Teretonga News Round-up

Care the key says McIntyre

John McIntyre agrees that he’ll have to be careful during this afternoon’s NZ V8s series-deciding reverse grid race.

But he says he should be better off than arch-rival Angus Fogg.

McIntyre is starting from around the fourth row of the grid, but Fogg will be right off the back of the grid and with a lot of drivers to get past.

“Angus will be trying to come through on one of the hardest tracks to pass on.

“He’s going to have to take big risks and I’m not going to have to.

“I’ll have to be real careful, though. These cars, especially the Falcon (McIntyre and Fogg both drive Ford Falcons) with the front hub (which can be damaged by even minor contact with another car).

“I was very cautious in the last race (where he came from 22nd on the grid to finish 16th) and I’ll have to have the same mindset in this one.”

McIntyre leads Fogg by just eight points going into the reverse-gridder.

Pedersen fighting injured leg

United Video Ford Falcon racer Mark Pedersen says that, for him, this afternoon’s 22-lap reverse grid NZ V8s race will be a long one.

During this morning’s hailstorm which lashed the Teretonga racetrack, Pedersen slipped on the steps as he was getting out of the team’s race truck, and fell on to his knee.

He went to Southland Hospital in Invercargill, but his arrival coincided with the arrival of victims from a car crash.

“They said it would be three to four hours before they could see me properly so we cane back to the circuit.”

Pedersen says doctors think he has ripped a ligament on the outside of his thigh.

Pedersen says the biggest problem he’s having in the car is that his toes go numb, so he’s had to adopt left-foot braking for the first time.

He says the first part of the race earlier this afternoon wasn’t so bad, but he was having trouble having to move his right foot from the accelerator to the brake and back again.

He began missing braking zones. “I wasn’t losing any time, it was just an endurance thing.

“So I started left-foot braking. I had to learn it in one lap. Left-foot braking isn’t that easy. I’ve got admiration for the V8 Supercar guys now.”

Pedersen says that running that race with an injured leg means he knows now what the final race is going to be like.

After his fifth place finish in Race 2, injured leg and all, Pedersen says he’s staring down his best result of the season.

“We’re just grafters who keep on going and going and going.”

All run out

It may be cold and windy at Teretonga – there was even a hailstorm earlier in the day – but Southlanders have turned out in big numbers, though most are wrapped up in winter clothing, including woollen beanies.

So big that the infield food shop has run out of all bar hot chips, a few sandwiches and cold drinks.