She's a funny old track, Pukekohe. It's been around or a good 40-odd years and is beginning to show signs of age but still provides great racing for drivers and spectators alike.
It's one of those tracks you can never really figure out. You can practice and practicearound it until the cows come home to get set-ups perfect, the car balance just right and the gearing spot on.
Lap times are in the top five for the class you're racing in the next weekend and on the drive home you're as happy as a pig in the proverbial.
A week later you turn up to race, not having touched the car at all in the interim, happy in the knowledge it's all good and then bang! Puke's decided to have a mood swing and nothing seems to work any more.
The general consensus is: you can sort of get things pointed in the right direction with set-up, but you really have to fine tune on the weekend of racing.
And if it rains, all bets are off.
The track has enough different characteristics to keep drivers and mechanics alike on their toes and if the data from the previous race tells the team "x" is the right set up, on the day it'll probably be "y" that'll win the race.
The back straight is the longest in the country where cars can reach 260kp/h plus before having to be hauled up for a 60kp/h hairpin.
During the left, then the sort-of left before the dip and the climbing right up the hill before the sweeping right at the top before the drop back onto the front straight, never lets the car really settle or attain any stability.
And there have been some mightily spectacular offs through that right at the top of the hill.
At the end of the front straight there's a dip that again upsets the car before the very fast right bend into, oh I don't know, lots of left-right-left things before a hard right on to the back straight, and off you go again.
And rather you than me in a big old taxi going flat out around there.
