It’s hard enough winning just the one class race at a major kart race meeting like the KartSport Auckland club’s annual Butch Pet Foods-sponsored City of Sails 2-Day Challenge at Giltrap Group Raceway on Avondale’s Rosebank Domain on Saturday and Sunday. Yet this year, four drivers – Jason Lee, Aarron Cunningham, Ryan Crombie and Ashton Phipps – claimed event clean sweeps, winning all five races they started to claim coveted CoS class titles for 2019.
Lee (Rotax DD2), Cunningham (Rotax Max Heavy) and Crombie (Rotax Max Light) also qualified quickest in their respective classes, while Lee and Crombie – the latter just out of the Junior ranks and impressing everyone with his pace and maturity on his winning move into the Senior Rotax Max Light category – enjoyed the distinction of never actually being headed in any of their races.
Cunningham was only headed once – by Andrew Grant in the first head on Saturday – but otherwise won as he liked as well. Ashton Phipps, however, spent the weekend battling for every win in the Vortex Mini ROK class with Tauranga’s Jay Urwin, who eventually finished second, and visiting Nelson driver Ollie Workman, who ended up third.
For top female Junior Breanna Morris the meeting was literally the one that got away.
Breanna qualified quickest and won two of the three Rotax Max Junior class heats as well as the Pre-Final and Final….but with every race counting to the overall result she was never going to make up for her early dnf in the first race of the weekend on Saturday.
Instead the class title went to the consistent Nathan Crang from Gemma Winters, with fellow female young gun Morris third.
Joshua Parkinson was another recent Junior class graduate to make a big impression at the meeting, qualifying on pole in the KZ2 class and winning three of the five class races. Established class front-runner Regan Hall ended up winning the weekend however, his two wins and three second placings – just – giving him the edge over Parkinson whose three wins and a second could not make up for a 7th place score in the other heat.
Carl Brennan was the other Junior graduate to rue a single low finishing position, in his case 10th in the ClubSport 120 Pre-Final. Having been the only driver in the class to break the 35.00 second barrier to claim a runaway pole position in qualifying, then gone on to continually smash the class lap record on his way to winning the other four class races, it was a bitter pill for the youngster to swallow in his first event as a Senior.
With only one (out of 20) laps completed in the Pre-Final however, he was classified 10th, handing the overall event win to class stalwart Stephen Muggeridge who won the Pre-Final (in his absence) and finished second to Brennan in the other four class races.
Eight-year-old Maxim Kirwan, meanwhile, won out in a close and competitive battle with fellow Cadet ROK class race winners Jamie Thompson and Miles Baker. Baker qualified quickest, and Thompson and Kirwan shared the same number of race wins (two each) but Kirwan was the more consistent, and was rewarded with the City of Sails class title for 2019.
KartSport Auckland would like to acknowledge the assistance of event sponsor Butch Pet Foods and the class sponsors Cosgrave Awards, Dayle ITM, Bellroy Construction, WRB Karting Supplies, Biz Safety and Westspeed Motorsport in putting together the annual City of Sails 2-Day Challenge meeting.
RESULTS
KZ2
1. Regan Hall; 2. Joshua Parkinson; 3. Michael Adolph; 4. Shaun Curran; 5. Kevan Storr; 6. Sam Dashfield
Rotax DD2
1. Jason Lee; 2. David Malcolm; 3. Tim Eriksen; 4. Garry Claxton; 5. Mark Dixon; 6. Mike Barry
Rotax Max Light
1. Ryan Crombie; 2. George Sampson; 3. Zane Hills; 4. Quade Krissansen; 5. Charlie Coleman; 6. Jason Butterworth
Rotax Max Heavy
1. A. Cunningham; 2. Brendon Hart; 3. Andrew Grant; 4. Henry Gelb; 5. Simon van der Drift; 6. George Gelb
ClubSport 120
1.Stephen Muggeridge; 2. Carl Brennan; 3. Richard Macey; 4. Lee Sefton; 5. Scott Dalley; 6. Cliff Walsh
Rotax Max Junior
1. Nathan Crang; 2. Gemma Winters; 3. Breanna Morris; 4. Luke Thompson; 5. James van den Beck; 6. Hayden Bakkerus.
Vortex Mini ROK
1. Ashton Phipps; 2. Jay Urwin; 3. Ollie Workman; 4. Harry Scott; 5. Hayden Lines; 6. Lewis Newton..
Cadet ROK
1. Maxim Kirwan; 2. Jamie Thompson; 3. Miles Baker; 4. Carson Daly; 5. James MacDonald.