Two top tens the highlight on difficult weekend for JMR

A top ten finish for each of its two Ford Falcon V8 SuperTourers at last weekend's Woodstock 500 at Pukekohe was a welcome boost for John McIntyre Racing on the toughest weekend in its six year history.

Seventh place for John McIntyre and Jono Lester in Race 2 and ninth for Steve Richards and Scott Harrison in the new look Sidchrome Ford V8ST in Race 3 represented a great save by the team on a weekend where they were dogged by problem after problem.

More importantly, the top ten finish kept team principal McIntyre in the hunt for the inaugural SuperTourer title. Arch rival Jonny Reid had a difficult weekend as well, and both were leapfrogged in the points by Scott McLaughlin. McIntyre nevertheless heads to the final round at Ruapuna still with a strong shot at the title.

"That's a whole lot better than it was looking on the Saturday of Pukekohe," he explained. ""We had the worst qualifying of my career and to top that off in Race 1 the car engine shut down on Jono. He rebooted the electrics and was able to get going but we went a lap down. Our pace wasn't good when I hopped into the car and with eight laps to go I had to pit for front end repairs."

McIntyre and Lester had lost time in Friday practice with steering rack issues, cutting their track and critical set-up time to just four competitive laps. In a field covered in its entirety by little more than a second, that was never going to be enough and the pair could not recover from Friday's issues, qualifying 18th and finishing 18th, 7th and 14th in the three races over the weekend.

The appearance of Steve's dad and racing legend Jim Richards worked a bit of overnight magic on both cars, and they were much closer to the pace on Sunday. The gremlins and the awful luck remained, however.

Car #47 of Lester/McIntyre drove through the field from 18th to seventh in the 53 lap second race. Car #70 of Harrison and Richards was hit at turn one on lap 5, with Scott behind the wheel. He managed to avoid the armco on the left and brought the car in for repairs. It was decided that the front end damage and a gearbox issue was better remedied before race 3 and the car was retired from the race.

In the 70 lap Race 3, car #47 struggle early on with a suspected cut left rear tyre. Lester pitted as early as possible on lap 30 to hand over to McIntyre for the remaining 40 laps and McIntyre was able to make good progress into the top ten until a series of incidents with other cars forced him off track and back down to 12th. With just three laps to go the gearbox in the #47 Blackwoods Protector Falcon started vibrating and McIntyre circulated in sixth gear to finish 14th.

Harrison and Richards in car #70 made great progress all race from the back of the grid. Harrison handed a clean straight car to Richards and the 2xBathurst Winner charged on. The team made a great call to bring Richards in during a safety car, fitting fresh left hand side tyres. Richards went to the back of the pack then moved forward including passing team owner John McIntyre and eventually finishing a well-deserved ninth.

"Firstly I'd like to say thanks to all of our sponsors and supporters for their encouragement at Pukekohe," concluded McIntyre "JMR had its toughest ever round of a motor racing and I have lost the effective lead of the Championship. Jono was great all weekend but he and I just suffered from a lack of laps on Friday. Steve and Scott did a great job in the #70 Sidchrome/Dewalt Falcon under the circumstances and finished strongly in the final race. Its only through your mistakes that you learn and we believe we have learned a great deal this weekend.

"We now head to Ruapuna in Christchurch for the GRAND FINAL on November 24-25th, the scene of our feature race Win at Easter. We are working flat out between now and then to sort our car issues and produce two fast cars at Christchurch."