Kerry Grant

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30653, 20 January 1965, Page 12

Kerry Grant

If Jim Palmer is headed off as first New Zealander home in the Lady Wigram trophy race it will almost certainly be by the spirited Wellington driver, Kerry Grant, last year’s saloon car champion. This is Grant's first season in a single seater, and although he retired in the first championship race of the season at Renwick with a puncture, it was not before he had shown his ability to keep up with the head of the field. Grant on the track is a spirited and even fiery driver, and is rarely satisfied until at the head of the field. It was last year, with a Lotus Cortina, that he became really well known to the New Zealand public. Grant started the season at Renwick, in 1963, with a Cortina G.T. with a modified 1650 c.c. engine, and he finished third after a spin at the hairpin. This engine was transferred to a Lotus Cortina, and at levin, Grant's home course, he set ■ new lap record and won the event.

He won the open scratch race at Pukekohe, and at Wigram spun out in the first heat, but won the final. He won again at Teretonga, and at this stage it emerged that there was to be an exciting finish to the year’s saloon championship. Grant had 35 points on the table, compared with the 37 points of E. Sprague, who had been driving the very fast Zephyr Mk. 111. If Grant won at Waimate, the last race of the championship series, he would take the title. If Sprague also happened to finish second, Grant would hold the title by only one point. As it turned out, Sprague crashed in a previous race, and Grant drove restrainedly to take second place in the main saloon race behind P. Fahey in another Lotus Cortina, thus winning the championship. Providing Grant does not try too hard, he stands a good chance of finishing well up the list at Wigram. He is a driver who may well be a future New Zealand single-seater champion.