By BOB PEARCE
Jason Richards finally had something to smile about again after the Darwin round of the Australian V8 Supercar championship.
For years, the young Aucklander has been one of the sunniest personalities in New Zealand motorsport.
And he had plenty to be happy about as he won national touring car titles with BMW and Nissan cars.
But being lead driver in Team Kiwi's debut season in the big V8s has tested his patience and his good nature.
There was a serious setback when the team Holden Commodore failed only a couple of corners into his attempt to pre-qualify for the first round of the championship. And he was bitterly disappointed to miss pre-qualifying by a fraction of a second a couple of weeks back at Sydney.
But, after trekking all the way to Darwin, Richards flew through the 15-minute Friday purgatory which is pre-qualifying for the half-dozen cars trying to make it into the main field.
Richards then qualified 26th and finished 18th, 23rd and 24th in the three sprint races over the two days of the meeting.
"It means we won't have to pre-qualify for the Canberra meeting next month and, hopefully, we've now broken away from that group into the main body," Richards said.
"It's been really hard with only 15 minutes of track time. Darwin was better because none of the teams use the Hidden Valley track for testing and they go there only once a year. It was more of a level playing field for us.
"We managed to have the 12th-fastest lap time over the weekend and the other teams were impressed. I hope we'll be able to continue to make that sort of improvement."
About that time things will get really hectic for Team Kiwi, with Richards and No 2 driver Angus Fogg contesting the New Zealand touring car championship, which will overlap with some V8 rounds.
Richards has another more pleasant problem: finding time to get married. He proposed to his fiancee, Charlotte Bridge, on Conrod Straight at Bathurst last year, but wedding plans are on hold until he gets a break from racing.
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It would be a big surprise if Scott Dixon did not win New Zealand's premier motor-racing award, the Jim Clark Trophy, when the results are announced at the motorsport awards dinner in Christchurch on Saturday.
The other finalists are Jason Richards, winner of the national touring car title, and Robin Porter, who is the national truck-racing champion.
Possum Bourne, the Asia Pacific rally champion, tops the finalists for the Rally Founders Trophy. Also in the running are the national champion, Bruce Herbert, and Chris West, of Timaru, who was both junior and Group N champion.
Aucklander James Cressey, winner of the Formula Ford title and the McLaren Scholarship, is a contender for the Steel Trophy for under-21 circuit racers alongside Michael Shepherd, from Hastings, who won the Formula First title, and fellow Aucklander Jody Vincent, who had an impressive saloon car season.
Finalists for the Lupp Trophy for classic and historic racers are Bill Cottle (Otaki), Keith Cowan (Christchurch) and Alan Curry (Hamilton).
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One of the topics for the annual conference of Motorsport New Zealand at the weekend will be regulations and licensing of street racing.
Discussion will come on the eve of another court fixture in the long-running case arising from the death of spectators at the Queenstown Festival.
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Formula One teams are worried about the dangers posed by the "launch control" starting aids on the narrow grid at the upcoming Monaco Grand Prix.
The electronic starting aids have been legal since the Spanish Grand Prix and when they work they apparently deliver a quicker and smoother start than a manual takeoff.
But at the Austrian Grand Prix, four or five cars stalled, including Mika Hakkinen's, and they had to sit while the rest of the field charged by.
At Monte Carlo, the grid area is not as expansive and the possibility of a pileup has the drivers worried. Several have said they will revert to manual starting until the gremlins have been sorted.
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Rally New Zealand have decided, at this stage, not to include a special televised finale to the world championship rally on September 23.
Provisional plans had been published for a 3km special stage in the Maramarua Forest at 1 pm on the Sunday, which could have been televised live.
Organisers are still keen to see more live television.
Gary Upson, chief executive of Rally New Zealand, said it had been decided that 3km was too short to provide meaningful competition at the end of the Propecia event.
Motorsport: Richards smiles again after Darwin V8 races
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