The almighty duel between Jonny Reid in the Audi R8 GT3 LMS he shared with Rotorua’s Neil Foster and Highlands’ head professional driver Andrew Waite, driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT3, kept the crowd on their seat edges for almost the entire final hour.
Using every available ounce of the V12 Aston’s aerodynamic prowess and straight speed advantage, Waite fought off Reid for lap after lap until in the final six minutes, when the V10, 5.2-litre Audi’s pilot caught the whiff of locked brakes in front of him and pounced.
"You only get one shot at a New Zealand title. I pointed the car on the grippy part of the track and put the boot in," Reid said of the pass that earned him and Foster the national trophy in this winner-takes-all event.
For Waite, who recently finished second in the Chinese LMP3 Endurance Championship and shared the drive on Saturday with his boss Tony Quinn, his time behind the wheel felt like a sprint race.
"It was hard. I’m knackered but to be battling with Jonny out there, it was so cool," he said.
This was the first year the Australian GT cars were not racing at Highlands’ headline spring meeting, but their absence did not dilute the event. Quinn said that the beginning and end of each endurance race on his Cromwell circuit was unscriptable and "the quality and talent of these two guys [Reid and Waite] was first class."
While the war of attrition struck down some of the star players, Highlands’ driver Jack Milligan and Christchurch’s George McFarlane took third in the Porsche GT3R.
Dunedin’s Allan Dippie and his Invercargill driving partner Scott O’Donnell kept it clean to finish the highest of the Otago teams, in sixth place in their Porsche 991 GT3 Cup.
A couple of nervous pit stops to patch repair a damaged driveshaft paid off for Queenstown’s Barry Moore and Tim Mackersy as they were able to still hold on to first in Class B in their VW Golf TCR.
Invercargill’s Brendon Leitch, who also works at Highlands, was in a seemingly safe third place in a Mercedes AMG SLS GT3 when a rear driveshaft that was installed on Friday broke with only 20 minutes to go.
John McIntyre and Simon Gilbertson suffered the bitter disappointment of having to pull out due to electrical issues in their freshly-rebuilt SaReNi Camaro GT3.
The Auckland duo of Simon Evans and Chris Hanley also faced game over early when their V8 SuperTourer encountered an alternator issue and had to retire with just over 30 minutes left in the race.
