Invercargill driver Brendon Leitch had two contrasting days during Round 2 of the 2017 Castrol Toyota Racing Series at Teretonga Park in Invercargill this weekend. After good speed in the early stages of the weekend an incident on Sunday morning cost him any chance of further top results.
The round started well as Leitch set the fastest times in both practice sessions on Friday before tackling two qualifying sessions on Saturday morning, the first to establish the order for the opening race of the round on Saturday and the second to sort the order for the feature race on Sunday afternoon. Leitch took the ITM FT-50 to the third fastest time in the first before setting the fastest time for the feature.
He then raced to second in the opening race on Saturday, running third behind Thomas Randle of Australia and Richard Verschoor of the Netherlands for the entire distance only to be promoted to second place post-race after Leitch’s Victory Motor Racing team mate Randle was penalised for a jump start. The result elevated Leitch to third equal on the series points table.
Sunday morning dawned wet and Brendon started from position three for the morning race only to be caught up in an incident with UK driver Enaam Ahmed at the first corner, sliding off the track and out of the race while Brazilian Pedro Piquet went on to win.
The Victory Motor Racing team did a great job to repair the ITM FT-50 in time for the feature – the Spirit Of A Nation Cup Race. However in the time available the car was far from perfect, Leitch dropping back through the field as the race progressed, eventually finishing seventh.
“Saturday was a great day,” said Brendon as he summed up his weekend. “The ITM FT-50 was fast and qualified third and on pole. We had good speed in race one and took second. We were taken out in the second race and then the team did a fantastic job and gave me the best car they could for race three. They had ten people working on it. We broke a bellhousing and other bits in the incident and there were parts required that were hard to source. The car was pretty hard to drive and I just had to push on.”
Leitch will now turn his attention to Round 3 of the series at Hampton Downs in North Waikato next weekend. “We have good speed there,” he said.
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