Race winners confirmed

Press, 29 October 1981, Page 30

Race winners confirmed

David Oxton and Garry Pedersen, of Auckland, have been confirmed the winners of the first round of the Benson and Hedges produc-. tion saloon-car series. The two shared the Commodore which crossed the line first in the incident-packed two-and-a-half hour race at Bay Park, Tauranga, on Sunday. Second were two Dunedin drivers. Rod Collingwood and Lin Neilson, in a small VW Golf GTI and third place went to the experienced team of Gary Sprague (Tauranga) and Leo Leonard (Timaru) in a Ford Fairmont VB. Kent Baigent (Toyota Celica GT) led the race before

Wayne Wilkinson and Bruce Fowler (Fairmont) took command. However, on lap 38 Wilkinson rolled the big car off the track when it spun on oil dumped by another car’s exploding engine and the Auckland father-and-son team of Frank and. PaulRadicich took the lead in their Toyota Trueno. Sprague and Leonard drove well in the wet to overhaul the little Trueno and they took the lead for two laps before succumbing to the Commodore of Oxton and Pedersen on lap 42 in the appalling conditions. This year’s Bathurst champion from Australia, Dick

Johnson, worked his Fairmont up to fourth place by lap 50 but his co-driver. Nick Begovic, had a puncture which threw the car into a safety fence. The veteran pairing of Rod Coppins and Denis Hulme, the 1967 world driving champion, brought home their Commodore fourth. Neal Lowe and John Morton easily won the class for New Zealand-assembled 2 litre cars in their Ford Cortina and Graham Lorimer and Tony Lawrence took the 1.7 litre class in their Ford Laser Sport. However, a Honda Civic, driven by Ron Campbell and Reg Cook, won the small-car class.