Cross seeks to hunt down Cockerton for title

points on offer over three races, there only has to be one slipup for the title to be decided. The late entry of veteran Ken Smith could well mix up the results.

Strong entries for Easter kartsport nationals

A strong contingent of South Island karters will head north at Easter to the Kartsport NZ National Sprint Championships at Palmerston North. Last year four southerners won national titles. Christchurch’s Matthew Hamilton is expected to defend his KZ2 title, along with Simon Hunter who won the Yamaha 100 Heavy. Winner of the Junior 100 Yamaha title, Caleb Cross, hasn’t entered, nor has Marcus Armstrong, winner of the Rotax Max Junior class. Cross is focused on his single seater racing while Armstrong is racing in Italy. This weekend Armstrong contests the second round of the WSK Master Series in Italy.

Entertaining ute racing a guarantee at Ruapuna

Canterbury Car Club hosts both the UDC V8 Utes and the Ssangyong Racing Series this weekend at Ruapuna. It’s the second round of the entertaining UDC V8 Ute Series which is currently led by Australian racer Mason Barbera. Timaru hosted the first round a fortnight ago which saw three different winners from three races. Barbera, who was quickest in qualifying and went on to win the first race, currently leads the series by one point from Sam Barry, winner of the third race. Peter Ward won the second race and is third overall. Bamber ready for Sebring Earl Bamber will be competing this weekend at what is regarded as the oldest and toughest sportscar race in the United States. Bamber will join seven other Porsche works drivers as they tackle the 63rd running of the 12 Hours of Sebring held at the Sebring International Raceway in Florida. Bamber will be driving a Porsche 911 RSR in the GTLM class along with last year’s winner Jorg Bergmeister, from Germany, and Frenchman Frederic Makowieki. The race is part of the Tudor United Sportscar Championship. Evans to race at Le Mans While Kiwi Mitch Evans will drive for the Russian Time team in the 2015 GP2 Series, he has also signed with the British Jota LMP2 team to drive in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps World Endurance Championship rounds. This certainly signals that he will start pursuing a sportscar career as the reality of driving in F1 means bringing millions of sponsorship dollars to a team. Evans is managed by ex-F1 driver Mark Webber who is a Porsche works driver alongside Brendon Hartley. We will now see four Kiwi drivers at Le Mans in June with Earl Bamber and Hartley driving for the Porsche LMP1 Works team and Richie Stanaway in an Aston Martin.

Benjamin Carrell is the online editor of nzmotorracing.co.nz