Briant and Hoogerbrug dip out of champs

OUT OF CONTENTION: Blake Briant and Kate Hoogerbrug’s campaign in the New Zealand Jetsprinting Championship has ended with a top-nine finish at Hastings. File picture by Ian Moss

JETSPRINTING

GISBORNE’S Blake Briant and Kate Hoogerbrug have dipped out of the New Zealand Jetsprinting Championship with a couple of rounds to go.

The Harvey Transport Bar’s Bugs team made it into the top nine of the superboats class at Hastings on Sunday but an “average run” in the first elimination round meant they didn’t advance further, Briant said.

The championship has two more rounds, at Whanganui and Wanaka, but Briant said the team wouldn’t make it there.

“That will be the end of our New Zealand championship campaign,” he said.

Briant and his navigator Hoogerbrug were coming off a third and fifth in the first two rounds, sitting in fourth place overall.

He said they had been “reasonably happy” with their qualifying runs on Sunday.

“The boat felt good.”

The course at Hastings was technical and they had been improving ahead of the top-nine run-off, he said.

“We needed a flawless run and I made a couple of mistakes.”

There wasn’t much between the top teams and one or two corners could make quite a difference, he said.

Waikato driver Glen Head and navigator Hayley Todd from the Altherm Jetsprint Team were first, as they were in Round 2 at Meremere last month.

They lead the championship, just ahead of Rob and Ange Coley (Poison Ivy), from Whanganui.