Drysdale takes lead in series

Dylan Drysdale has taken the series’ points lead in the premier KZ2 class after a dominant performance at the penultimate round of the Prokart Series in Auckland over the weekend.

Heading into the round in Auckland Cup reigning class New Zealand sprint champion Drysdale shared third place in the standings with multi-time former class title holder Ryan Grant. With Grant sidelined by an elbow injury, top Australian driver Troy Loeskow provided the competition.

But former Palmerston North and now Auckland-based Drysdale qualified quickest. After sharing heat wins and fastest race laps with Loeskow on Saturday, he was completely dominant on Sunday, winning the third heat, pre-final and final.

Loeskow and local class young guns Taylor Harte and Bradley Hicks also impressed, but Drysdale was unstoppable, further lowering the new class track lap record, set by Loeskow on Saturday, in the third heat on Sunday morning, then going quicker again to leave it at 25.576 in the pre-final.

Drysdale has leapfrogged former points

leaders Mat Kinsman and Aaron Wilson in the overall points standings and has a sevenpoint lead heading to the series finale in Hamilton in a fortnight.

Andrew Hunt had a similar start to Dylan Drysdale in the KZ2 Masters class, qualifying quickest and winning the three heat races.

But he was beaten to the line in the prefinal by fellow Aucklander Glenn Ellis, then excluded from the final after failing to follow the correct notification procedure when making an engine repair between races.

The result was that Ellis won the round from another Auckland driver, Enrico van der Griend, and van der Griend now leads the class points standings by three points from Tim Loughran from the Hawke’s Bay, with Brett Hollander from Auckland third.