oxton Cup.
The beauty of FONZ is that whilst the three different types of cars race for their own individual series points, because they all race together it creates very close racing with all cars being similar in lap times but delivering the performance in varying ways. Therefore, even though the numbers were low the racing was outstanding with battles right throughout the field.
Series newcomer Ollie Sentch had the ex-Grant Rivers Swift DB4 Formula Atlantic absolutely singing and he had great battlers with both James Corban and Reagan Edwards in their FT40’s in all three races. Likewise, another FT40/ Atlantic battle raged between Paul Couper, Paul Mc Cormack in FT40’s and Fraser Windleburn in his Atlantic.
In race two on Sunday morning Paul Couper got a blinder of a start from last on the grid to get past both Paul McCormack and Fraser Windleburn. Sadly on lap two at the end of the straight between the Porsche Dipper and Trade Zone Sweeper the diff locked up and spun Paul 180 degrees hitting the very end of the Armco barrier and tearing the left front suspension off the car, luckily Paul was unhurt.
Of the remaining two Kenny Smith had a quiet time in his 1990 NZIGP winning Swift DB4 after absolutely stunning the youngsters with his demon starts coming from third on the grid to lead into turn one only to be repassed by Toby Mc Cormack before turn two.
As Toby pulled away from Kenny on each occasion, so too did Kenny on the rest of the field. So at the start of race three, the fifteen lapper, with Kenny Smith & Paul Couper no starters one might have thought that with only six cars it was going to be a snore fest. Well they could not have been more wrong! Right from Lights out Paul Mc Cormack (FT40) and Fraser Windleburn (Atlantic) engaged in a titanic battle that saw Paul Mc Cormack lead home Fraser by a mere second.
Meanwhile further up the track the two single seater newcomers Ollie Sentch and James Corban also engaged in some fierce dicing which eventually saw Ollie get past and set off after Reagan Edwards who was having a lonely race in second place on the road. Things certainly livened up when Ollie arrived on the scene and proceed to hassle Reagan with several attempts to get past. Reagan already had two second on the road placings from races one and two and was clearly determined to make it three. His defence against Ollie in the faster Formula Atlantic was outstanding and Ollie said after the race that Reagans experience in Formula Fords clearly paid off in keeping him out.
So ended our second to last round with the final round is April 26th, 27th at Taupo International MotorSport Park, At this stage off all repairs go well we will have all classes should be back up to maximum numbers.
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