Cooley eyes improvement
Wellington driver Brock Cooley feels he’ll be able to move his Ford Falcon further up the grid as the New Zealand Touring Cars Championship moves to Manfeild this weekend.
The reigning class two champion made the move to class one of the championship this season, but by his own admission said it had been a lot of hard work by himself and his team to get speed out of the car.
‘‘Up until Teretonga the season has been bit of a struggle to be honest, not through lack of effort. But we just hadn’t got our heads around the new car as fast as we would have liked from a set up point of view and my own driving hasn’t been good enough,’’ Cooley said.
‘‘It has been a bigger learning curve with the new car than we all thought going into this season. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but it has been harder than that again.’’
After a tough few opening rounds Cooley said some of the key set-ups for the car were unlocked at Teretonga last month.
‘‘Owen Evans and his Smeg Racing team have been a massive help to us all season.’’
‘‘On Saturday night at Teretonga his team set my car up for us and we had the second fastest lap in race two and was on for our first podium in race three until I was too eager on the throttle out of the last corner and got wheel spin allowing Nick Ross past.’’
‘‘It was so good to have a car that was capable of running with the front guys.’’
‘‘That’s a huge confidence booster for us as a team. We know the car is fast and capable, we just have to maximise those opportunities on track and we’ll be able to bring home some strong results.’’
Manfield is Cooley’s home track, a circuit where he has had a lot of success in the past and has tested his Ford Falcon in the off-season and said he was more confident off the back of the Teretonga improvements.
‘‘It gives us more confidence heading into the weekend. I obviously know the place well and just hope we have the same car speed we did at Teretonga on Sunday.’’
Meanwhile, Pukekohe’s Liam Lawson will look to seal the 2016/17 New Zealand Formula 1600 Championship title this weekend at Manfeild.
With a maximum of 122 points available and a 110 point lead over rival Michael Collins, the 14-year-old just needs to finish in the points to win the championship at the fifth and final round of the season.
‘‘I’ve done a lot of Formula First racing [at Manfeild] so I know the track very well,’’ Lawson said. ‘‘It is a matter of dialling the car in on test day and making sure we finish races.’’
Lawson has almost obtained the perfect record this season, winning 11 of the 12 races competed so far and setting fastest time in qualifying at the first four rounds.