Matt Powell Racing

Final day of the 25/26' New Zealand Sportscar Championship! And, a chaotic day at that! 🏁🇳🇿

We started the day strong qualifying second in class and P4 overall with a new PB.

Race 1, despite not getting the best start I was contesting second place into turn 1, but was the outside car, 3-wide, not left any racing room and was pushed into the dirt on exit. The shuffle continued down to turn 2, still outside, with rubbish on the tyres, I spun the car and dropped to the back. A series of mechanical failures for others ensured we spent the remainder of the race under yellow flags. 🟨🏁

Race 2, An incident in the category before ours left a huge amount of oil on the racing line at turn one which made for some pretty exciting moments but again the entire race was on/off due to safety car intervention, but we managed to move from 15th to 9th in only a few racing laps.

Race 3 started with an incident into turn 1 and the race was red flagged 🚩🏁. By the restart I was P6 and 3rd in the open-class. We didn't have great pace and was challenged in the closing laps. But, with the tone established earlier in Race 1, I got the elbows up and defended that spot to take 3rd in the open-class for the final race 🥉🏁.

Teamate Tim Edgell had electrical issues Friday and it looked like the car wouldn't compete. Saturday morning a last minute solution was found and despite missing qualifying, Tim came from the back to win race 2, before a different issue forced him to miss the final race.

A really difficult weekend for the team, and points wise collectively our worst weekend. However, challenging days like this show the never say die attitude of everyone in this team and even with the weekends issues we still had cars on the podium in two races.

As always, a mega thank you to Ross Tebbs, Edgell Performance and many others this weekend for their generosity and hard work. 🇳🇿🏁

Thank you to our supporters, all the NZIGP Events staff & all the staff & volunteers at Hampton Downs!

I'll post an end of season wrap up soon!

Action shot thanks to Chelsea Media Co - Motorsport! 📸