Craig Baird is almost guaranteed this season's Battery Town Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge title after a strong showing at Timaru. Photo / Fast Company, SportProMedia.
Reigning Carrera Cup Australia champion David Reynolds won the final race, but defending series champion Craig Baird won the penultimate round of the penultimate Battery Town Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge at Levels.
Though he could only make it back up to seventh place in the 16 lap reverse
top six grid final after spinning off the track on the first lap, runaway wins over young gun Jono Lester in the first race and pole sitter Daniel Gaunt in the second meant 37-year-old Queensland-based Kiwi Baird has clocked up four round wins out of five.
Second was pole-sitter man Daniel Gaunt, followed by Australian driver Rodney Forbes, with Reynolds fourth and 19-year-old young gun Ant Pedersen coming fifth.
Heading into the weekend's round Baird had a 146 point buffer on Gaunt.
Despite the spin in the last race, that advantage is now 151 points, meaning - in effect - that Baird heads to next weekend's championship final at Invercargill's Teretonga Park virtually guaranteed the championship title.
Gaunt can also head south confident, having also extended his lead over third placed Jono Lester.
Young gun Lester trailed Gaunt by just 48 points going into the Timaru round, but a question mark hangs over his fitness after a heavy crash in the final race.
Lester was in fourth place with Forbes just in front when the pair speared off the track and into the tyre barrier, both cars sustaining heavy damage and Lester taken to hospital for observation with a leg injury.
As a result, the red flag came out, with the race declared. This put Reynolds ahead of Gaunt, Pedersen and Jody Vincent. When a race is declared, running order on the previous lap usually dictates finishing position, but Gaunt and Lester both copped five-second penalties for jumping the start.
