KEY POINTS:
Australia's leading woman race driver, Leanne Tander, will compete in this weekend's round of the Toyota Racing Series at Manfeild.
Tander, wife of V8 Supercar driver Garth, is fourth in the Australian Formula Three championship. She has never raced in New Zealand before, though she was at Pukekohe
to watch her husband drive a Holden in the Supercar round there.
She will be a welcome addition to the field, which will be without three leading international drivers this weekend.
Englishman Ben Clucas, who is third in the championship, never planned to race at Manfeild.
Qatar driver Hamad Al Fardan and Italian Edoardo Piscopo were entered but have opted out. Al Fardan won the New Zealand Grand Prix last year and is sixth in the championship this season.
Championship leader Daniel Gaunt from Auckland has a comfortable 111-point lead over Wellingtonian Ben Harford after four rounds and he also shares the lead in the international segment of the series with his teenaged team-mate, Shane Van Gisbergen.
Tander will join the European Techniques team alongside former Australian Formula Three race winner Barton Mawer, who drove at the last round in Taupo. The team began the season with another Aussie, Lucas Dumbrell.
Although Tander has never raced a Toyota, she is confident she can adapt quickly and said she hoped a good performance would see her invited back. She will go head-to-head with New Zealand's leading woman driver, Christina Orr.
"I'm certainly hoping to go well this weekend," Tander said. "I'd love to have the chance to go over there and race again, so we'll see what happens and how the results pan out."
Gaunt comes to Manfeild fresh from a successful test in an Indy Pro car in the United States, where he had experience in Indy Pro and Champ Car Atlantic races last year. Last year at Manfeild he won two of the three races.
The track is also a happy hunting ground for New Zealand V8 championship leader John McIntyre, who enjoys a 27-point lead over the defending champion, Kayne Scott. Australian David Besnard is six points back in third.
McIntyre won the first two races at Taupo in his Ford but dropped out of contention in the third with a suspension failure. Scott won the round in his Holden, continuing his steady improvement after a disastrous first round at Pukekohe.
Besnard dominated the Pukekohe round but has suffered a succession of setbacks on unfamiliar tracks and will be looking for a revival on a circuit he has used for testing.
After a slow start to the Porsche GT3 championship, Team Kiwi driver Matt Halliday won all three races at Taupo but still remains third on points behind defending champion Craig Baird and Aucklander Fabian Coulthard.
Palmerston North driver Sam MacNeill has built up a big lead over the field in the Formula Fords but South Islanders Eddie Bell and Brent Collins are almost level-pegging in the Mini Challenge.
The purpose-built Manfeild circuit, near Feilding, is popular and usually produces very competitive racing.